NYTimes
Public health officials are considering promoting routine circumcision for all baby boys born in the United States to reduce the spread of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.
The topic is a delicate one that has already generated controversy, even though a formal draft of the proposed recommendations, due out from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by the end of the year, has yet to be released.
Experts are also considering whether the surgery should be offered to adult heterosexual men whose sexual practices put them at high risk of infection. But they acknowledge that a circumcision drive in the United States would be unlikely to have a drastic impact: the procedure does not seem to protect those at greatest risk here, men who have sex with men.
Recently, studies showed that in African countries hit hard by AIDS, men who were circumcised reduced their infection risk by half. But the clinical trials in Africa focused on heterosexual men who are at risk of getting H.I.V. from infected female partners. [...]
I think that this is a stupid and dangerous idea.
ReplyDeleteThe only proper protection is rigorous testing or rigorous protection.
If the WHO now advocates circumcision as "one means of protection", people who did it might neglect the 100% protection, and this looks very dangerous to me.
Shoshi, that's silly.
ReplyDeleteIn the same vein, one could make the (similarly flawed) argument that promoting rigorous testing and protection is stupid and dangerous, since the only guaranteed protection from STDs is abstinence or sex within the confines of a permanent and exclusive partnership (i.e., marriage).
I don't like the idea of this post even being on this blog because it's a bad thing when people take the next logical step which is that G-d has us do circumcision for our own good and so forth.
ReplyDeleteThe only reason we circumcise is because we are commanded to. If there are other benefits, so what? Do we need to justify doing a Mitzvah by explaining side effects that might be positive?
What if later we find out that it's actually unhealthy? Would that be justification to stop doing it?
Harvey said...
ReplyDeleteI don't like the idea of this post even being on this blog because it's a bad thing when people take the next logical step which is that G-d has us do circumcision for our own good and so forth.
The only reason we circumcise is because we are commanded to. If there are other benefits, so what? Do we need to justify doing a Mitzvah by explaining side effects that might be positive?
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What do you do with the large amount of discussion regarding the consequences of doing particular mitzvos? For example this Rambam?
Moreh Nevuchim (3:49) As regards circumcision, I think that one of its objects is to limit sexual intercourse, and to weaken the organ of generation as far as possible, and thus cause man to be moderate. Some people believe that circumcision is to remove a defect in man's formation; but every one can easily reply: How can products of nature be deficient so as to require external completion, especially as the use of the fore-skin to that organ is evident. This commandment has not been enjoined as a complement to a deficient physical creation, but as a means for perfecting man's moral shortcomings. The bodily injury caused to that organ is exactly that which is desired; it does not interrupt any vital function, nor does it destroy the power of generation. Circumcision simply counteracts excessive lust; for there is no doubt that circumcision weakens the power of sexual excitement, and sometimes lessens the natural enjoyment: the organ necessarily becomes weak when it loses blood and is deprived of its covering from the beginning.
The consequence discussed by the Rambam appears to discuss the spiritual benefit of doing the Mitzvah and while dismissing the physical affects of it as an irrelevancy.
ReplyDeleteI don't mean to imply that there's something wrong with discussing the apparent effects of a Mitzvah, but if the context of the discussion is purely physical and seems to promote the Mitzvah on the basis of the physical benefit, then we have a problem.
So, it's great if/when we observe that keeping the laws of Taharas HaMishpocha benefit the marital relationship. But that type of discussion, if not carefully thought out, can result in someone in a bad marriage deciding that the laws are therefore bogus.