Zuma could be right!

A study was conducted in Orange Farm in Johannesburg, between 2002 and 2005. This study, according to the researchers, shows that circumcised men are at a lower risk of contracting HIV.
The specifics of the study are that 3374 men were recruited. They were split into two groups – control and intervention groups. The men in the intervention group were circumcised upon entering the study, and the men in the control group were not. 21 months later, 69 participants had turned HIV positive. Of these 69, 20 were from the intervention group, and 49 were from the control group. The finding: To be circumcised has a 60% protective effect….you have a 60% less chance of getting infected if you are circumcised.

I heard about this study as I was driving to work this morning, and I almost lost control of my car. I could not believe it! On the face of it, it seems like good news, right? But I have a couple of questions still.

The first is this: How did they manage to attribute the lower rate of HIV infection in the intervention group to the fact that they were circumcised? To be able to conclude that with any degree of certainty, I can think of two things they would have needed to do: They would have needed to make sure that all the men slept with the same women – and that all the women were HIV positive. And they would have had to make sure that none of the men used protection during intercourse in the 21 months of this study.

The reason why more men in the control group got infected could simply be because they were more reckless. The reason for the lower infection rate in the intervention group could be that more of them used condoms…or that they had the good fortune of having intercourse with HIV negative partners. Hell, less people in the one group might have engaged in any sexual activity!

The researchers speak of how they split the recruits into two equal groups. Now, this is a very sensitive study, with far reaching implications. So many factors could have influenced this study. Apart from the ones I mentioned above, the one group could have had more active gay men in it than the other – and they engaged in reckless sexual behaviour. Some men could have been sex workers in that group. And given the stigma attached to this kind of behaviour, I seriously doubt they would have revealed this in the recruitment questionnaire.

If this study is right, and there really is a 60% reduction in the risk of contracting HIV if you are circumcised, then one can not deny that Zuma’s statement that taking a shower reduces the risk of contracting HIV is correct.

Zuma could be right! Now, there’s something to keep you awake at night!