Wednesday evening

[emmagrant01]

1. It's sad that the first thing the media jumps on when a Senator from South Dakota has a stroke is that this might shift the balance of power in the Senate.  But it actually might, and that's scary too.  :-P  Here's to hoping he'll make a full recovery, and that the governor of South Dakota is not a complete and total asshat.

2. This story was floating around on some of the gay issues comms I watch today: Circumcision Reduces Risk of AIDS, Study Finds.  Yikes.  It's so commonly practiced in the US, and most people I know don't think anything about having their infant sons circumcised.  It's something I have deep reservations about personally, because hello?  Cutting off a piece of your body for no good reason?  It doesn't sound like a very good idea to me. But if research keeps going in this direction, it may settle the argument between me and MDH, should we ever have a son.  (He's staunchly pro-circumcision.)  Still, it's an interesting finding. Edit: More articles: Another study showing men circumcised as infants have significantly fewer instances of STDs as adults | an article criticizing the first link above (thanks, kagyakusha)

3. Whoa -- when did LJ change the posting form?  Cool.

4. Holy crap!  LJ can be so random sometimes.  It's funny how I can never predict which posts will get 200 comments and which will be mostly ignored.  ;-)

Comments

[rubymiene.livejournal.com]

Sorry, but I'm just going to have to call you skeptical. The scientific explanation of why the foreskin is more suspectible to HIV (presence of Langahan's cells) makes logical sense to me. And you can't just wash the HIV virus off after having sex. If you could, wouldn't doctors be recommending enemas?
Obviously, the best way to avoid contracting HIV through sex is to avoid having sex with people who have HIV, but if it were that simple, there wouldn't be an epidemic. If you can't get people in wealthy countries to demand their partners get tested before sex, you certainly can't expect it of people in Africa where 1) it's largely unavailable, and 2)the cost of getting every single person tested would probably bankrupt the continent.

[sagcat.livejournal.com]

for the sake of argument, I'll assume what you're saying is completely true.

It still doesn't justify amputation of a perfectly normal, healthy, functional part of your child's anatomy, especially part of their reproductive/sexual organs.

The circumcision of every male on the planet would not do away with HIV.

[rubymiene.livejournal.com]

It does if your risk for getting HIV is very high. In the US, this would do nothing. In Africa, where in some countries 30% of the population has HIV? You're practically guarenteed to be exposed to HIV at some point in your life. Halving your risk would save millions of lives. If someone gets HIV in Africa, they're not going to have anti-virals to live a relatively normal life for the next 30 years. We're talking about dying in a horrible painful way. Now, going from a 1 in 10,000 risk to 1 in 5000? Probably not worth it. Going from 1 in 3 to 1 in 6? If I were a parent, I'd do it in heartbeat.
Besides, in Africa, they're far more likely to be performing adult or teen circumcision to prevent HIV, not neonatal ones.