AIDS specialists have suspected for years that circumcision dramatically reduces rates of female-to-male transmission but have faced a dreadful quandry over whether to actively promote a "get snipped" policy because it does not offer the total protection of condoms.
However, given the relative failure of safe sex initiatives in the developing world, a childhood snip could help protect a generation, as I explained to the Secretary General of the Church of England whom I found myself sitting next to on a flight back from Tanzania a few years ago.
The kindly Right Reverend had never heard of what was back then a relatively new field of research and we had a slightly surreal conversation during which we discussed the relative states of our own foreskins...
'Blimey,' I remember thinking at one point, 'I'm discussing the penis of the head of the Church of England!' Or the head of the penis of the... anyway...
Pictured is Reverend John chatting to the late Pope. I can only hope he used the opportunity to raise my proposal: it could help mitigate the Catholic church's disasterous anti-condom stance...
'Are you in the hood your Holiness? You see I met this guy on a plane...'
4 comments:
Now OK this isn't my specialist area and I'm so as to speak up for anything that helps but doesn't the sentence:
"In Africa, about 70 percent of men are circumcised at birth or during rite-of-passage ceremonies in early puberty."
give us a clue that this isn't going to save Africa from Aids, though as the man from Wal-Mart says 'every lkittle helps' for sure.
And of course it might help reduce levels of cervical cancer among Africa's women - but only if they live long enough tio contract it.
Ah but Meester Chris, the next par says....
"Medical anthropologists began noticing as early as 1989 that the highest rates of HIV infection in Africa were occurring in regions of the continent where the predominant tribal or religious cultures did not practice circumcision. Adult HIV infection rates above 30 percent are found in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Swaziland and eastern South Africa, where circumcision is not practiced; yet HIV infection rates remain below 5 percent in West Africa and other parts of the continent where circumcision is commonplace."
Personally, I'd bet on the snip but PRACTICE SAFE SEX too! (enough safe sex messages, Ed)
Yeah, yeah I know but my overall point is that there is a way to avoid catching and spreading HIV with some degree of certainty and the Catholic church does not approve of it.
Giving them get out clauses which allow them to feel better about recommending behaviour which results in millions of deaths (condoms with holes in them or no condoms) or are totally unrealistic (abstinence) is not a good idea.
Sure it may help a little bit but it may also have the opposite effect by encouraging people who've had their genital hoodie removed and their partners to think condoms aren't necessary.
There be the debate!
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