On a Mission to Save the World’s Foreskins From Bill Gates

Story here. Excerpt:

'“Bill Gates: Foreskin Enemy #1.” This was the slogan on one of the picket signs outside TED at the Vancouver Convention Centre Tuesday night, where inside Gates and his wife, Melinda, were discussing their foundation’s efforts to combat communicable diseases in developing countries. The demonstrators were there to protest the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s funding of voluntary male circumcision programs in Sub-Saharan Africa, designed to reduce the transmission of HIV. The campaigners believe the programs do little to cut infection rates.

“Circumcision doesn’t work, and what’s happening with Bill and Melinda Gates now is that they are mutilating literally millions of men and boys, and it’s not going to help,” says Glen Callender, founder of the Canadian Foreskin Awareness Project (aka CAN-FAP). “Bill Gates is directly responsible for more unnecessary circumcisions than any other single individual on the planet. He is behind the destruction of more foreskins than any other individual. That is why he’s foreskin enemy number one.”

The World Health Organization maintains that there is “compelling evidence that male circumcision reduces the risk of heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men by approximately 60 percent,” research that underpins the Gates’ plans. Callender, however, says the studies that informed the research were not well-executed. This is an opinion shared by some within the scientific community who posit that circumcision programs can increase the risk of transmission by taking “resources away from more effective, less expensive, less invasive alternatives.” Though the Gates group does advocate for a multipronged approach to fight HIV infection, Callender believes the circumcision programs are a product of Bill Gates’ cultural ignorance.'