Letter to the Editor

I couldn't resist writing a letter in response to an article that I read in the Chronicle for Higher Education. I'd suggest reading the article (I've copied and pasted it below since the link didn't work) before checking out my response.

Studies Link Circumcision to Reduced HIV Risk
By DAVID GLENN
Circumcision of adult men appears to be a highly effective method of reducing HIV transmission, officials of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases announced in December. The announcement may bring a decades-long argument among medical researchers and social scientists closer to resolution.

The institute's Data and Safety Monitoring Board voted to cut short two large-scale, randomized studies of circumcision in Africa. Early results showed very strong effects, and the board decided that it would be unethical to continue to withhold treatment from the men who had been assigned to the control groups. Those men will immediately be given the option of being circumcised.

The two studies, which got under way in 2002, were conducted in regions of Africa where boys are rarely circumcised as infants. The studies offered half of their participants — those who were randomly assigned to the treatment condition — the option of being circumcised as adults. Participants in both the treatment and control conditions were offered counseling about sexual risk-taking and an array of general health services.

One of the two studies, based in Uganda, found that newly circumcised men's risk of acquiring HIV was reduced by 48 percent. The other study, based in Kenya, found that the risk was reduced by 53 percent.

The Uganda study was led by scholars at the Johns Hopkins University and at Makerere University, in Kampala. The Kenya study was a collaboration among scholars at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Manitoba, and the University of Nairobi. Both studies received their principal support from the National Institutes of Health.

Epidemiologists have long suspected that circumcision reduces men's risk of acquiring HIV in heterosexual sex. Some social scientists have cast doubt on that theory, but the new controlled studies have effectively proven the epidemiologists' case.

http://chronicle.comSection: Research & PublishingVolume 53, Issue 18, Page A12

And my response:

To the Editor:

As an avid reader of the Chronicle and someone with a personal interest in medical advances, I was drawn to your article entitled, "Studies Link Circumcision to Reduced HIV Risk" in the January 5th edition. I didn't make it past the first sentence in the second paragraph before I did a double take. Considering the subject matter, David Glenn's wording almost made me fall out of my chair. Needless to say, my attention for the rest of Glenn's article was "cut short" as my eyes kept drifting back to his uncaught (uncut?) pun. Thank you for publishing important discoveries in health and also for the chuckle on an otherwise slow afternoon.

M. A. Duncan
Washington, D.C.

I still haven't heard anything from the editor yet. Hmm...