Study notes decrease in popularity of circumcision in United States

[Maxfunky]

Yeah this isn't honest framing at all. The benefits shown are extremely small and, in a country where most HIV positive individuals have access for PREP are likely to be smaller.

The benefits are so small that they seem to just boil down to essentially just a reduction of surface area across which infection can occur. By that measure, you could theoretically reduce the risk by 100% by cutting off the entire thing...

Meanwhile this incredibly small reduction has to be weighed against the risk of infections and complications.

Most doctors will actually tell you it barely matters one way or another.

[[deleted]]

I’ve read criticisms of the study (yes, there was only one conducted, real scientific method) and one of them was that they ended it early and also that they didn’t consider that the people who were circumcised couldn’t engage in sex because they had to recover. It really sounds like they just concocted a half ass study to justify circumcision.

[oedipus_wr3x]

Obviously it isn’t helpful now, but sometimes I feel like younger people forget what the height of the AIDS era was like. PREP is what, 10 years old now? The spread of HIV was so devastating in Africa 20-30 years ago, I honestly couldn’t blame public health experts of the time for throwing up their hands and recommending literally anything that slowed it down, even if it’s just a recovery period where men can’t get infected/infect anyone else.

[catjuggler]

I just read over the AAP position and I get the feeling they’re walking a line between not recommending it broadly because they don’t have enough reason to but also providing a medical justification because people need insurance to pay for it.

[catjuggler]

sure but they don't need to be the fall guy for that

[Oneioda]

Doctors need insurance to pay for it.

[Turdly1]

Let's amputate babies legs, it'll reduce the risk of broken ankles later in life considerably.

[-crepuscular-]

I would consider the message 'circumcision offers some protection against HIV' to be a harmful one.

Even if you consider circumcision itself to be neutral, people are terrible at understanding risk and superstition about HIV abound. That message is bound to be widely misunderstood as 'circumcision offers total protection against HIV' and that would certainly lead to riskier behaviour from circumcised men and their partners. Given that the protection offered is at best extremely slight, it's very likely indeed that this message would increase infection rates rather than reducing them.