IA: Tell the NYT That Circumcision Does Not Prevent HIV

Via email:

According to an article that appeared on the front page of the Science section of Tuesday's New York Times (1/31/12), "The day of the assembly-line circumcision is drawing closer." The article states that two new devices, named PrePex and the Shang Ring, will greatly increase the ease and speed with which nurses can perform circumcisions in Africa, with the goal of circumcising 20 million men by 2015.

The tone of the article shows a shocking disregard for the pain and risk involved in circumcision, the loss of functional tissue, and the negative impact on sexual function—not to mention the overwhelming proof that circumcision at best lowers the transmission rate of HIV from women to men, but not from men to women, and that the only way to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted HIV is to practice safe sex. Rather, the focus is solely on the use of American tax dollars to pay for mass circumcisions. According to Dr. Jason Reed, an epidemiologist in the global AIDS division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "PrePex teams could mean circumcising around 400 men a day, rather than the 60 to 80 a busy team now does. And the surgeon could go do something more important."

Write to the New York Times right now at letters-at-nytimes.comand tell them that the male foreskin is indeed "important," and that circumcision does NOT prevent HIV!