Two pieces I picked up from this week’s New Scientist. First a report of moves to “encourage” male circumcision:
New York is […] considering whether promoting circumcision among the city’s men might help limit the spread of HIV there. The procedure has worked wonders in Africa, cutting the infection rate by 60 per cent in circumcised Ugandans, Kenyans and South Africans compared with their intact compatriots. On 28 March, the World Health Organization and UNAIDS endorsed it as a means of reducing HIV spread.
So far […] the procedure has only been shown to work in Africa and in men who only have sex with women. So could a similar strategy work in New York, where sex between men and infection through intravenous drug use are more prevalent?
As this quote implies male circumcision isn’t just actively under consideration in NY but also in the whole of Africa. And now to female circumcision:
The painful and dangerous practice of female circumcision has been outlawed in […]Eritrea, where around 94 per cent of women are circumcised […] anyone who requests, incites or promotes female genital mutilation [will] be punished with a fine and imprisonment.
I appreciate that there is a difference of scale between male and female circumcision, but it seems to me there is a disconnect here. How can it be immoral to (seek to) mutilate female genitalia but yet moral to (seek to) mutilate the male penis?
Yes, OK, male circumcision may reduce the incidence of HIV amongst a defined section of the population: males who have sex with females without condoms. But it worries me that there is clearly going to be (political, medical and peer) pressure applied to men to get circumcised, and on parents to have baby boys circumcised. Worse I can see circumcision of male babies becoming an unquestioned part of perinatal care with parents not even being asked if they consent. And for adult men (at least in Africa) I can foresee the scenario there was in India some years ago where men were effectively bribed to have vasectomies. If I choose circumcision of my own free will, then fine. But how dare the medical profession, let alone politicians, decree that I must (or even should)? And how dare parents inflict it on a baby? If the same situation was being applied to women there would be the most almighty outcry — and rightly.
Let’s stand by our human rights and be very clear that all body mutilation (whether medically induced or not) which is not chosen of the subject’s own free will is immoral and (probably) illegal under international law.
When will politicians and the medical profession learn?
(Oh and by the way, no I’m not circumcised and I’m very glad my parents didn’t inflict it on me.)
The New York story is mis-reported. The Health Commissioner published a letter in the NY Times this week clarifying that THE CITY IS NOT PLANNING to offer or encourage circumcision. I think New York is already doing plenty; they are giving away condoms by the millions and it’s only costing them 4 cents each. The UN can do it for 3 cents. If only the Bush administration’s abstinence-only policies didn’t blind the UN, there would be large scale controlled trials on a real preventative instead of a barbaric blood ritual. Most of the half-million American men who have died of AIDS were circumcised at birth. That “study” is over. Circumcision does not prevent AIDS.
@ tlc tugger: Thanks for the update especially as all I can go on is news which is available here in the UK. Good to know that there is common sense around. However the half-million US men who have died of AIDS where likely 95%+ homosexual or IV drug users; whereas the work quoted was aimed, as I said, at men who have sex with women without condoms — a rather different audience! Let’s just hope the common sense continues!