It would be if that was the outcome of circumcision in the real world. But if the cost of circumcision sucks resources out of the local health care system, gives men the false sense that they can abandon condoms, and/or does nothing directly to protect women while disempowering them from refusing sex without condoms, then circumcision may not lower AIDS even if it has that effect in controlled studies.

“Did you even bother to read that the people aren’t using the condoms?”
Where the campaigns are properly funded and managed, they use them, and the AIDS rate goes down – more effectively than with circumcision.

“And picking a characteristic of a population that has a low incidence of HIV has nothing to do with that characteristic. There is a low incidence of HIV in Japan because there is a low incidence of HIV in Japan. That means it rarely is transmitted. You might as well say that speaking Japanese protects against AIDS.”
Exactly the problem with Potts’ comparision of Niger with Botswana.

How does a virgin get HIV? You don’t even make sense in your objections. Did you even bother to read that the people aren’t using the condoms? And a condom has to be used each and every time. And picking a characteristic of a population that has a low incidence of HIV has nothing to do with that characteristic. There is a low incidence of HIV in Japan because there is a low incidence of HIV in Japan. That means it rarely is transmitted. You might as well say that speaking Japanese protects against AIDS. What is wrong with you people? If circumcision and fidelity save lives, then this is a good thing – never mind your twisted logic.

In Cameroon, Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda, and Tanzania, it is the circumcised who have markedly higher incidence of HIV infection.

HIV is more rare in Japan where almost nobody is circumcised than it is in Israel where 95% are cut.

African virgin boys are more likely to already have HIV if they have been circumcised.

The supposed 60% improvement in HIV resistance has bearing only for an insertive male and has no bearing on his partner. Since it costs a man penile sensitivity and comes with these ridiculous associations with the word vaccine, it will surely make a man’s partner less safe as that man is less likely to don a condom.

The three large trials were halted for ethical reasons? If ethics was a consideration they wouldn’t have been started. Non-double-blinded, non-placebo-controlled human amputation experiments overseen by long-time circumcision justifiers; how they get press is the mystery.

Foreskin feels REALLY good. How disrespectful of the West to offer an inferior costly desensitizing form of protection when proven and less destructive prophylactics are just a matter of will. The UN can give condoms away for about 3 cents each.

Ummmm, the explanation is rather simple! A penis is not the only way that a man (or woman) can contract the HIV virus. The African RCTs focused on heterosexual transmission because, unlike the US, that is the primary mechanism of infection in that area of the world.

Furthermore, a direct comparison of circumcision and HIV infection rates between different global regions is woefully flawed. Consider that such an analysis would only be meaningful if sexual contact were the sole mechanism of transmission and if condom compliance were identical in both areas. Obviously, these requirements can never be fulfilled.

Correlation does not equal causation! It’s one of the most basic principles of statistics, yet people just don’t seem to get it….

Circumcising a man and claiming that it will protect him from HIV is just like giving a woman a birth control method that fails 40% of the time and saying it will protect her from unwanted pregnancies. Eventually, realistically speaking, a circumcised man will contract HIV and eventually that woman with the faulty birth control will get pregnant.

How else do we explain the indisputable fact that America has both the highest circumcision rate and the highest HIV rate in the developed world? Obviously, in the real world, being circumcised didn’t protect American men from contracting HIV, how can anyone think that it will protect African men from contracting HIV in the real world outside of these studies?