LucidWombat
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@kmcharleston Lovin' the Hitchens quote, and here you go: http://www.circumcisionandhiv.com/files/mcnotavaccine.pdf. Here is another paper detailing the lack of external validity of the studies:
Green, L.W. (2010). “Male circumcision and HIV prevention insufficient evidence and neglected external validity”. American Journal of Preventive Medicine (0749-3797), 39 (5), pp. 479.
On top of the points that Green et al mention in the above editorial there is another that I'll just copy and paste from my blog:
- for the most widely cited study (Auvert & Taljaard, et al. (2005) Randomized, Controlled Intervention Trial of Male Circumcision for Reduction of HIV Infection Risk: The ANRS 1265 Trial. PLoS Med 2(11): e298.), the conclusion of a 60% protection rate was derived from comparing 20 infections in the circumcised group and 49 infections in the intact group (1 – 20/49). Forgetting for the moment that this sample size is far too small to draw such a conclusion, this is only a relative difference *across* the two groups. The actual calculated protection rate is only 2.25% (3.74% infected in control vs. 1.49% in experimental). Compare this to a condom with a 99.97% protection rate. Due to the short time of the study, and the other errors involved in the trial, 2.25% is safely within error bars and therefore not significant.
@kmcharleston The WHO's position is based on the faulty HIV trials I mentioned previously, along with a lot of lobbying by some very vocal Jewish doctors.
@kmcharleston The HIV trials were all fraught with methodological errors. Look up a paper written by Lawrence Green called 'Circumcision isn't the HIV vaccine we've been waiting for', where he details everything wrong with those studies and why they're not to be trusted.