The Center for Disease Control is currently weighing whether or not to recommend circumcision for all baby boys after multiple studies have shown it to be highly effective in thwarting the spread of HIV/AIDS in southern Africa
As it so happens, the CDC is currently holding its annual "National HIV Prevention Conference" in Atlanta, and tomorrow it will have a panel on this 'cutting-edge' technique.
The presentation is being done by Inon Schenker, an Israeli doctor who has led "Operation Abraham," a project where Israeli doctors (who gained experience in mass circumcisions in the 1990's circumcising Russian and Ethopian Jews who weren't circumcised but wished [if not demanded] to be circumcised) teach techniques in mass circumcision to doctors in African nations suffering high HIV/AIDS infection rates.
The most important barrier to circumcision is that 'Medicaid fails to cover circumcision in many states'. This of course begs the question:
Will the public option cover the 'pubic option?'
Of course, the circumstances in Africa and the U.S. are quite different. In Africa, most HIV/AIDS cases are from so-called 'high risk' (which I believe is a euphemism for unprotected) heterosexual sex.
However, in the United States, 'men who have sex with men' make up a majority of new HIV/AIDS infections.
This group has been the only group to show increases in infection rates, having increased since the early 1990s after a drastic decline from the mid-1980s.
Men who have sex with men made up 53% of new infections in 2006, with an additional 4% being both men who have sex with men and intravenous drug users.
This is relevant because studies have shown no transmission reduction due to circumcision among those engaging in homosexual sex. Although the studies do not go into detail as to why this is, my guess would be that it's not so much homosexual sex as it is anal sex.
However, it's another story when it comes to the 31% of new cases in 2006 caused by 'high-risk heterosexual contact.' See, whites make up a significantly smaller percentage of high-risk heterosexual contact infections (roughly 1/3) than of men who have sex with men infections (about 1/2).
Blacks and Latinos have 7 and 3 times the rates of infections of whites; among non-IV drug users who aren't 'men who have sex with men', the rate is likely closer to 10 and 5 times the rate of infections of whites.
This is relevant because blacks and Latinos are also, according to a self-reporting study conducted by the CDC, quite a bit less likely to be circumcised (almost 90% of non-Hispanic whites, but less than 3/4 of non-Hispanic blacks and less than half of Latinos).
Mind you, the study may be unreliable because about one out of every three adolescents in another study could not correctly identify whether or not they were circumcised (31% of circumcised adolescents and 35% of uncircumcised adolescents, to be exact)
However, don't tell that lack of awareness factor to Intact America (led by a woman, of all things), a new intactivist group that I feel should be referred to as the 'Knob Lobby.'
They are holding protests tomorrow in Atlanta, mass intaction, if you will, with "mobile billboards that will drive around Atlanta carrying their message that "circumcising babies doesn’t prevent H.I.V." I can't find pictures of the protesters but I assume they'll be something like this.