Ethics against AIDS, not statistics - Sigismond
From Peaceful Beginnings
(biased enquiries upon black human guinea-pigs)
“The one who gives up an essential liberty for a fleeting and
uncertain security does not deserve either security or liberty.”
Benjamin Franklin
In order to fight AIDS, the only safe and sound methods are personal pleasure (autosexuality), condoms, fidelity and monogamy. Talbott demonstrated (1) that in Africa, the most struck continent, the great carrier of the epidemic is not the foreskin but prostitution. Indeed, African prostitutes are four times more numerous and four times more contaminated than those of the rest of the world. But “dry sex”, sodomy, multi-partnership, adultery, polygamy and homophilia when it is not zoosexual touring with endemic carriers-of-the-virus monkeys (very probably at the source of the epidemic; one zoophile homophile is enough to contaminate humanity), must also be rejected steadfastly. Let us insist upon the fact that the use of drugs favours taking ill-considered risks. For all those who have not yet found a stable relationship with a healthy person, autosexuality is the surest resort against infection. This implies not to have been deprived from its specific natural organs: the clitoris (its ablation can be compared to the castration of the penis) or the foreskin (circumcision is a threat of castration that traumatizes even little girls). In a continent where women are now the first affected by an epidemic initially spread by men, they are the first interested in adopting the ethic of fidelity. And this all the more that it is also an ethic of equality in which the loss of diversity is rewarded by gain in physical and affective security, and by deeper relationships.
Human guinea-pigs
Contrary to this obviousness and to the ethical principle forbidding amputation for preventive purpose, the insight of a few researchers makes one’s hair stand on end. 3 128 men have been recruited for a research study (2) on the effectiveness of circumcision in preventing AIDS. It succeeded a whole series since twenty years, with similar aim. But the press touted again the dubious conclusion. Circumcised right away were 1 546 human guinea-pigs. The others underwent the mutilation ten months later. For according to the hasty and naive promoters, the venture was so successful that they stopped it to circumcise the rest of the sample.
The authors of the enquiry eased their conscience by providing condoms and advice to their victims. But there was a time when experiments upon humans were sheltered behind the barbed wire of extermination camps. Today they are done in the open; in order to proclaim the so-called positive results of crimes realized with the collaboration of victims fascinated by the title of physician, a few scientists obtain media coverage in the congress of the International AIDS Society. Science, how many crimes are committed in your name!
Men only, blacks only
The enquiry asserts being randomized (statistically representative of the population through drawing lots) but women were excluded from it. But since when is a population composed of one sex only?! Moreover, how could a small town of black people validly represent South African population that includes 11% of whites?! The enquiry, deliberately androcentered and ethnocentered, is all the more statistically biased that it studies the risk of transmission of women to men without having registered the HIV status of women in contact with the subjects of each sample.
A fascinating short term outcome
The enquiry confirmed that over a period of 10 months, circumcision considerably lessens the number of masculine contaminations, 60% lower with the circumcised. Two similar enquiries, led in Kenya and Uganda, over a longer period (two years), showed a lessening of this "protection" through circumcision that passes from 60% to 50% (3). The lessening of the protecting effect of circumcision within time shows that circumcision only hinders the entry of VIH with those who expose themselves to it. It is fallacious to advocate a lessening of the risk of “60%” instead of “60% over one year”. One could say that the reason why the experimentations were prematurely stopped was that the more they lasted, the lower was their allegedly successful rate. And we are going to see that in the long run, there are good reasons to think that the cure will be worse than the disease.
The long-term consequences
Indeed, with the victims who will endure the life-long consequence of the operation, its implementation will end in inverse effect: spreading the epidemic through reluctance in the use of condoms, for two reasons. On one hand the circumcised – particularly young subjects – will think themselves sufficiently protected. The rumour is already spreading into Africa: “Circumcision is the best condom, the best vaccine!” On the other hand and foremost, by striking a blow at the sensitivity of the glans (4), circumcision makes condom use, already little pleasant to normal men, frankly daunting. The extent of the epidemic in Africa and the USA – where the majority of the male population is circumcised – strongly suggests that, in the long term, circumcision has the inverse effect to the looked for aim. Indeed, the USA is the developed country where the epidemic spread the most.
The second consequence will be a worsening of the transmissibility of the virus to women – and children of pregnant women – due to abrasion of the vagina provoked by the absence of the foreskin. Two enquiries (5, 6) disclosed that the foreskin limits irritating friction against the vagina, for three reasons. First of all, normal men look for the fine sensations provided by the exquisite erogenous and tactile sensitivity of the foreskin (that of the glans is merely erogenous), through movements of moderate amplitude, in a less gymnastic, slower, gentler and more tender act. Then, the foreskin glides on the shaft so that friction against the vagina is reduced. At last, through its mobility and folds, the foreskin plays a part similar to that of the rings of a piston and inhibits the draining out of vaginal secretions by the rim of the glans. Conversely, in order to compensate for their loss of sensitivity, the circumcised require movements on a greater scale inducing, indeed, deep massage of the glans but also intense rubbing. Moreover, the mushroom of the corona of their glans voids the secretions little by little and the vagina gets irritated. We already know that women are twice more likely to be contaminated that men. Circumcision can only worsen this figure. The AIDSUNO 2004 and 2006 (7) reports revealed that in Sub-Saharan Africa, where circumcision concerns less than 20% of men, women represent 59% of contaminated persons. But South Africa is the land of “dry sex”, which excludes preservative. A recent enquiry (8) disclosed that women of circumcised men are more prone to contracting HIV.
Conclusion
For lack of integrating ethical and behavioural variables, statistic enquiries, however fascinating their conclusions may be, are likely to be gravely misleading.
There still are in Africa many peoples who resisted the epidemic of circumcision. The probability is now high that they would abandon their antique wisdom in front of the pseudo-scientific, neo-colonizing invasion that recommends circumcision against AIDS in Pretoria but not in Paris. Whereas, at request of the prosecution, a Finish court acknowledged that circumcision is a penal assault, whereas South-Africa was the first country in the world to prohibit circumcision of children under 16 without their consent, a few physicians use the AIDS epidemic as an excuse to bring barbarity in general use and mutilate the last black upholders of an ethic which respects the child and refuses the quasi-racist distinction that pretends founding a collective identity upon a destruction of the identity of the species.
World circumcision – and soon genetic manipulation in a “brave new world” – rather than fighting the real sources of the epidemic is the long-term solution suggested by sorcerer’s apprentices who benefit from the gullibility, conformism and antique hygienist superstition that favour paedo-sexual criminality. The psychoanalyst will see there an avatar of the sadistic obsessive, parental and societal compulsion to threaten sons and daughters with castration, and even to castrate the latter from their erectile organ, in order to dominate both of them better. As this threat is not verbalized, it remains unconscious and its consequences can be disastrous.
The great statistical sophistication of the enquiry and the treacherous, short-term effectiveness of the solution it recommends did not abuse European scientists; for ethical reasons, it was refused for publication in Europe (9) to be edited only by an obscure review of the United States still practising circumcision by a majority. We highlighted its unconscious racism, worthy of “Uncle Tom’s cabin”. But it occurred, at the beginning of the enquiry (10), that 146 (72 + 74) of the subjects had contracted the virus. These persons were not warned of it (11)! The stenches of racism ensuing from such a decision are obvious; it would have been unthinkable in a developed country. The editors of The Lancet did not make any scandal; they turned the study down. But it is inadmissible that physicians would have attempted on the right to dignity of human persons by depriving them from a diagnosis of lethal contagion. Such a use of the public funds granted by the French government to the Agence nationale de recherche sur le SIDA is appalling.
At all events, even if circumcision has a strong incidence upon the transmissibility of AIDS, a medicine that is only 60% and short-term safe must be ruled out if it can have the effect of dissuading the use of a 99% safe one. As the president of Uganda stated, one has no right to neglect a 40% risk. Second and foremost, we saw that the protective effect is limited in time.
Not only do elementary ethics forbid mutilating the human body as a preventive measure but also puritan mutilation and benign neglect towards debauchery cannot save humanity from AIDS. African voices already raised (12) to denounce the now well-known behaviours responsible for its development. Instead of opposing them, circumcision is going to favour them. This solution is thus still more aberrant than the ablation of breasts for the prevention of cancer. The AIDS epidemic, still more than other STDs, reminds a world lead astray by the reign of pornography of the elementary rules of love ethics: “One must not make love without true love and true love (respect, tenderness, fidelity) does not exist without true knowledge”. Their implementation cannot be done without the abandonment of the taboo of autosexuality. According to Marilyn Milos’s motto (13), AIDS must be fought through education, not amputation. Ethics and education enable really fighting AIDS, the circumciser moral order cannot. This is why circumcision for statistical motive, recently declared by OMS officials, is an ethical derangement. Already two medical societies: the Australian Federation of AIDS Organizations (AFAO) (14) and the French Conseil national du SIDA (15), reacted against the recommendation of the WHO to circumcise population against AIDS.
The enquiry led in Orange Farm is an alarm screaming to the universe that the safety of condoms is made for rich whites whereas circumcision is a fallacious and short-term stopgap for poor blacks. However, the main upshot that can be drawn from Talbott’s enquiry is that the latter had rather offer themselves condoms than the prostitutes through which they contaminate their wives back home. At all events, the younger must not suffer from an epidemic resulting from their elders’ misconduct nor the whole masculine population from that of a few ones.
Sigismond – oldsigismund@hotmail.com - http://groups.msn.com/circabolition
(1) Talbott J. "Size Matters: The Number of Prostitutes and the Global HIV/AIDS Pandemic". PLoS ONE 2007, 2(6). http://plosone.org/doi/pone.0000543
(2) Auvert B, Taljaard D, Lagarde E, Songnim-Tambekou J, Sitta R, 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.
http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020298
(3) http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/news/QA/AMC12_QA.htm
(4) Sorrells M., Snyder J., Reiss M., Eden C., Milos M., Wilcox N., Van Howe R. Fine-touch pressure thresholds in the adult penis. BJU International 99 (4), 864-869.
http://www.icgi.org/touch-test/touch-test-article.pdf
(5) O’Hara J., O’Hara K. The effect of male circumcision on the sexual enjoyment of the female partner. BJU International 1999; 83 (suppl. 1): 79-84.
http://cirp.org/library/anatomy/ohara
(6) Boyle G. Bensley G., Effects of male circumcision on female arousal and orgasm. N Z Med J 2003; 116 (1181): 595-6. http://cirp.org/library/sex_function/bensley1
(7) http://data.unaids.org/pub/EpiReport/2006/2006_EpiUpdate_Fr.pdf
(8) http://www.icgi.org/2008/02/wives-more-likely-to-contract-hiv-from-circumcised-husbands/
(9) Schoofs M, Lueck S, Phillips MM. Study says circumcision reduces AIDS risk by 70%. Findings from South Africa may offer powerful way to cut HIV transmission. Wall Street Journal 2005 July 5: A1.
(11) Cohen J. AIDS research. Male circumcision thwarts HIV infection. Science 2005 Aug 5; 309 (5736): 860.
(12) http://geocities.com/RainForest/3719/circoncision.html
(13) NOCIRC 2006 newsletter. http://www.nocirc.org (NOCIRC publications)
(14) http://www.afao.org.au/view_articles.asp?pxa=ve&pxs=169&pxsc=&pxsgc=&id=633
(15) http://www.sida-info-service.org/direct/news.php4?id=384
