[quote=Navydoc]Your Data for 0.0 heterosexual transmission? Because here’s mine:
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Those stats actually support my “0.0” number. Given that heterosexuals outnumber homosexuals by 10:1, you have to divide the heterosexual numbers by 10 to even get close to a transmission rate.
Further, those stats do not isolate the F-M transmission rate, which you talked about separately in an earlier post.
Circumcised or not, the F-M transmission rate is low. But even so, if I had an HIV+ wife, I would be an idiot to trust my circumcision to protect me! And if my partner has an unknown health history, I again would be an idiot to trust my circumcision to protect me.
Furthermore, from a public health perspective, where are the dollars best spent? Cutting up babies, or disseminating condoms fifteen years later?
Want to protect against HPV? The vaccines are far more effective.
From an ethical perspective, doing an irreversible surgery on a baby that may never be even at risk … this needs to be a choice the person makes at or near adulthood.
There almost is, paradoxically, a misogynistic aspect to protecting the boys. Reducing the incidence of disease in boys ignores the more likely recipient. A boy could be bisexual, get HIV from receiving anal sex, then go around infecting girls. He might even argue to them that he isn’t likely to have HIV because he was circumcised!
The money would be far better spent training girls to demand their partners use condoms.
It really is patronizing to argue that Africans should be circumcised because they are too poor, dumb, or amoral to prevent HIV transmission any other way.
In the final analysis, the ethical issues can only be defeated by turning to tradition and religion. Case in point: The Wall Street Journal regularly publishes Jewish-written editorials on the topic. This really is a close cousin to female genital mutilation, and there are compelling tradition and religion arguments that support that lovely surgery.
