The clinical trials suggest that circumcision by itself reduces a man's chance of becoming infected by 50-60%.
In fact the success of social-marketing programmes in HIV prevention among gay men in the West underscores that there are effective alternatives.John Egan VancouverSIR – I deride your description of medical circumcision as "mutilation".
Circumcision is an occasionally necessary surgery, with verifiable, albeit usually negligible, benefits.
Indeed, Tachi Yamada, the head of the Gates Foundation's Global Health Programme, suggests bringing in volunteers from the rich world on a temporary basis, to clear the backlog.The other predictor of the scale of the epidemic in African countries, besides rates of circumcision, requires a rather different approach.
For both faiths, that was an attack on religious freedom.The merits and costs of circumcision are under scrutiny as never before, in rows involving religious leaders, human-rights activists and health professionals.
In many African countries, male circumcision is a rite of passage, sometimes with dire or lethal results.Now legal worries are making doctors in Germany and elsewhere nervous.
The "serious health risk" involved clashed with Judaism's "pre-eminent concern with life and human health .The medical aspects of mainstream circumcision are under review too.
Now it recommends that the procedure be covered by insurance (though it stops short of backing routine circumcision of babies).
But medicine only partially helps those who defend circumcision as a religious ritual.
The rate of circumcision in Africa is rocketing.
But in recent decades, circumcision has been declining, to about half of baby boys as of 2008.The culture of the San Francisco Bay Area often exalts anything natural, from birthing to eating.
