Notebook: Apologies, faithful readers

This month has kicked my ass. As soon as I think I have it under control, I'm hit again with another wave, including a trial. The good news is that we (co-counsel and I) won that one, too.

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And now a few missed stories ...

The Alexander Sanger commentary on the Planned Parenthood site was interesting [also available here.]. The way I understand Sanger, he questions the allocation of resources to a very imperfect and contradictory claim for circumcision in HIV prevention. He calls for a level-headed approach to prevention that promotes the most highly effective means of prevention, i.e. condoms, testing, empowerment of women, and education. With circumcision being highly contested, expensive to administer, and likely to become a poor substitute for condoms in the minds of those who undergo the procedure, it's likely to cause harm. Plus, he seems to say that it's just bad policy to allocate money down the list of least effective measures when the most highly effective measures have yet to be fully implemented.

Other stories deserved attention earlier in the month. There was the story from Belgium regarding the jail sentences for parents who refuse to vaccinate their children against polio. That one has implications in the HIV/circumcision controversy, although important distinctions exist. Perhaps more on that later. Perhaps readers could help out on that one in the comments.

There was the news out of Ghana where circumcision will now be promoted despite the fact that circumcised men tend to be infected at higher rates than intact men in that country. Same old story, except out of Ghana instead of Rwanda this time.

Finally, Reuters is reporting this morning on that old story from last month, that circumcised men are no more protected from STDs than intact men. Actually, the data slightly favors intact men. We knew this already as study after study over the years has swung from protective to not protective. Do we need any more studies on STDs and circumcision at this point? I doubt it.

The importance of the STD story is that researchers have seen a correlation between levels of STDs and likelihood of infection with HIV. The developed theory was that STDs increase the likelihood of contracting HIV due to inflammation and lesions symptomatic of so many STDs. However, we saw that treating a prime suspect in this regard, herpes, did no good in reducing HIV rates. Therefore, it would seem the theory doesn't hold. Of course, we don't know for sure. But clearly, the theory needs more study.

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Apologies, dear readers, for the intermittent nature of this month's posts. I'll do better next month. Thanks for reading.

Comments

[Joe in CA]

The distinction between circumcision and polio vaccines, is, of course, that while one vaccine prevents a serious disease, circumcision prevents jack shit.

Circumcision prevents HIV? Tell that to the circumcised victims of AIDS.