Circumcision protects against AIDS

ORANGE FARM, South Africa, Jul 05, 2005 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- A South African study finds that circumcised men are far less likely to be infected with AIDS through heterosexual sex than the uncircumcised.

The Wall Street Journal reports that French and South African researchers followed 3,000 HIV-negative men in a South African township, with half the men getting circumcised at the beginning of the study. They found that three men in the circumcised group became infected for every 10 in the control group.

The Journal reviewed a draft of the study, which has not yet been published. Its findings echo those of previous research, including a study that found a far lower AIDS rate among Kenya's Kikuyu tribe, which practices circumcision, than among the Luo tribe, which does not.

AIDS experts caution that circumcision is by no means a total protection against AIDS and fear that the study results might inspire false confidence among some men.

Circumcision also offers no protection from AIDS spread by sharing needles and limited protection with homosexual sex, the most common means of transmission in the United States.