'Intactivists' lobby feds on circumcision

Story here. Excerpt:

'A new organization based in the Lower Hudson Valley is hoping to influence the debate about infant circumcision, as the nation's most influential public health agency prepares to make recommendations on the procedure amid new evidence that it could help protect men from sexually transmitted diseases, including the HIV virus.

The group, Intact America [link added], is headed by Upper Nyack resident Georganne Chapin, who also leads the Tarrytown-based Hudson Health Plans, which provides health insurance to people on Medicaid.

The organization, backed by an anti-circumcision Texas millionaire, is circulating an online petition that it hopes will convince the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention not to recommend routine infant male circumcision as a matter of public health policy.

The CDC is reviewing new data, including studies recently done in Africa, that suggest that men who undergo circumcision, the surgical removal of all or some of the foreskin from the penis, have marked reduction in their risk of HIV infection.'