New York City Plans to Promote Circumcision

[pigpickle]

Source: New York Times

New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is planning a campaign to encourage men at high risk of AIDS to get circumcised in light of the World Health Organization’s endorsement of the procedure as an effective way to prevent the disease.

While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta is just beginning to convene meetings and design studies to help it formulate a national policy, New York City is moving ahead on its own.

In the United States, “New York City remains the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city’s health commissioner, said in an interview. Referring to H.I.V., he said, “In some subpopulations, you have 10 to 20 percent prevalence rates, just as they do in parts of Africa.”

His department has started asking some community groups and gay rights organizations to discuss circumcision with their members, and has asked the Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs city hospitals and clinics, to perform the procedure at no charge for men without health insurance.


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/nyregion/05aids.html?hp

[donheld]

1. .

:popcorn::beer:

[Kiouni]

2. more like:

[Laughing Mirror]

6. There you go!!

Can't wait to see how Bloomberg is going to promote this appalling assault on a person's dignity in the poor neighborhoods, the people who are clearly the target of this insanity.

[aquart]

13. Better yet, don't. Let 'em die.

Since Bloomberg is circumcised, he may have a hard time seeing your point of view.

By all means, protect that teeny tiny turtleneck until all your kind is dead. You know what's important, after all.

Don't let anyone take your teeny tiny turtleneck!

[Laughing Mirror]

14. I doubt that it matters to him one way or the other

He's got his pile of money and very good health. Were he to contract HIV he'd be able to get the best care money could buy. Unfortunately that's not the case for the people this deranged butchery, if put into practice, would affect.

[Mind_your_head]

5. LOL

can't decide whether I should post this to comment 1 or 2, but.....yeah (or rather 'no'....don't do it).

[Kikosexy2]

15. But I like it...

bigger, longer & uncut...

[nosmokes]

3. oh what a beautiful moheling, oh what abeautiful day...

too bad i can't carry a tune...

[Hekate]

7. You had to say that! lol

:spray:

Hekate

[DemBones DemBones]

24. , , ,

:rofl:

Luckily, you don't have to carry a tune to sing here!

[lvx35]

4. I've heard the african studies support circumcision, but has there been a 1st world study?

I wonder if the same issues apply in a place where people have access to modern amenities. Its an interesting issue.

[Hekate]

8. Dunno, but some of this knowledge has been available for at least 40 years...

If my own mother, an educated housewife, was able to tell me that one good non-religious reason for circumcision was that women in cultures with male circumcision had a lower incidence of cervical cancer but no one knew exactly why... then by God, someone has already studied this, okay? She referenced the Middle East and (I seem to remember) Africa, where both such cultures coexist and make comparison easy.

I definitely chose to have my son circumcised when he was born 29 years ago. And guess what: we now know that men are the vectors for the spread of HPV, which causes cervical cancer. Especially uncircumcised ones. And guess what else: we now know that uncircumcised men are at higher risk for getting and spreading AIDS.

I've been amazed at some of the men's comments I've read at DU regarding this subject in the past. I never knew there was so much resentment and angst -- alongside so much misinformation.

No one in New York City is going to line up all the men and boys and force them to have their weenies whacked. But it certainly makes sense to have a strong public health education campaign and funding to make it an affordable option for those who choose to do this.

Hekate

[silverojo]

9. You're believing the myths

Here's a site with the truth about circumcision, and you can find many others like it if you Google:

http://www.math.missouri.edu/~rich/MGM/primer.html

[merwin]

16. One of those "fair and balanced" sites!

Gotta love that!

[depakid]

18. Actually, if you want to read the science-

Then run a pub med search with the terms "HIV" and "circumcision."

It currently brings up 371 entries from peer reviewed journals.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=search&DB=pubmed

The facts- as opposed to the "myths" are that the studies have been controlled and replicated with a large sample sizes. They show a protective effect against HIV (and other STD's) that approaches what one would expect to see with a preliminary vaccine.

The incidence of HIV is about 60% less in circumcised men than non-circumcised men. The results are so astounding that researchers had to halt the studies, because it was no longer ethical not to offer treatment to the control groups.

That doesn't happen very often in medical science.

[merwin]

26. Now why would you look up peer reviewed journals when you could go by pure opinion?

Honestly, it seems that we all agree that global warming is a fact, and laugh when the right wing tries to talk about how disreputable these peer reviewed scientific studies are... then when it comes to circumcision, the anti-circumcision crowd does the same thing that the right wing does.

[lvx35]

10. Its a complex issue.

So many egos wrapped up in it, parents who chose it (or didn't) for their kids, men who feel like their weenies are getting judged if they haven't (have) had it. I don't think its that important in itself, what I am seeing is that those who are circumcised are less at risk for disease, those who aren't have more sensitivity for pleasure.

But one thing I totally agree with you about is choice and information. A person can get circumcised at any time, and if they are living a high risk life it could be a life saver.

But at the same time, I would like more data. How does the circumcision/AIDS rate in Europe stack up to the African data?

[Hekate]

11. Indeed it is, like everything else to do with human sexuality.

:hi:

Just try to apply logic to it, and then duck fast.

Hekate

[merwin]

17. Our OBGYN told my wife, when we were deciding whether or not to have it

done for our son, said to her "Go home, ask your husband if he's ever felt like sex is not enjoyable or is less enjoyable because he's been circumcised".

Pleasure is a combination of physical and mental. If you're circumcised, technically you have less surface area for pleasure, but your body makes up for it in other ways. Kind of like people who lose their sight develop insanely good hearing, etc. Note that I'm not comparing circumcision to blindness... just using that as an example of how the mind compensates.

[lvx35]

19. Yeah, I agree pleasure isn't really the issue here

I guess to really know on that one you'd have to take people who were circumcised as adults. But what I've heard of pleasure is just that having the head rub around in the undies, not protected by skin, desensitizes it a bit. But really, nature finds a way...In the end its about orgasm, and obviously both get there.

If circumcision really and truly cuts down on AIDS in itself, it should probably be done widely. But I really want more data on exactly what it is at play here. I mean, an uncut man can walk around with his foreskin pulled back all day long, and be very similar to a circumcised man as far as areas of the penis exposed to air. So if its about washing the penis, or exposing it to air, uncircumised men need to know about these extra precautions.

[merwin]

20. I agree that there should be more tests in 1st world countries on the effects.

Nobody really knows why it cuts down on AIDS, just that pretty much every study done in Africa has shown that it drastically cuts the chances.

[lvx35]

21. My guess is that infected fluids get trapped under the foreskin

increasing the time its alive with a change to get into the skin, and that air or sunlight or something would rapidly kill the virus. Whatever it is, millions of lives could be saved by looking at it closer.

[Toucano]

23. How would he know?

"...if he's ever felt like sex is not enjoyable or is less enjoyable because he's been circumcised."

If he was circumcised as an infant, he wouldn't have a meaningful answer.

[merwin]

25. It's a question about feelings. And the "he" is me :)

I personally feel like it is plenty enjoyable, and wouldn't want it any less/more enjoyable.

[DemBones DemBones]

30. I think it's equally true that you can't know whether

you'd enjoy sex more as a woman than you do as a man. And I can't know if I'd enjoy it more as a man than as a woman, but I've rarely devoted any thought to it since it's pointless to wonder about something that will never happen and I'm happy being a woman.

My mother-in-law always said she never understood penis envy except that "it would be a handy thing to have on a picnic in the woods." Then she'd laugh and laugh. It always cracked me up when she'd tell me that because she had been raised pretty strictly, as most girls were in the 1920s and 1930s, and almost never swore, even to say "hell" or "damn." She was pretty feisty, though, because she was very short and people just didn't see her in crowds, so she knew how to elbow her way through a crowd so people wouldn't step on her size 4 feet.

[merwin]

31. That was very well put, and I completely agree.

I also think your mother-in-law would be fun person to talk to.

[DemBones DemBones]

33. Thank you, it was inspired by what you wrote.

I'll send you a PM about my mother-in-law. :-)

[dipsydoodle]

12. It's such a shame

the off cuts are not bigger . They could otherwise be used as banjo heads. :rofl:

[David Zephyr]

22. Liberals who deny scientific evidence because of cultural bias same as creationists.

I've posted this before.

I don't like the idea of circumcision. Period.

However, there have been far too many sterling, true scientific studies now where the evidence is simply undeniable.

And if we truly care about AIDS then one more tool in the toolkit to prevent tragic loss of life and loss of quality of life is a good thing.

Posting your cultural prejudices here at a liberal website that fly in the face of science and, cavalierly against saving lives around the globe is just as pathetic as fundamentalists who still insist that "all the science" isn't in yet on global warming or on evolution.

There is no vaccine for HIV. There is no 100% preventative measure for sexual activity against transmitting or acquiring the HIV viurs...

BUT

Using condoms helps prevent AIDS and the spread of the HIV virus.

Practicing safe sex helps prevent AIDS and the spread of the HIV virus.

Circumcision helps prevent AIDS and the spread of the HIV virus.

My fellow male DU'ers who are "uncut" as nature yielded us all, it is not necessary to feel threatened by the science that is here. And that's what I see a lot of here in forums whenever this issue comes up...threatened men who cherish their skin. Cherish your skin, but don't scoff at scientific evidence for your own vanity.

[DemBones DemBones]

27. Well said. And it's not just about

AIDS and HIV. It's also about HPV and cervical cancer, which continues to kill American women, and surely kills thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, around the world in countries without government-provided health care, particularly in poor countries, like much of Africa. Women who have to have their cervix removed suffer a considerable loss of sexual sensation. If they have to have a complete hysterectomy, it's even worse.

Women married to circumcised men have less risk of contracting one of the forms of HPV that cause cervical cancer.

Yes, there's a vaccine for HPV now but I would not want it for myself or want my daughter vaccinated. We are both too old to be vaccinated, anyway. They want to give it to girls as young as 9 and it's only given up to age 26, if I remember correctly. They assure us it's perfectly safe. Just like DES, thalidomide, Vioxx. . . I've been a guinea pig enough times, thank you.

Just read up on DES, which turned out to produce various reproductive anomalies and abnormalities in the sons and daughters who were exposed in utero because it was routinely prescribed for pregnant women from 1946 up into the 1970s. They knew in the 1950s that it did not do what it was supposed to do, which was to prevent miscarriages, but many doctors continued prescribing it to their pregnant patients. Kickbacks, maybe? In any case, it also caused a rare form of cancer, clear cell vaginal adenocarcinoma, in some DES daughters, which is normally not seen in women under 60 and is rare in them. DES daughters developed this cancer in their teen-aged years and had to have their vaginas removed. That's a bit worse than having your foreskin removed, guys, it's like having your penis removed.

Who knows what bad effects the new HPV vaccine, Gardasil, might have, effects that won't be known for years? Merck makes Gardasil and they need the money they'll get by states requiring girls to be vaccinated because of the class-action lawsuit over Vioxx and another class-action suit that will soon be brought over another of their "perfectly safe" drugs.

I know they're using the HPV vaccine in Europe and many think European medical care is better than ours, certainly it's less expensive and there's evidence it's better in many ways. But that doesn't mean it's perfect. Scandinavian medical care is excellent, too, but it was in Scandinavia (and Germany, as I recall), that thalidomide was prescribed during the 1960s and turned out to be teratogenic. Google "thalidomide babies" and look at what it did to children if you're not old enough to remember the horror.



I can understand the feelings against as well as the logic in favor of circumcision. If every person on earth would be content to have one sexual partner in their entire lifetime, or every man in the entire world would always wear condoms when having sex, it would stop the spread of AIDS or HPVs, but I can't see that extreme commitment to monogamy or to condoms happening, can you?

[krispos42]

28. Oh, this should be amusing when the rest of the world wakes up tomorow

Better get ready...





Plenty of popcorn, check.
Plenty of beer, check.
Plenty of attractive company, check.

Let's flame!!!!

[dailykoff]

29. What if the link is coincidental,

as common sense would suggest that it is (uncircumcised = third world = poorer medical care and education)?

This is really nutso.

*edit to add, no pun intended.

[DemBones DemBones]

32. It's not coincidental, it's based on clinical studies, not

anecdotal evidence. The World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control wouldn't get behind this if they didn't believe the science was there.

Other clinical studies show that women married to men who are uncircumcised are at significantly greater risk for cervical cancer, which can be fatal, still kills thousands in first world countries, probably kills hundreds of thousands of women around the world.

Now we know that certain types of Human Papilloma Virus cause cervical cancer. So uncircumcised men are infecting their wives (or any sexual partners) with HPV.

Yes, there's a vaccine against HPV but women can only take it when they're under 26 or so and it's not been approved long and I wouldn't trust it with my health or my daughter's health until more research can be done.

Ideally, everyone, except people who are free of both viruses, have been free of them for years, and are in a monogamous relationship, would use condoms every time they had sex, which protect against both HIV and HPV, though the protection isn't 100%, it's close enough. Even couple in monogamous relationships should consider them if there's the slightest doubt about a partner's fidelity.

But lots of men won't use condoms, particularly African men.


(Edit: noticed one typo, may be more -- need new glasses)

[dailykoff]

34. What the studies have found IS a coincidence

which, if you think about it objectively, is a totally absurd reason to launch a campaign of adult circumcision, that is until you realize it's another front in the war against immigrants, particularly brown ones.

Another triumph of bush science is what this looks like.