Notebook: Kenya Braces for Epidemic of Genital Warts

Forgive The Onion-esque headline. Still, I'm just taking two sources and interpreting them together.

Kenya has decided to make circumcision part of government policy in the fight against HIV/AIDS, joining Rwanda, Uganda, and Ghana. I'm not sure what this means in terms of actual on-the-ground changes, apart from payment and training. But this being Africa circumcision, compulsion will likely take some ambiguous form, much as it has in the United States, with ridicule, guilt-trips, misinformation, and other assorted mind games.

To be fair, at least some lip service is being paid to the reality that men will likely skip condoms once circumcised. According to the Kaisernetwork, "Ruth Njeri, an HIV/AIDS advocate, said she fears the new policy might make circumcised men have unprotected sex and think they are safe. 'Men who have been using condoms or those who have been faithful to their spouses will now opt for unprotected sex,' Njeri said."

[Edit: Aidsmap has a much better piece on the Kenya story. Apparently, this is an effort to coerce the non-circumcising communities of Kenya to adopt it, as most of Kenya already circumcises. Of the ethnic minorities that don't, only the Turkana seem to be resistent. The others have already fallen victim to the meme of better sex and greater attractiveness. It's an interesting case of a community acting against its own interests that has its counterparts in politics and psychology.]

Take a study that shows a modest increase in incidence of sexually transmitted disease among the intact, and the MSM (that's mainstream media, rather than men who have sex with men) go ape-shit. Take a story showing a doubling of one type of STD in circumcised men, and you have to go all the way to Sri Lanka to find out about it.* Thank God for the Internet. The Tamil Star is reporting that circumcised men have much greater rates of genital warts than the intact.

Nearly 7% of whites reported having been diagnosed with genital warts

4% of African-Americans reported having been diagnosed

2 1/2% of Mexican-Americans reported having been diagnosed

Circumcision appeared to have an effect on rates of genital warts:

4.5% of circumcised men reported having genital warts

2.4% of uncircumcised men reported having genital warts

Source: April issue of Sexually Transmitted Diseases.

*Ok, I didn't search long and hard for this story elsewhere, opting instead to nick it from the Intactivism Pages. Thanks, Hugh (and others via email).

Editorial note. Coming up this week will be a belated Puerto Vallarta Edition of Notebook.

Hasta entonces!