2012-02-04 salem-news.com - The Flap over Circumcision

[DerekV12345]

The Flap over Circumcision

Getting to the head of things...


(HONG KONG) - American exceptionalism takes many forms. One of the least noticed is the preference for circumcision of boys. Other than among Muslims and Jews, for whom it is a religious or at least traditional requirement, cutting off part of the penis is alien to most other cultures and usually only carried out for medical, or occasionally aesthetic, reasons.

But the US is now trying to promote the practice in developing countries supposedly as a defense against AIDS. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is supporting its propagation and the World Health Organization is being urged to do the same. The theory is that circumcised men have a roughly 50 percent less chance of contracting HIV.

Assuming that is the case, adult men may reasonably decide whether they are at risk and if so whether the loss of the penis foreskin and possible impact on sexual enjoyment is worth the lowering of HIV risk. But any such campaign carries with it the real danger that societies in Africa, where the AIDS prevention efforts are mostly focused, will result in the large scale circumcising of infants who have no choice in the matter....


URL: http://www.salem-news.com/articles/f...rcumcision.php

[TopHat]

I've said it before, but I really hate titles like this.

[Element786]

Cutting edge news !!!

Editor: Oh that was good!

Utterly sickening.

[U.S. male]

Despite the stupid headline, the tone of the article is generally anti-circ. At least it acknowledged that the foreskin is actually part of the penis! However, it said that the newborn circumcision rate in Australia is over 50%, which is untrue. It may be over 50% for the entire male population (I'm not sure), but the current rate for newborns is around 10%.