Seattle times article

[applecider]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...cision16m.html

I'm just LIVID about this article!! And this is from Washington state, supposedly a fairly progressive state! Why are we regressing??

[Claire and Boys]

"These are completely personal decisions and there are a lot of religious, social and cultural considerations," Wasserheit said. "Nobody is trying to force anyone to get circumcised."

This is exactly what they are doing by performing circumcision on newborns. The newborns didn't have a choice, so they were forced into it.

[MommytoB]

Boy it sure does show if CDC and WHO are this UV the same people who send out vaxes just shows that if they keep acting thatway the are going to end up more looking like UV .

I'm with you claire they say they are not forcing people so when it's a parent decision to circ their child to them they don't see that as forcing circumcision on a child who can't say his words is just plain blindness .

I think this whole thing is because in the past penile cancer was the top promoter of circ benefit then people got smart including ACS changed their habbits even starting to say the studies were flawed etc .

Then the UTI became the big circ promoter now people with intact children are going we know UTI's are not because my children have a foreskin so they know that's is out in the the intact parent eyes but still it's out there even though the studies are flawed on UTI.

Now, they need to get up something that they assume they could pass off this flawed HIV study as actual scientific evidence to become a heavy on circ promoter .

So many parents may fall for that when they use scientific hopefullly many will realize how Nuts it is .

[Belle]

They've posted a rebuttal.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...yndication=rss

[daddysmymommy]

The thing I don't understand about logic like this . . .

During the past five years, three independent randomized clinical trials on adult heterosexual men in sub-Saharan Africa have all shown the same result: Those who were circumcised were 60 percent less likely to acquire HIV, or human immunodeficiency virus.

. . . is that it ignores the moral aspect in favor of an "ends justify the means" approach. What if we castrated boys at birth? They'd have fewer instances of testicular cancer, right?

So I guess that's what we should be doing.

[applecider]

Originally Posted by Belle

They've posted a rebuttal.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...yndication=rss

Thanks for that. I don't actually read the times, I just happened to read the one my Grandma had bought that day. Which was interesting because when I started talking to my Grandma about it, she said that my Grandad had not been circumcised and always wished he was. When he was older and had prostate surgery (?) he asked them to circumcise him and he thought it was better.

[Night_Nurse]

Originally Posted by cody'smomma

... she said that my Grandad had not been circumcised and always wished he was. When he was older and had prostate surgery (?) he asked them to circumcise him and he thought it was better.

That's okay, maybe it was better for him. It was nice that he had the choice. Since it wasn't a choice forced on him, I'm sure he was happier with the result. That's not to say that the majority of intact men wish they were circed (if they did, they could get a circ at any time) or that they prefer being circed over intact. I'm not trying to be insensitive at all, but I'm wondering if really it was your grandmother who wished your grandfather was circed so he did it and then was happy because she was happy. Does that make sense?

[serendipity22]

During the past five years, three independent randomized clinical trials on adult heterosexual men in sub-Saharan Africa have all shown the same result:

They were all prematurely ended.

Perhaps the second and third were ended at a point in time that the results looked like the first.

Perhaps if all 3 trials had been completed,they would have had different outcomes.

[Crunchy Frog]

Even if these African trials were completely valid it would still have little or no applicability to the situation in the U.S. It only showed a reduction in heterosexual female to male transmission; the least frequent type of transmission in the developed world. An American male is many orders of magnitude less likely to have an unprotected sexual encounter with an HIV+ woman than a man in Southern Africa.

There are so many other epidemiological factors that differ between the two populations that it's absolutely impossible to extrapolate.

It doesn't even matter what the outcomes of the African trials were from the standpoint of American neonatal circumcision, except that it's a useful tool for people who want to push a preexisting agenda.

[brant31]

Originally Posted by serendipity22

Perhaps if all 3 trials had been completed,they would have had different outcomes.

I'm no statistician, but as I understand it from a couple of friends (one an actuary, one an MPH), the data were converging when the trials were stopped. That is to say, after the head start that the intact group apparently had, over time the duration that each group was in the trial would become relatively closer. Another way to look at it is, there was no statistical difference between the two groups within a comparable time period. If the trials had gone to completion, the results would have been statistically insignificant -- a dead heat. In fact, that is what previous trials had demonstrated, and what the Royal Dutch Medical Association alluded to.

But ultimately, Crunchy Frog's point is correct. It should be moot. The researchers themselves, along with the WHO and UNAIDS folks now in charge of the Ramp-Up in Africa, have always stressed (and continue to stress) that circumcision as an intervention is appropriate only where certain criteria are met:

1. HIV rates are high (i.e., over 5% of the adult population) and
2. Adult circumcision is not widespread already

This would appear to rule out circumcision as an epidemiological intervention in the developed world on the first count, and in North America and Australia on both counts.

Yet it seems that numerous pro-circumcision, US-based epidemiologists and doctors have somehow taken the ball and run with it, failing to understand there's no game being played.

Good grief, I even had Robert Bailey PhD, designer and co-principal investigator of the Kenya RCT, tell me to my face 32 days ago that it would be "crazy" for a US parent to circumcise their infant primarily out of future concern about HIV. He could think of lots of other good reasons (he's a huge circumcision fan), but AIDS definitely was not one of them. I made that point the next day to the 2 CDC epidemiology officers I spoke to for 45 minutes, and they seemed extremely surprised. I hope it sank it.

Personally, I think what is happening in Africa is fraudulent and disgraceful, but it would only compound the tragedy to try to apply it outside that region.