AP:
Male circumcision gains as Kenya anti-AIDS weapon
KISUMU, Kenya - Sitting underneath the bright murals at a clinic, 22-year-old Elijah Ochanda gestures at his shorts and explains: “When they remove this thing, it makes you safer.”
(snip)
Bailey’s study in Kisumu, western Kenya found infection rates were cut by 60 percent among men who were circumcised. The study, funded by the U.S. Institutes of Health and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, was one of several that led the World Health Organization to include circumcision in its prevention policies a year ago.
Meaning that 40% of the men who had “this thing removed” still got AIDS. Little comfort for them. Mr. Ochanda, the odds aren’t that much in your favor — your best bet would to keep that “thing” in your shorts more often.
Seriously, I can just see it now — many African men will get circumcized based on the myth that they won’t be able to get AIDS, and they’ll think they’re home free, and they can do whatever (rather, whoever) they want, meaning the infection rate will soar even higher. This is what happened when African AIDS patients were administred the cocktail. They thought they were cured, when all the cocktail does is to mitigate the virus at best.
