Anyone read Newsweek this week?

[Breathless Wonder]

The article was entitled:
Circumcision: Cutting the HIV Rate?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9806505/site/newsweek/

While more than 40 studies since 1989 have found lower HIV rates among circumcised men, this study, led by the French national agency for AIDS research and conducted in the Gauteng region of South Africa, is the first to test circumcision as an active intervention.

A monitoring group even halted the experiment early because the results were so stark. More than 3,000 men were randomly assigned to be circumcised or left intact; only 20 men in the first group became infected, compared with 49 in the second.

Will that number now rise? U.S. and international AIDS organizations are awaiting results from Kenya and Uganda, due in the summer of 2007, before they recommend circumcision to the developing world on a massive scale.

I'm sure the study has been discussed before, but I was a bit frustrated to see a very mainstream magazine like Newsweek jump all over this. Particularly because many people will just read this article, take it as gospel, and not do any other research on circ.

[CallMeMommy]

Just fired off an angry email!

[mamabearsoblessed]

[Super Pickle]

I wrote this letter to the editor:


I thought it was highly inappropriate to pair Nick Summer’s article on circumcision and HIV with a photograph of a crying newborn. The article was about a study in which adult men consented to being circumcised. Why, then, picture a newborn baby alongside this article? Routine infant circumcision is unrelated to the article. Infants are not sexually active. Infants cannot provide informed consent. Unlike grown men, infants cannot demand effective pain relief. In fact, a recent study by the American Medical Association showed that the majority of baby boys receive no pain relief at all during or after circumcision.
Summers also wrote, mistakenly, that the circumcision rate in America has been holding steady at around 80%. In fact, the latest statistics show that the rate has been dropping at about 10% a year for the past few years, and that in 2003, only 55% of newborn boys were cut. The 45% of American parents who left their little boys intact did not necessarily do so out of a belief that intact is “better;” they did so out of recognition that it is not their body and therefore not their choice.
If further studies support the conclusion that circumcision reduces HIV infection, then certainly, men should have access to this information. They can then consider their own personal risk factors and weigh the pros and cons of the operation. If they choose to be circumcised, they will surely receive the best pain medications available. However, if they wish to keep the most sensitive part of their genitalia, no one should be able to force it from them. Unfortunately, half of the boys born in America will never be able to make that choice for themselves; they will be strapped down and their cries of protests ignored, while the most personal, private part of their body is altered without their consent.

[Breathless Wonder]

Super Pickle-
What an awesome letter!!!

[Super Pickle]

Thanks! And thanks for linking the article in the first place!
I hope someone will write in debunking the study.

[ramlita]

let's write letters!

Super Pickle, that's a super letter!
I was aghast to read the 80% figure What sloppy journalism.

Here's info on Letters to the Editor at Newsweek:

*Must include name, address and daytime phone number.*

Email to: [e-mail]

mail to:
P.O. Box 2120
Radio City Station
New York, NY 10101-2120

or fax:
212/445-4120

Let's flood 'em.

[Dave2GA]

Ignored the facts

The author was given all the facts and chose to ignore them (I have this on good information from the informant). It is quite evident to me that the powers who own the mainstream media intend to push circ. That's why this unpublished study has gotten front page coverage in the Wall Street Journal, editorial page coverage in the New York Times, and now this major story in Newsweek. Circ is a very emotional issue, whether or not it involves religion. The defenders are going to try to find every excuse to continue it. They ignore the fact that probably 80% or more of the men who have died of AIDS in the US were circed at birth. If circ is so protective, then why is our rate of AIDS the highest in the industrialized world? They can't answer that so they push circ on Africans without really studying what went on in the study. How many newly circed men stopped having sex and for how long? Did women in this uncirced society refuse to have sex with the newly circed men? Did the circumcision of the men render them suspect of having AIDS? Did they wear condoms more often because their raw penises hurt while having sex? Until these matters and others like them are considered and controlled for the study means nothing. Besides, if it is really true, an adult can decide for himself if he wants to trade the sexual advantages of a foreskin for a reduced risk of catching HIV. This is not an argument for neonatal circ, but it will be made into one here in the US.

[Breathless Wonder]

Well, not surprised they twisted things.

My in-laws INSIST we get Newsweek. I think they believe that "good" mainstream journalism will turn is into the "normal" parents they think we should be.

This week was the "Let's really get Breathless Wonder's knickers in a twist" issue:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9785345/site/newsweek/

I regularly find myself ranting at Dr. Sanjay Gupta's blurbs. I don't find their reporting balanced. I find it substandard, and totally lacking in thought or research.

Did journalists ever really ask hard questions? Or is that a myth?

[AntoninBeGonin]

just trying to see what is quick reply.

~Nay

[ramlita]

re: binkies in Newsweek

Was it a coincidence that NPR had something this morning about how pacifiers raise the risk of ear infections?

[Soxfan Mom]

This study was quoted in my Hartford Courant yesterday, too. Would be nice to have a well-informed someone (hint hint, Frank) write a letter to the editor.

I just know my MIL will be all over me for this.

Super Pickle, you should cc your letter to the Courant. Well done.

[LeosMama]

That article about binkies makes me angry! People are amazing! We think that sticking him in a crib is safe. But then there's SIDS. So we stick him in a crib with a binky and now he's safe.
Why not stick him in mama's bed with nummies?? Why all the artificial crap. We have to keep sticking on band-aids to hold this ball of crap together. It's so artificial it doesn't work so we just keep coming up with fix-its to fix the previous mechanical fix-its. The next thing will be an electronic monitor so you can 'hear' him breathing. Oh wait...

[crayon]

Man... This pisses me off! I cant believe this.... Why would they even think....

I can't type right now....

[Doodlebugsmom]

I've been a loyal Newsweek reader for 15 years, and I'm just about ready to cancel my subscription. My stomach sank to the floor when I read that article. I was sickened.

[DevaMajka]

Originally Posted by Dave2GA

How many newly circed men stopped having sex and for how long?

That's exactly what I've wondered since I read that study! If you're having less sex, OF COURSE you have less of a risk of getting HIV!!! (And I'm pretty sure that after getting circed, a man would be less inclined to have sex.)

[Doodlebugsmom]

Here's my letter:

I have been a loyal Newsweek reader for 15 years. When I finished reading "Circumcision: Cutting the HIV Rate?" in the October 31st issue, I was sick to my stomach. Why was a picture of an infant used for a piece discussing adult men consenting to circumcision? And the author's claim that "nearly 80 percent of newborn boys" in the U.S are circumcised is incorrect. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 1999, only about 36% of boys born in short-stay hospitals were circumcised in the western US. The South was the only region in the US to have a rate as high as 80 percent for that year. The rates have been steadily dropping since then. There isn't a medical association in the world that recommends routine infant circumcision. By running a photo of a newborn, you are misleading readers by drawing a connection between infant circumcision and cutting the HIV rate. There is a huge difference between restraining a newborn and cutting off part of his penis without consent and an adult male who chooses to engage in risky sexual behavior and makes decision to be cut.

[AntoninBeGonin]

Originally Posted by Doodlebugsmom

Here's my letter:

I have been a loyal Newsweek reader for 15 years. When I finished reading "Circumcision: Cutting the HIV Rate?" in the October 31st issue, I was sick to my stomach. Why was a picture of an infant used for a piece discussing adult men consenting to circumcision? And the author's claim that "nearly 80 percent of newborn boys" in the U.S are circumcised is incorrect. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 1999, only about 36% of boys born in short-stay hospitals were circumcised in the western US. The South was the only region in the US to have a rate as high as 80 percent for that year. The rates have been steadily dropping since then. There isn't a medical association in the world that recommends routine infant circumcision. By running a photo of a newborn, you are misleading readers by drawing a connection between infant circumcision and cutting the HIV rate. There is a huge difference between restraining a newborn and cutting off part of his penis without consent and an adult male who chooses to engage in risky sexual behavior and makes decision to be cut.

Excellent. I think you should mention you aren't resubscribing, but that's just me. I can see that backfiring too though. Kinda like, "You aren't going to subscribe. Well screw you!"

~Nay, who needs to write a letter too.

[AntoninBeGonin]

my letter--critique please?

My letter. Haven't sent it yet. Waiting for Dh to come home from work to get his opinion.

~Nay

The United States has one of the highest circumcision rates in the world, and we also have one of the highest AIDS rates in the world. If circumcision prevents AIDS it's not doing much good in this country. Futhermore, there was absolutely no reason for Newsweek to have a photo of a screaming baby alongside Nick Summer's circumcision article. The study was performed on consenting adult males. Infants do not have sex. It makes no sense to preemptively remove the most erogenous skin from an infant's penis just in case he decides to have unsafe sex one day. Circumcison should be his decision when he is an adult and capable of making such a decision.

It is very common in this country to consider infants and children as something less than human. The important thing to remember in the circumcison debate is that we're not talking about little thoughtless, non-feeling dolls who can be traumatized at will. These boys are our children. They deserve to be treated with the same basic humankindness anyone else would expect to receive. Every time a boy is routinely strapped into a circumstraint and his genitals altered in a painful and non-theraputic cosmetic surgery our society becomes a little more primitive, and our futures much more dismal.

[Girl Named Sandoz]

This is a study that established medical journals refused to publish because of serious flaws.

Yet, the mainstream press is all over it ... just as they were all over the revised AAP SIDS-'prevention' guidelines. Sigh. It's all just too predictable.