View Full Version : Circumcision Cuts AIDS Risk
Red Peasant
12-13-2006, 21:04
Serious topic here, but I couldn't help a good chuckle at the appropriately monickered Doctor quoted in the article. Childish, but funny. :laugh4:
Circumcision 'cuts' HIV infection
Dr Kevin De Cock
World Health Organization
Results last year from a study in 3,280 heterosexual men in South Africa, which was also stopped early, showed a 60% drop in the incidence of new infections in men who had been circumcised.
There are several reasons why circumcision may protect against HIV infection.
Specific cells in the foreskin may be potential targets for HIV infection and also the skin under the foreskin becomes less sensitive and is less likely to bleed reducing risk of infection following circumcision.
When Aids first began to emerge in Africa, researchers noted that men who were circumcised seemed to be less at risk of infection but it was unclear whether this was due to differences in sexual behaviour.
A modelling study done by international Aids experts earlier this year showed that male circumcision could avert about six million HIV infections and three million deaths in sub-Saharan Africa.
A further trial in Uganda to assess the risk of HIV transmission to female partners is due to report in 2008 but the effect among men who have sex with men has not yet been studied.
Implementation
Dr De Cock, director of the HIV/Aids department of the World Health Organization told the BBC the results were a "significant scientific advance" but were not a magic bullet and would never replace existing prevention strategies.
"We will have to convene a meeting which we hope will happen quite soon to review the data in more detail and have discussions about the implications.
"This is an intervention that must be embedded with all the other interventions and precautions we have. Men must not consider themselves protected. It's a very important intervention to add to our prevention armamentarium."
Dr De Cock said that countries in Africa who wanted to use this approach would still have to decide what age groups to target and there would have to be training and hygienic practices in place.
Original article from the Beeb: Link (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6176209.stm)
What a brilliant name. So devastatingly appropriate.
Big King Sanctaphrax
12-14-2006, 03:25
Ha, I was about to post a thread on this, and make the very same joke!
Louis VI the Fat
12-14-2006, 04:13
hehe, speaking of which... (http://www.break.com/index/fox_news_top_cock.html)
~D
This was posted on my city's metal forum some time ago. The discussion turned into a mud-slinging fest regarding Zionists trying to make everyone do things the Jewish way.
In any case, the only way I could see it making sense is if there are simply fewer blood vessels and pores around a dong that's been circumcised, making it less likely for a potential AIDS infection to travel into the man's bloodstream.
Strike For The South
12-14-2006, 05:48
You know what also cuts aid risk?
Rubbers
not sleeping with prostitutes
Dont share needles
Samurai Waki
12-14-2006, 07:45
Yeah. But honestly when a random hot chick is offering you sex do you generally ask questions or just go for the gold?:uhoh:
Yeah. But honestly when a random hot chick is offering you sex do you generally ask questions or just go for the gold?:uhoh:
Since when in the world do you not were a condom when a random hot chick is offering sex? Honestly gotta think it through on occasions.
Interesting study, though that would also mean most men in europe are at more risk for AIDS.
Kekvit Irae
12-14-2006, 08:15
HIV encodes itself into your DNA. Any fool who took high school anatomy will know this. Taking a knife to Mr Winkie and cutting off his tophat has the same risk of contracting HIV as keeping his headgear on.
No sex before marriage, stay away from blood that's not yours, and not doing injected drugs is the best way to keep yourself clean. And if you absolutely must have sex before marriage, use a condom for ANY penetration, and get yourself and your partner tested before doing anything oral.
Fun fact: the HIV virus is present in saliva, so theoretically you can contract HIV just by french kissing. However, the concentration of the virus is so small in the saliva that there has never been a reported contration of HIV (yet) by just kissing.
Kanamori
12-14-2006, 08:56
There are places in most cities where one can get clean needles by trading in old needles. Inject safely!:2thumbsup:
Kralizec
12-14-2006, 09:29
Dr Kevin De Cock, director of the HIV/Aids department of the World Health Organization told the BBC the results were a "significant scientific advance" but were not a magic bullet and would never replace existing prevention strategies.
:clown:
HIV encodes itself into your DNA. Any fool who took high school anatomy will know this. Taking a knife to Mr Winkie and cutting off his tophat has the same risk of contracting HIV as keeping his headgear on.
No sex before marriage, stay away from blood that's not yours, and not doing injected drugs is the best way to keep yourself clean. And if you absolutely must have sex before marriage, use a condom for ANY penetration, and get yourself and your partner tested before doing anything oral.
Fun fact: the HIV virus is present in saliva, so theoretically you can contract HIV just by french kissing. However, the concentration of the virus is so small in the saliva that there has never been a reported contration of HIV (yet) by just kissing.
The immune system can and generally will destroy HIV viruses if they enter in only small amounts, wich is why there's never been a reported case of infection by saliva. The problem is when it enters the body in such large amounts that the immune system can't cope with the rate at wich it mutates.
Circumcision is thought to reduce the risk of contracting it because:
Specific cells in the foreskin may be potential targets for HIV infection and also the skin under the foreskin becomes less sensitive and is less likely to bleed reducing risk of infection following circumcision.
Well, IIRC(feel free to correct me, just trying to remember that) the immune system consists of 3 types of cells, which I will call A, B and C now since I do not remember the official names. The A cells are patrolling the body and destroy every strange thing they can find that should not be there, they are the first defense. The B type will search for similar things and especially for infected cells, however it will not do much itself except to "activate" the C type cells which are able to identify and destroy infected cells with the information they get from the B cells.
The HIV virus now infects the B cells and reproduces itself inside them, destroying them(that's what a virus does, only that other virii use other cells as hosts), this will basically render 2/3 of your immune system useless because the B cells are destroyed by the virus and the C cells will never be activated again by them. This leaves you with the A cells but those are no good in defeating a mass invasion of virii or bacteria and cannot do much against infected body cells. I think a flu for example can then end up lethal and kill you.
Now circumcision can only prevent fluids from staying around underneath the skin of your penis and get sucked up by your skin I think, maybe cleaning the penis with alcohol shortly after sex might work as well.~;)
I was under the impression that the foreskin was just more exposed to attack. TV documentary science though...
Duke Malcolm
12-14-2006, 17:52
I remember hearing that on the midnight news on BBC Radio 4 last night... It was hilarious... Though it shan't tempt me into getting my bits mutilated...
Rodion Romanovich
12-14-2006, 18:50
The immune system can and generally will destroy HIV viruses if they enter in only small amounts, wich is why there's never been a reported case of infection by saliva. The problem is when it enters the body in such large amounts that the immune system can't cope with the rate at wich it mutates.
Well the most likely to have HIV are people who are promiscuous (unfortunately there are some very sad exceptions where people who have just had sex once in their life turned out to get HIV etc - really unfair and brutal of the world!), and those who are promiscuous are very likely to have sex if they have gone as far as to do French kissing, so how do you know the HIV was spread during sex and not during foreplay? There's simply no statistic basis for such a statement, and many doctors and medical scientists I've met have said that it's an old myth that kissing wouldn't have any risk of giving you HIV.
HIV encodes itself into your DNA. Any fool who took high school anatomy will know this. Taking a knife to Mr Winkie and cutting off his tophat has the same risk of contracting HIV as keeping his headgear on.
No sex before marriage, stay away from blood that's not yours, and not doing injected drugs is the best way to keep yourself clean. And if you absolutely must have sex before marriage, use a condom for ANY penetration, and get yourself and your partner tested before doing anything oral.
Fun fact: the HIV virus is present in saliva, so theoretically you can contract HIV just by french kissing. However, the concentration of the virus is so small in the saliva that there has never been a reported contration of HIV (yet) by just kissing.
I agree! Also, avoid any anal sex (of course) as you have the highest chance of being infected by it!
Since homosexuals seem to like this particular kind of sex, it is hard for them to break from it, but it is truth, anal sex is the best way to contract HIV.
As a matter of fact, it is suspected that it originated from Africans pecking monkeys there... (Who on earth would do that to a poor monkey?)
As gross as that is, it is the truth. I don't know if being circumsized cuts the risk of getting HIV, but I do know that the main way to stop the spread is for people to alter their lifestyles.
Big King Sanctaphrax
12-14-2006, 19:09
HIV encodes itself into your DNA. Any fool who took high school anatomy will know this. Taking a knife to Mr Winkie and cutting off his tophat has the same risk of contracting HIV as keeping his headgear on.
No sex before marriage, stay away from blood that's not yours, and not doing injected drugs is the best way to keep yourself clean. And if you absolutely must have sex before marriage, use a condom for ANY penetration, and get yourself and your partner tested before doing anything oral.
Fun fact: the HIV virus is present in saliva, so theoretically you can contract HIV just by french kissing. However, the concentration of the virus is so small in the saliva that there has never been a reported contration of HIV (yet) by just kissing.
I'm not sure why you're so quick to dismiss these findings-I'm sure the scientists are aware of the pathological characteristics and mechanism of HIV. If they're making claims like this they probably have some, you know, empirical evidence.
Rodion Romanovich
12-14-2006, 19:10
Speaking of oral sex and STDs, apparently it dramatically increases the risk for an extremely lethal form of oral cancer to have oral sex if the receiver has human papillomavirus (HPV), a virus which seems to be very much spread in western society today (but it isn't as lethal as HIV unless during oral sex, when it is transmitted to the oral cavity and causes cancer). If you're flexible in your joints you can do autofellatio and autocunnilingus, which shouldn't give you any diseases you don't already have.
So here's why LegioXXXUlpiaVictrix corporation proposes: THE BODY CONDOM! Cover your body in a big, warm and cosy rubber overall! Cover everything - mouth, arms, legs, chest and breathe through diver's equipment! Available in sizes small, medium and large! THE BODY CONDOM TM - making sex safe even in a modern overpopulated, disease spreading and oversexualized society! Instruction usage: Be careful not to break the rubber when unrolling it and taking it on!
If you're flexible in your joints you can do autofellatio and autocunnilingus, which shouldn't give you any diseases you don't already have.
oh dear... I just looked those words up... More than I wanted to know...
And may I ask, what type of guy is going to...(you know...)
Well, IIRC(feel free to correct me, just trying to remember that) the immune system consists of 3 types of cells, which I will call A, B and C now since I do not remember the official names. The A cells are patrolling the body and destroy every strange thing they can find that should not be there, they are the first defense. The B type will search for similar things and especially for infected cells, however it will not do much itself except to "activate" the C type cells which are able to identify and destroy infected cells with the information they get from the B cells.
The HIV virus now infects the B cells and reproduces itself inside them, destroying them(that's what a virus does, only that other virii use other cells as hosts), this will basically render 2/3 of your immune system useless because the B cells are destroyed by the virus and the C cells will never be activated again by them. This leaves you with the A cells but those are no good in defeating a mass invasion of virii or bacteria and cannot do much against infected body cells. I think a flu for example can then end up lethal and kill you.
Now circumcision can only prevent fluids from staying around underneath the skin of your penis and get sucked up by your skin I think, maybe cleaning the penis with alcohol shortly after sex might work as well.~;)
There are T cells, B cells, and helper T cells. HIV infects the helper T cells.
Big King Sanctaphrax
12-14-2006, 19:50
Immunology on the .Org?! I have a massive exam on this stuff tomorrow, let me be!
Speaking of oral sex and STDs, apparently it dramatically increases the risk for an extremely lethal form of oral cancer to have oral sex if the receiver has human papillomavirus (HPV), a virus which seems to be very much spread in western society today (but it isn't as lethal as HIV unless during oral sex, when it is transmitted to the oral cavity and causes cancer).
A tentative link between oral cancer and HPV has been established, but it has been established beyond a shadow of a doubt that it causes cervical cancer.
As a matter of fact, it is suspected that it originated from Africans pecking monkeys there... (Who on earth would do that to a poor monkey?)
Last I checked, that was considered one of the least likely vectors for the jump from chimp to human. Here's a brief rundown (http://www.avert.org/origins.htm) of current theories, although I think it gives short shrift to the polio vaccination theory:
How could HIV have crossed species?
It has been known for a long time that certain viruses can pass between species. Indeed, the very fact that chimpanzees obtained SIV from two other species of ape shows just how easily this crossover can occur. As animals ourselves, we are just as susceptible. When a viral transfer between animals and humans takes place, it is known as zoonosis.
Below are some of the most common theories about how this 'zoonosis' took place, and how SIV became HIV in humans:
The 'Hunter' Theory
The most commonly accepted theory is that of the 'hunter'. In this scenario, SIVcpz was transferred to humans as a result of chimps being killed and eaten or their blood getting into cuts or wounds on the hunter. Normally the hunter's body would have fought off SIV, but on a few occasions it adapted itself within its new human host and become HIV-1. The fact that there were several different early strains of HIV, each with a slightly different genetic make-up (the most common of which was HIV-1 group M), would support this theory: every time it passed from a chimpanzee to a man, it would have developed in a slightly different way within his body, and thus produced a slightly different strain.
An article published in The Lancet in 20043, also shows how retroviral transfer from primates to hunters is still occurring even today. In a sample of 1099 individuals in Cameroon , they discovered to ten (1%) were infected with SFV (Simian Foamy Virus), an illness which, like SIV, was previously thought only to infect primates. All these infections were believed to have been acquired through the butchering and consumption of monkey and ape meat. Discoveries such as this have lead to calls for an outright ban on bushmeat hunting to prevent simian viruses being passed to humans.
The Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) theory
Could production of the oral polio vaccine have contributed to the spread of HIV?
Could production of the oral polio vaccine have contributed to the spread of HIV?
Some other rather controversial theories have contended that HIV was transferred iatrogenically (i.e. via medical experiments). One particularly well-publicised idea is that polio vaccines played a role in the transfer.
In his book, The River, the journalist Edward Hooper suggested that HIV could be traced to the testing of an oral polio vaccine called Chat, given to about a million people in the Belgian Congo, Ruanda and Urundi in the late 1950s. To be reproduced, live polio vaccine needs to be cultivated in living tissue, and Hooper's belief is that Chat was grown in kidney cells taken from local chimps infected with SIVcmz. This, he claims, would have resulted in the contamination of the vaccine with chimp SIV, and a large number of people subsequently becoming infected with HIV-1.
However, in February 2000 the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia (one of the original places that developed the Chat vaccine) announced that it had discovered in its stores a phial of polio vaccine that had been used as part of the program. The vaccine was subsequently analysed and in April 2001 it was announced4 that no trace had been found of either HIV or chimpanzee SIV. A second analysis5\ confirmed that only macaque monkey kidney cells, which cannot be infected with SIV or HIV, were used to make Chat. While this is just one phial of many, most have taken its existence to mean that the OPV vaccine theory is not possible.
The fact that the OPV theory accounts for just one (group M) of several different groups of HIV also suggests that transferral must have happened in other ways too.
The final element that suggests that the OPV theory is not credible as the sole method of transmission is the argument that HIV existed in humans before the vaccine trials were ever carried out. More about when HIV came into being can be found below.
The Contaminated Needle Theory
This is an extension of the original 'hunter' theory. In the 1950s, the use of disposable plastic syringes became commonplace around the world as a cheap, sterile way to administer medicines. However, to African healthcare professionals working on inoculation and other medical programmes, the huge quantities of syringes needed would have been very costly. It is therefore likely that one single syringe would have been used to inject multiple patients without any sterilisation in between. This would rapidly have transferred any viral particles (within a hunter's blood for example) from one person to another, creating huge potential for the virus to mutate and replicate in each new individual it entered, even if the SIV within the original person infected had not yet converted to HIV.
The Colonialism Theory
The colonialism or 'Heart of Darkness' theory, is one of the more recent theories to have entered into the debate. It is again based on the basic 'hunter' premise, but more thoroughly explains how this original infection could have lead to an epidemic. It was first proposed in 2000 by Jim Moore, an American specialist in primate behaviour, who published his findings in the journal AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses.6
During the late 19th and early 20 th century, much of Africa was ruled by colonial forces. In areas such as French Equatorial Africa and the Belgian Congo, colonial rule was particularly harsh and many Africans were forced into labour camps where sanitation was poor, food was scare and physical demands were extreme. These factors alone would have been sufficient to create poor health in anyone, so SIV could easily have infiltrated the labour force and taken advantage of their weakened immune systems to become HIV. A stray and perhaps sick chimpanzee with SIV would have made a welcome extra source of food for the workers.
Moore also believes that many of the labourers would have been inoculated with unsterile needles against diseases such as smallpox (to keep them alive and working), and that many of the camps actively employed prostitutes to keep the workers happy, creating numerous possibilities for onward transmission. A large number of labourers would have died before they even developed the first symptoms of AIDS, and those that did get sick would not have stood out as any different in an already disease-ridden population. Even if they had been identified, all evidence (including medical records) that the camps existed was destroyed to cover up the fact that a staggering 50% of the local population were wiped out there.
One final factor Moore uses to support his theory, is the fact that the labour camps were set up around the time that HIV was first believed to have passed into humans - the early part of the 20th century.
The Conspiracy Theory
Some say that HIV is a 'conspiracy theory' or that it is 'man-made'. A recent survey carried out in the US for example, identified a significant number of African Americans who believe HIV was manufactured as part of a biological warfare programme, designed to wipe out large numbers of black and homosexual people. Many say this was done under the auspices of the US federal 'Special Cancer Virus Program' (SCVP), possibly with the help of the CIA. Some even believe that the virus was spread (either deliberately or inadvertently) to thousands of people all over the world through the smallpox inoculation programme, or to gay men through Hepatitis B vaccine trials. While none of these theories can be definitively disproved, the evidence they are based on is tenuous at best, and often ignores the clear link between SIV and HIV, or the fact that the virus has been identified in people as far back as 1959. They also fail to take into consideration the lack of genetic-engineering technology available to 'create' the virus at the time that AIDS first appeared.
Rodion Romanovich
12-14-2006, 20:17
A tentative link between oral cancer and HPV has been established, but it has been established beyond a shadow of a doubt that it causes cervical cancer.
Interesting, then it's even worse than I thought! :hide:
I'm not sure why you're so quick to dismiss these findings-I'm sure the scientists are aware of the pathological characteristics and mechanism of HIV. If they're making claims like this they probably have some, you know, empirical evidence.
Well, certainly from a woman's point of view, the circumcision of (or lack of) their partner would truly have very little bearing on the likelihood of the woman contracting HIV. Not sure that's how she meant it though. :shrug:
I certainly can agree that the best way to not get HIV or any STD is to... you know... not sleep around or shoot drugs.
Well, certainly from a woman's point of view, the circumcision of (or lack of) their partner would truly have very little bearing on the likelihood of the woman contracting HIV. Not sure that's how she meant it though. :shrug:
I certainly can agree that the best way to not get HIV or any STD is to... you know... not sleep around or shoot drugs.
Actually, because of the liquid kept underneath the foreskin, women are put at a greater risk...or so I've heard...
Actually, because of the liquid kept underneath the foreskin, women are put at a greater risk...or so I've heard...
I would guess that is if the man doesn't clean himself between having sex and having sex with another woman. I leave it to anyone's interpretation whether that interval is usually 10 minutes or a year...:sweatdrop:
Kanamori
12-15-2006, 01:30
Like I said, it's easy to get totally clean and new needles. Better not get a shot at the doctor's office...
Or do we need a bunch of non-sense reasons not to do drugs...
Okay, I admitted to myself that I was purposefully coarse a second after I posted, and am getting around to apologizing for being an ass just now. Sorry.
The point stands, though in friendlier terms.:tongue2:
Sasaki Kojiro
12-15-2006, 12:43
AIDS as the reason not to do Heroin is rather odd now that you mention it.
No sex before marriage,
:inquisitive:
:laugh4: roflmao :laugh4:
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