If you read the actual paper, you find that "both circumcised and uncircumcised men significantly reduced their HIV risk behavior from baseline to the 6 and 12 month follow-up visits." The fact that the NON-circumcised men ALSO changed their behaviour clearly shows that it was not circumcision that did it, but just the effect of being in an experiment, getting a lot of attention (the "Hawthorne effect"). In the real world, we have heard many stories suggesting circumcised men will think they are immune and abandon safer sexual practices.

One of the authors of this research is Robert Bailey. He and Daniel T Halperin have been busy promoting circumcision together for more than 10 years. Halperin is on record as thinking his descent from a ritual circumcisor means “maybe in some small way I’m ‘destined’ to help pass along [circumcision] to people in [other] parts of the world … .” ('The Case for Circumcision' by Gordy Slack, East Bay Express Online, May 19-24, 2000) Whatever else that it, it’s not science.

Uganda achieved a remarkable reduction in the HIV rate with its "zero grazing" (partner reduction) policy. That, not circmcision, is the way to go.

I agree with Hugh totally on the merits of his argument, although I have not read the study. In addition to the argument he gives, is anyone looking at the circumcision may be performed? In the real world out here (I'm writing from southern DRC), a major campaign to circumcize sizable numbers of men would most likely lead to abuses -- informal circumcisions performed by cheaper providers in neighborhoods, etc. The risk of the disease and even the death rates among those circumcized is, from my perspective of living and working throughout Africa for 40 years, very great. Already, dozens or more of teenagers apparently die in Southern Africa of badly performed circumcision, but these stories are rarely reported. Imagine if that practice were increased in an attempt to lower HIV rates. Typically, the West is again looking for quick fixes to problems that require persistent, culturally-sensitive programmes to change people's behaviors. Uganda has already shown it can do this quite well and I'm called to break with my past disagreements with Pres Museveni's positions and agree and commend him for being skeptical.