Bill Gates Helps Fund Mass Circumcision Programme
June 16th, 2009
Loading ...Via: New Scientist:
Microsoft founder Bill Gates last week injected $50 million into a programme to circumcise up to 650,000 men in Swaziland and Zambia.
The goal of the project is to curb the transmission of HIV in two of the AIDS hotspots of the world, as circumcision has been shown to more than halve the risk of men becoming infected.
Funded for five years through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the programme is the first to massively scale up provision of circumcision by fully trained medical practitioners.
Traditional methods of circumcision sometimes harm and even kill boys and young men. The network of 250 teams of providers will be managed by Population Services International, a global health organisation based in Washington, DC.
“It’s great news, and this is exactly what’s needed,” says Catherine Hankins, chief scientific adviser at UNAIDS. “We’ve been working on development of guidance and technical support, and these development partners are now being funded to take it forward,” says Haskins.
Hankins said that Kenya has the most advanced programme, with 20,000 men newly circumcised, and plans are also well-advanced in Botswana and Namibia. But she stressed that circumcision can’t alone protect men or women against HIV, and that circumcised men should still take additional precautions, such as wearing condoms and not engaging in risky or promiscuous sex.
“Ensuring they understand how to maintain safe behaviours is key, and the procedure would be 100-per-cent accompanied by education to that end”, says a PSI spokesman.
Research Credit: dilinger
Barbaric!
Certainly anyone involved in mutilating defenseless children should be jailed. The victims in this case seems to be ill informed or uneducated adults, but the verdict still stands.
After all, it’s not like it’s going to do anything for them…. she stressed that circumcision can’t alone protect men or women against HIV, and that circumcised men should still take additional precautions, such as wearing condoms and not engaging in risky or promiscuous sex.
@ Eyelight
Great, then we’ll have to jail the entire American medical establishment, not to mention the Jewish community as well. That being said, it irks me that nobody ever consulted me about the decision to take my foreskin, (Too much detail?) but I’m comforted by the knowledge that if I really wanted to, I could grow it back with “exercises.”
@ Kevin
According to Moses Maimonides, circumcision was supposed to decrease pleasure for the male. Exposing the glans, as opposed to shielding it with a foreskin, makes it less sensitive, and thus results in less pleasurable sensations when the glans touches something. The decreasing sensitivity of the glans means that males become aroused less easily. I assume that they believed that arousal would happen more incidentally in the day to day movements due to heightened sensitivity.
That being said, the foreskin may trap a certain amount of bodily fluids if not promptly cleaned after sex; most people would probably not clean their genitals immediately after sex, or at least not quickly enough. Thus, the remaining bodily fluids, if carrying a disease may infect the male, and possibly other females, even without infecting the male.
What is really going on here?
What you don’t know about the Egyptian blood ritual can’t hurt Them:
(64%, 64 Votes)
The super yachts and submarines need matching upholstery, curtains and lampshades:
(24%, 24 Votes)
Bill Gates just wants to help:
(12%, 12 Votes)
Total Voters: 100
I apparently cast the hundredth vote. I’m sticking with my decor vote. Melinda has been in charge of the relationship from day one, count on it. Bill had a domineering mother and a significant shortage of female company for quite a few years if most accounts are to be believed.
As for giving that kind of dough to a program circumcising African men, when you consider the alternatives, really is a head-scratcher. Saint Bill of Medina, health crusader and funder of all bizarre social programs both massive and ludicrous. Flying syringes and now this?
I’m beginning to think Bill might just be the world’s most sophisticated RC model.
I don’t mean to diminish the significance of blood in religious rituals around the world but I would’ve thought that halving the risk of men catching AIDS would be rather a good thing. Decreasing the number who die from traditional methods might also be seen as such.
I find it very interesting that this ritual exists all over the world. The Aborigines of Australia perform circumcision as well. Why they would adopt such a practise from another culture I can’t guess. If, as is claimed, the Aborigines have been in Australia for 40,OOO years it may go back a lot further than the Egyptians.
One of three results when I googled “Egyptian Blood Ritual”:
http://www.maryknollsocietymall.org/chapters/978-1-57075-707-5.pdf
See comments re Hitler.
Anyone know whether Bill Gates can get it up?
http://www.norm-uk.org/where_do_foreskins_go.html
http://www.gettingit.com/article/200
There is a large market for foreskins… perhaps Bill is just repaying some favors? How many millions in foreskin does a $50 mil. investment parlay into? Data on the size of the market is not readily available.
Promoting circumcision as an AIDS beater may only convince circumcised men they don’t need a condom. Surely there is something else that can be done short of mutilating genitals.
This is just too sick to comment on.