Issues arising from lobby of UN to outlaw circumcision

doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7519.781

BMJ 2005;331:781 (1 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7519.781

Letter

Issues arising from lobby of UN to outlaw circumcision

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Hopkins Tanne's news item on a US group lobbyingthe UN to outlaw circumcision conflates two unrelated storiesinto one.¹ The first is Hess's call for UN action to declaremale circumcision a human rights violation, the second the selfdescribed, randomised controlled trial of circumcision by Auvertet al to prevent transmission of HIV from women to men.² TheWall Street Journal reports that the Lancet refused to printthis report, so only the scant information from the abstractis available.³ The private peer review at the Lancet that resultedin a refusal to print the article is not encouraging, and publicscrutiny is therefore speculative.

Several observations, however, are possible from the abstract.The study purports to be a randomised controlled trial, yetthe men were not selected at random. Auvert et al eliminatedthose men who were not willing to be circumcised, so selectionhas . . . [Full text of this article]

George Hill, executive secretary

iconbuster@earthlink.net
Doctors Opposing Circumcision, Suite 42, 2442 NW Market Street, Seattle, WA 98107-4137, USA

John V Geisheker, general counsel

Doctors Opposing Circumcision, Suite 42, 2442 NW Market Street, Seattle, WA 98107-4137, USA

CiteULike

Complore

Connotea

Del.icio.us Add to Digg

Digg

StumbleUpon Add to Technorati

Technorati What's this?

Relevant Articles

Aid agencies ignored special needs of elderly people after tsunami: Ganapati Mudur
BMJ 2005 331: 422. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Spectre of racism in health and health care: lessons from history and the United States: Raj Bhopal
BMJ 1998 316: 1970-1973. [Extract] [Full Text]