Infant Circumcision and HIV Prevention—LET’S RUN THE NUMBERS

Yes, I am at it again. I want to unveil the absurdity of using circumcision as a preventive measure against the spread of HIV in the U.S.

According to the study done on Sub Saharan African men on the effectiveness of circumcision in the prevention of the spread of HIV, the rate of prevention was about 50%. This study only applied to heterosexual men. It did not cover homosexual populations or women. It should also be noted that these men did not have regular access to condoms.

In the United States in 2007, 37,041 new cases of HIV were reported. Twenty-eight (28) of them were children under the age of 13, mostly infants. So for our purposes, since we are looking at sexually transmitted infections, I will remove these cases. That leaves us with a starting number of 37,013 teen and adult cases of HIV infection. Of those cases only 535 cases were reported in persons under the age of 20. Given that the age of consent is 18, we will use this “under 20” figure to discuss the number of lives that would be saved by INFANT circumcision.

Of 535 cases, 17% would result from IV drug use for which circumcision would be of no use, and 47% would result from homosexual sex which isn’t covered by our study. So we are left with 193 cases of heterosexually transmitted HIV. Statistically speaking 107 of those cases would be female, which again is unaffected by circumcision. That leaves us with 86 male heterosexual transmissions. Of those at least 60% would be circumcised already (I’ll use 60% to be round about it.) That leaves 35 intact male cases transmitted heterosexually. Since circumcision would save about 50% of those lives, routine infant circumcision would save about 17 lives for American boys before the age of consent. Compare that to the over 100 infants, who through no choice of their own, die from circumcision every year in the U.S., not including those who have other life long complications.

So let’s use some sense here. Your child is more likely to die from infant circumcision than he is likely to be infected with HIV [through heterosexual contact] before the age of consent. It makes more sense to teach condom usage to junior high school students, a method that protects all people from sexually transmitted HIV. Because let’s face it, in this country the vast majority of men contracting and living with HIV are circumcised. So what real impact is circumcision having on transmission in the U.S.? We as a society need to let go of our prudishness and educate our kids about safe sex and IV drug usage BEFORE they are at risk. Now there’s a method of prevention that has actually been shown to work in this country.

Of course, when your son is of the age to consent, you can ask him, “do you want to keep your foreskin and use a condom OR do you want to cut off your foreskin and use a condom?” Then let him decide.

Note: It is interesting to me that in the African study no one recommended that infants be circumcised. They began doing the surgery at age 12 and beyond.

Note: A baby’s blood does not clot well (which is why your baby got a shot of Vit. K when s/he was born. Also they have nearly no immune system to fight off infection. This is the worst possible scenario under which any surgery should be performed.)