Circumcised men experience more pain and have greater difficulty penetrating, study shows; authors, BBC wish it were otherwise
A recent study conducted in Uganda confirms an earlier Korean study that circumcised men experience greater sexual difficulties than their intact brethren. This information is important as the procedure could face a hard sell in Africa with no remedy for buyer's remorse.
According to the BBC article, quoting from the study published in the British Journal of Urology - International, the same journal that reported last year that four out of the five most erogenous zones of the penis are located on the foreskin:
Some 98.4% of the circumcised men reported satisfaction, compared to 99.9% in the control group.
In terms of ability to penetrate, 98.6% of the circumcised group reported no problem, compared with 99.4 of the non-circumcised group.
One Ronald Gray of Johns Hopkins University, another statistician member of the HIV/AIDS industrial complex, led the study, drawing opposite conclusions than from what the data showed.
Deborah Jack, chief executive of the National Aids Trust (UK), said:
There is a fear that people that have been circumcised will feel they are protected from HIV when they are not.
Condoms remain the best way of preventing HIV through sexual intercourse.
It should be noted that research into HIV and circumcision has been very limited in its scope.
Ms. Jack is not entirely accurate. Three studies have now shown that gay men receive no benefit from circumcision viz protection from HIV infection. One study was conducted by the proponents of circumcision, cutting into their eroding credibility even as they again concluded the opposite of what their data showed.
Clearly, the most difficult part of the study was adjusting for the problems associated with self-reporting. The circumcised men, with no effective way to turn back the clock, may not have felt comfortable admitting that they no longer had the same level of satisfaction and comfort as they had before sexual tissue was removed.
Additionally, unlike a survey of men who use or refrain from using condoms, once circumcised, comparisons are limited to fading memories and wishful thinking. The study did not apparently look at satisfaction longitudinally, which would better measure the well-known problems reported by circumcised men in North America, namely declining sexual sensation and response over time.
Reference
Staff reports. Circumcision 'does not curb sex'. BBC Online. January 7, 2008.
The Laumann study, and others, found much higher levels of sexual dysfunction and dissatisfaction (Laumann; 39-46%), so there is something wrong with the questions in this study or how they were asked.
Such low levels of dysfunction and dissatisfaction (all less than 1.6%) mean any differences between circumcised and intact are guaranteed not to reach significance.
It was carried out by the same people who circumcised all those volunteers in an effort to prove that circumcision prevents HIV. So everybody involved was in favour of circumcision, and everybody involved knew it.
It was obviously carried out and is now being publicised in order to soften people up for mass circumcision campaigns. (It's striking how much publicity this has had - especially considering it's a null result - compared to the Sorrells study, which tended in the opposite direction. Not that it's a conspiracy, just cut men favouring stories that favour cut men.)
More at http://www.circumstitions.com/Sexuality.html#uganda
Posted by: Hugh7 | Tuesday, January 08, 2008 at 01:41 PM