From John V. Geisheker, Doctors Opposing Circumcision
Your piece repeating the claim that circumcision reduces the risk of HIV infection sorely ignores the ethical elephant (3 April, p 15). Infant circumcision (the underlying object of all such studies) is a non-consented surgery that many bioethicists and legal scholars now recognise as extra-legal if not medical battery. The better solution to sexually transmitted diseases is simply more responsible, hygienic, adult sexual behaviour.
Pre-emptive amputation, without proper consent, of healthy, protective, immunologically alert, highly innervated sexual tissue is atrocious science and worse ethics, even if a prophylactic benefit could be demonstrated.
In any case, the US, with the west’s highest per capita levels of HIV, and its highest percentage of circumcised males, is a striking meta-experiment already run: as putative prevention for any sexually transmitted diseases, circumcision here has been an abject failure.
Seattle, Washington, US
