Circumcision 'Helps To Halt HIV'

Circumcision 'helps to halt HIV'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4719409.stm

(Gold9472: Awesome... I'm going to get one)

7/25/2005

New research suggests circumcision could be effective in preventing the spread of HIV among men.

The study of more than 3,000 men in South Africa was done by the French agency for Aids and Viral Hepatitis.

The data, outlined at a conference in Brazil, shows male circumcision prevented about seven of 10 infections.

UN health agencies have cautioned that more trials are necessary before they will recommend this as a method to protect against Aids.

Previous studies have suggested that men who are circumcised have a lower rate of HIV infection.

It is thought that the cells of the foreskin are much more susceptible to HIV than cells on other parts of the penis, so by removing the foreskin, the likelihood of infection drops.

Further trials are being carried out in Uganda and Kenya to measure the effect of circumcision on other populations.

If similar results are found, then circumcision could be used alongside condoms to prevent the spread of HIV, the BBC's Ania Lichtarowicz reports from the conference in Rio de Janeiro.

But implementing this measure on a large scale will be complicated, our correspondent says.

She says that ensuring safe techniques and changing cultural and social attitudes towards male circumcision will prove challenging.

i hear castration is also a good method.

Yes, castration works well. Unfortunatly, it has the side effect of turning yo into the kind of person that hangs out around Girl Nation. :P

I've been meaning to start a thread on AIDS research, but I've yet to get around to it. I'm lazy. I already bitched about it to pkp, though. ^_^ Basically, never donate or support chairties claiming to be for "aids research" or "finding an AIDS cure." Because of what HIV is, and the way it works, there are only two plausible ways to cure it; remove your immune system (chemotherapy works well for this), starving the virus to death, and killing you from poisoning your body, or genetically engineer an organism to hunt down the aids and kill it within your body. Not currently possible with the level of technology available. The only plausible way to beat aids is the only one never discussed: Teach safe sex, discourage drug use, and use all that charity money to fix the medical system world wide to prevent HIV infections from needles/transfusions.

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Originally Posted by jetsetlemming

I've been meaning to start a thread on AIDS research, but I've yet to get around to it. I'm lazy. I already bitched about it to pkp, though. ^_^ Basically, never donate or support chairties claiming to be for "aids research" or "finding an AIDS cure." Because of what HIV is, and the way it works, there are only two plausible ways to cure it; remove your immune system (chemotherapy works well for this), starving the virus to death, and killing you from poisoning your body, or genetically engineer an organism to hunt down the aids and kill it within your body. Not currently possible with the level of technology available. The only plausible way to beat aids is the only one never discussed: Teach safe sex, discourage drug use, and use all that charity money to fix the medical system world wide to prevent HIV infections from needles/transfusions.

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i heard on a discovery channel special about the plague that if you had an ancestor that had the plague and survived you actually can't get aids because of the way your blood cells were changed due to the plague. lol i feel like i just talked myself into a circle. but if they figured out how to change the blood cells to where the aids virus couldn't attach itself then they would be able to cure aids or at least keep it from killing the person infected.

Nope, that would require genetic engineering. Some cells in the body we can, but only if its one single gene, and not a gene that can be turned on or off (i.e. a gene thats always activated). The inherent gene(s) that deal will that immunity (which isn't completely perfect) has yet to be mapped out (the human genome project just kinda faded away, didn't it), and signs point to it, and genes like it, being complicated.