Some of you may be aware that Bill Gates has decided to very slowly give some of his money away, and has spent about 200 million dollars on a mass circumcision campaign in sub-Saharan Africa. Supposedly this is the stop the spread of HIV. The trouble is that compared to, say, spending that money on distributing condoms, mass ciorcumcision has two major drawbacks.
Circumcision is dangerous. Obviously it’s not that dangerous compared to most operations, but it’s much more dangerous than donning a condom. And dozens of men have been killed by the Gates’ circumcision drive.
Circumcision doesn’t work. Some studies show that circumcision makes you less likely to contract HIV while having sex with an infected woman. Also, more likely to infect women if you have sex with them while infected. But the difference is, if it exists at all, very minor compared to wearing a condom.
But there’s worse: men don’t like the idea of having a slice taken out of their penis, so they were convinced by being told it would make them immune to HIV. Hence lots more unprotected sex now. Almost three quarters of the newly circumcised have stopped using condoms, and the circumcised even get discounts from prostitutes, who don’t even demand they use contraception.
So well done Bill Gates, you killed some men, mutilated a load of men, and jump started the flagging rate of expansion in the HIV infected population of Africa.
Because I can’t be arsed to do the research myself:
Is this the only activity this group takes? Do they have initiatives other than snipping tips? Or is the Tip-Snippery Foundation?
I just want to know what percentage of their work goes to circumcising men as opposed to condoms, training, et cetera. Is this more akin to, say, the Catholic Church saying condoms don’t work? Or is it somewhere closer to Planned Parenthood providing abortions?
I’m with Little Plastic Ninja on this one…could we get a cite to show what we are supposed to be outraged about? I looked up the Gates Foundation (here on Wiki), and I’m not seeing anything about snipping tips.
In fact, I question the validity of the site being used for this cite. For instance, one of their linked articles on circumcision declares that both CNN and Time “declare male circumcision as biggest medical breakthrough of 2007.” What?! Not only does that sound preposterous, if you Google about that, you only find that article, their own Facebook page, one random link-aggregating blog, and a 404’d webpage even mentioning it, and they all refer to the Malawi Voice article, and not the grand proclamations of two major news outlets.
Withdrawing/amending my previous objection - changing up the search, Time published a blurb in 2007 regarding Lancet-published research showing that circumcision reduced HIV infection rates in circumcised men by 51% in that study, and lauding it as one of the top 10 medical findings for that year. Not a total prevention. I would like to see the published data cited in the OP, as well as a link to the assertion that these patients were told they would be free from HIV infection by doing this, and a solid link to the Gates Foundation efforts.
FWIW, this is directly in line with what I’ve read about the link between circumcision and HIV transmission. I’d be curious to see some discussion about the merit of that study, plus some back up on the anti-Gates claims in the OP. If the study can be trusted (and what I read before seemed to indicate that it could be), I see absolutely nothing wrong with Bill throwing a bit of money behind it-- HIV prevention is HIV prevention, even if it’s not perfect. And hell, you say that money could be spent on condoms like Gates doesn’t fund traditional anti HIV campaigns, too.
Half of your links don’t work, but of the one’s that do I am not seeing this as worthy of pitting Gates over. From your first link (which does work obviously):
The third link also works, which is about 31 killed in botched circumcisions…which doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Gates. Even if it did, 31 out of 650,000 is a pretty remarkable number considering where these things are being done.
Oh, and among the ‘other stuff too’ that the Gates Foundation does is to provide condoms in Africa and India (presumably not the ones under development, but just the old fashioned kind).
So, I’m failing to see the outrage to be honest. It’s not like Gates (or his and his wife’s foundation) is ONLY pushing circumcision as the only method of HIV prevention…it’s one of multiple options they are looking at to try and curb HIV in the developing world. And it’s not like there isn’t some reason WHY they are pushing circumcision as an option, since the first link you provided pretty clearly states ‘as circumcision has been shown to more than halve the risk of men becoming infected’.
Other foci of research:
Vaccine Research and Development
Anti-Retroviral Prevention Methods
Efficient and Effective Service Delivery
Improved Diagnostic Methods
Demonstrating the Scalability of HIV Programs
This is the same poster who’s currently outraged in GD about supposed attempts to increase rape convictions and about how that’s a bad thing. Because women are lying sluts who oppress men with tons of fake rape claims.