{"id":7819,"date":"2010-04-24T10:19:55","date_gmt":"2010-04-24T10:19:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/2010\/04\/24\/to-cut-or-not-to-cut-the-quest\/"},"modified":"2010-04-24T10:19:55","modified_gmt":"2010-04-24T10:19:55","slug":"to-cut-or-not-to-cut-the-quest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/24\/to-cut-or-not-to-cut-the-quest\/","title":{"rendered":"To cut or not to cut: The question of circumcision"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Men circumcised at birth saying that they prefer being circumcised makes as much sense as a man deaf in one ear extolling the virtues of monophonic sound. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nThat is a quote from one of many interesting comments on the equally interesting article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/blog\/post.cfm?id=is-male-circumcision-a-humanitarian-2010-04-23\">Is male circumcision a humanitarian act?<\/a> by Jesse Bering.  Worth a look.<\/p>\n<p>Bering concludes on the  basis of a couple of very preliminary studies that show large effects in terms of percentage but small effects in terms of hazard, in a dynamically changing situation, supporting circumcision to mitigate against HIV infection risks.   Bering has misunderstood the studies and their implications, though it is not entirely irrelevant that circumcision seems to be related to HIV risk reduction. It&#8217;s just not clear, not large, and quite possibly not important because the difference is only see in what is likely situations of unprotected sex in very high risk heterosexual populations.<\/p>\n<p>The interesting outcome, not mentioned in the article or in any of the comments I read, is that it is perfectly reasonable to  conclude from Bering&#8217;s (and other&#8217;s) logic that first world heterosexual men should not necessarily get circumcised, and nor should homosexual receptive partners.  But, first world insertive partners (tops) and all third world men should.  The whole idea that one&#8217;s penis should be cut (or not) on the basis of one&#8217;s global socioeconomic status or sexual preference is stunning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Men circumcised at birth saying that they prefer being circumcised makes as much sense as a man deaf in one ear extolling the virtues of monophonic sound.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[103],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-227","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7819"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7819\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}