Article in Baby Talk

[thepeach80]

There was an article in the newest edition under the healthy baby section "News About Circumcision". It does to all to say there was a study done on 2,298 high-risk men at an STD clinic in India and that the unciced men were 8 times more likely to contract HIV than the circed ones. It says there was no difference in other STDs, but HIV was a huge difference. The head researcher was Steven Reynolds from Johns Hopkins. It does end the article w/ the AAP still does not reccomend routine circ though. Any thoughts?

[polka123]

kinda like the same propanda in this "study":

http://www.mothering.com/discussions...hreadid=127941

I do not understand how these studies can be valid

[Frankly Speaking]

They are both the same study and it is old. It has been thoroughly debunked and keeps getting put out as new by those that want to promote genital modification. They always put the study out but never the other side. It's like the cervical cancer study published in The New England Journal of Medicine April 11th of last year. There was an article countering it and the NEJM also published an editorial blasting it but neither of those were ever mentioned except by intactivists. Only one side was mentioned in the newspapers and radio/TV reports. I'm not a conspiracy theorist but the evidence is damning!



Frank

[DesireeH]

Anyone know what the HIV rate in India is anyways? I mean if its high....obviously more people will have it. I wonder what their circ ratio is as well. Without those facts, their study is useless.

[Teresa]

Hindus do not circumcise, although Muslims generally do, & Christians & other faiths residing in India may--I don't think it's illegal, and even if it is, there's a way around everything in India.

As far as I'm concerned that study is useless--it only looked at men already attending an STD clinic!

Of course you've got to consider behavior and not just physiology!

India is a very conservative society, generally.
The last time we were there some friends of family there were detained & taken to the police station because they were unmarried (though engaged) and unchaperoned! And this was in Delhi, not a small provincial village!

There are also really bad 'red light districts' where prostitutes are displayed in the windows & doorways like any other 'product.' Someone who is engaging in extramarital sex of any kind is probably doing so with a prostitute. We're not talking about an American college student who has sex with a different partner every semester, but a person who has sex with (another person who has) multiple partners every day.

The tragedy is that the women married to the men utilizing the prostitutes have very little recourse.

[Frankly Speaking]

Originally posted by DesireeH
I wonder what their circ ratio is as well.

The only group that is circmcised in India are the Muslims. In other populations the circumcision rate would be very near zero. That very fact would be a significant confounder. Do the Muslims act differently sexually because of their religious convictions? Have the researchers accounted for this? Since this study was more about promoting circumcision, I sincerely doubt it just as similar confounders were not considered in similar studies in Africa.




Frank