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Circumcision Less Helpful in Reducing HIV in Gay Sex

Timothy Kincaid

October 7th, 2008

JAMA is reporting that circumcision, which may eliminate HIV transmission in heterosexual sex by up to 50%, is less helpful in male-male anal sex.

The study’s authors wrote that circumcision appears to provide “not statistically significant” protection from HIV in men who engage in anal sex with other men. The researchers said however that more research may be necessary to quantify the amount of protection — or lack thereof — provided by circumcision.

It seems counter-intuitive that a virus’ ability to infect a man would be impacted by the gender of his partner, assuming penetrative-only sex. Somehow I suspect some relevant questions were not addressed.

Comments

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KipEsquire
October 7th, 2008 | LINK

What’s so “counterintuitive” about the fact that vaginal tissue is not the same as anal tissue?

Timothy Kincaid
October 7th, 2008 | LINK

KipEsquire,

Circumcision is not understood to impact the receptive partner but rather to protect the insertive partner.

Erica
October 7th, 2008 | LINK

I’m generally suspicious of studies which claim there are benefits to circumcision. Finding there’s little difference in anal sex simply makes me believe that any alleged benefit associated with vaginal sex is bogus.

Trevor
October 7th, 2008 | LINK

Eeeep!

AJD
October 8th, 2008 | LINK

This is a funny coincidence… After I made my donation to the NoOn8 campaign, I took up Dan Savage on his offer to answer the question of anyone who donated $25 or more and asked him about this, after a study in Australia seemed to suggest that circumcision reduced tops’ risk of getting HIV.

I consider myself fortunate that my mom decided not to have me circumcised. The main reason why circumcision is so widespread in America (even as it has dramatically declined in other English-speaking countries) is because it’s been erroneously assumed to promote health for so long that people take for granted that “clean-cut” means precisely that, while uncut means quite the opposite. Various researchers have been trying to find justifications for circumcision for decades, long after it became clear that it failed to achieve its original goal — preventing masturbation — so pardon my skepticism when people name yet another risk that it supposedly reduces.

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