Saw this in the paper this morning. It surprised me. Most stuff you see about circumcision is criticizing it. It's rare that you see something promoting it with studies and shit.
Quote:
Circumcision decreases AIDS risk, but procedure hasn’t been fully embraced
By David Brown, Published: July 25
Circumcision substantially decreases a man’s risk of becoming infected with the AIDS virus by a woman, but acceptance of the procedure has been slow in Africa, where it would do the most good. There’s also evidence that some people overestimate circumcision’s protective effects — a potentially dangerous and unintended consequence of campaigns promoting it.
Those are among the findings presented at the 19th International AIDS Conference here this week.
As a medical procedure, circumcision is simple and becoming simpler. New research shows that nurses can perform it safely after three days of training, and it can be done in assembly-line fashion using devices that don’t require scalpels and stitches.
Although circumcision’s effect on protection against HIV is clear — three studies have shown a 60 percent reduction in risk to men — as a public health strategy, it is fraught with caveats.
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This article only talks about the relationship between HIV and circumcision. I wonder about the numbers for other STDs.