Circumcision: vindicated at last (National Post, July 13, 2005)

National Post
July 13, 2005

The International AIDS Society will meet in Rio de Janeiro later this month. There, senior researcher Bertran Auvert, representing the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, will announce official confirmation of what has been common knowledge in medical circles for years: that circumcision drastically reduces -- by 70%, to be precise -- the risk of contracting HIV through intercourse with infected women.

Circumcision: vindicated at last!

The anti-circumcision movement occupies the point of absolute bathos in the annals of victimology. Strident groups such as Intact, the Association for Genital Integrity and the Circumcision Information Resource Centre, who revere the ghosts of their lost foreskins as though they were amputated thumbs, have been lobbying against circumcision for years as a violation of basic human rights.

The pietistic anti-circs relentlessly advance a clever but false linkage under the PC banner of gender equity, insisting that male circumcision is equivalent -- in terms of pain memory, psychological trauma and sensual deprivation -- to the very real mutilation involved in the obscenity of female clitorectomy.

These mischievous malcontents scored a partial victory in 1996 when, bullied into submission, the Canadian Pediatric Society retreated from its sensible policy of recommending circumcision on hygienic and health grounds, and tiptoed into neutrality. During its 15 minutes of fame, the anti-circs' campaign sowed needless doubt amongst new parents in general, and particular consternation amongst Jews and Muslims, for whom the ancient rite is a religious obligation.

The intellectual penury of anti-circ groups is revealed in their baseless claims that, for instance, circumcision "actually encodes violence into boys." But perception is all: Their cunning deployment of "rights" jargon won them crucial support when, three years ago, prominent McGill University bio-ethicist Margot Somerville publicly denounced circumcision as a form of "criminal assault."

Bertran Auvert's study is bad news for Somerville and the anti-circs. As reported July 5 in The Wall Street Journal (which conducted its own review of the study), the hypothesis that circumcision can decisively affect rates of HIV infection was tested by French and South African researchers using the most rigorous possible method: a randomized, controlled clinical trial. The findings, involving more than 3,000 circumcised and uncircumcised HIV-negative men aged 18-24 in South Africa, were so dramatically favourable to the circumcised group that in February, nine months before its projected completion, the study was halted by an independent data and safety monitoring board, on the grounds that it would be immoral not to offer the uncircumcised men an opportunity to undergo the procedure.

The medical fraternity has long been aware that circumcision offers a 12-fold decline in urinary tract infection in infancy, a decreased occurrence of penile cancer, and reduced rates of HIV ("The foreskin of the penis is a magnet for HIV," says one British researcher). Community-based evidence also supported the hypothesis: For example, Kenya's Luo people, who don't circumcise, have a high rate of HIV, while the Kikiyu people, who do circumcise, have low rates.

Moreover, the findings may explain the comparatively low rates of HIV amongst (straight) American men, most of whom are circumcised. Yet despite at least 30 previous studies suggesting a circumcision-HIV relationship, ideologically motivated opponents here and in the U.K. have insisted there was no conclusive evidence to encourage the procedure.

But are these medical benefits worth the risks, you ask? Despite the scare-mongering of anti-circs, the incidence of serious complications from circumcision by an experienced practitioner, such as a mohel, is statistically negligible. The pain factor has been reduced to the same or less than a vaccination by topical anesthetics. As for the mythogenic notion that foreskinned men enjoy better sex, well, control-study that, if someone can, and get back to us.

Armed with now-incontrovertible evidence, the Canadian Pediatric Society should feel emboldened to recommence promoting circumcision as a health benefit. As for the anti-circ obsessives, they should seek therapy to uncover their real problems. And credulous theorists who have jumped on the "criminal assault" and "mutilation" bandwagon should offer a mea culpa for giving this most Lilliputian of human grievances the time of day.
© National Post 2005

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Circumcision: vindicated at last (National Post, July 13, 2005)