Circumcision: why it works.

someone left a comment on an earlier post about circumcision preventing HIV transmission.

He then posted a link to a US doc who spouts off stuff on TV there.

Uh, fellahs, I suspect I examined and treated a lot more penile problems than that US expert ever did.

The common thread is cleanliness. In tribal areas, full bathing in a stream full of schistosomiasis laden snails is not the best way to stay clean. In the dry season, it might mean going to a muddy water hole to wash, or to wash in a basin of water.

The dry, dusty dirt gets under the foreskin and causes irritation, called Balanitis. The balinitis results in small abraisions, making female to male transmission more common.

Since circumcision in males started in Egypt long before Abraham was told to start doing it, I suspect men agreed to have it done for a reason...because balanitis is painful, phimosis causes sexual problems (ask Louis XVI) and paraphimosis is nothing to laugh at.

Probably it started as a dorsal slit and then they went further.

As for the high rate in the US: This is mainly in very promiscuous gays, but it's not politically correct to point out the extreme promiscuity, or that sodomy, with it's variations of fisting, rimming, and other exotic variations, is more prone to cause bleeding/abrasions too, whereas monogamous ordinary sexual intercourse in a man who is circumcised or has access to running water probably will never get HIV unless he works in hospitals or is injecting drugs.

indeed, the high rate of HIV in China and Iran (and probably Russia) is not due to intercourse but to IV drug abuse, mainly of heroin...