How can HIV prevention be used as a reason for circ?

[KGB]

The numbers just don't add up. In a country like Iceland or the UK where circumcision rates are below 20%, HIV prevalence is ranked at #100 and #95 in the world, respectively.

In the US where circumcision rates are (and have been) around 50-80%, HIV prevalence is ranked at #68 in the world!

So if the US has one of the highest rates of circs in the world, we should have the lowest rates of HIV, right? But that just doesn't seem to be the case.

Has anyone else noticed this discrepancy?

[MyBoysBlue]

That is exactly why I laughed when I first read about the HIV studies results. I figured no one would take it seriously as it was so obviously flawed. I guess it wasnt as obvious as I thought.

[serendipity22]

How can HIV prevention be used as a reason for circ?

In the same way that prevention of many different diseases/disorders can be used as a reason. Bedwetting, alcoholism, deafness, blindness, TB, epilepsy, insanity and many many more conditions have claimed to cured/prevented by circ.

Take 2 groups of thousands of men, circ half and tell them not to have sex for 6 weeks and teach them how to use condoms. Ignore the men who drop out of the study. Finish the study early before the figures even out. Include the uncirced men who contracted HIV but never had sex in the figures.

2 or 3 dozen more men in the uncirced group contract HIV than the circed group therefore all men should be circed at birth.

Give more value to these ~30 men than the statistics of millions of men.
Ignore that some African countries have:
high hiv high circ
high hiv low circ
low hiv low circ
low hiv high circ

ignore evidence that male to female HIV transmission is increased by circ

ignore presence of tropical ulcers, chanchroids etc which mean results shouldn't be applicable to western countries.

[Fyrestorm]

It's like the bumper sticker I saw in NYC:

"If circumcision prevents AIDS, Why are all my friends dead?"