With HIV being so prevalent nowadays, you'd want to take all necessary precautions, and then some, just to make sure you won't get infected for engaging in the sexual act. Well, if you're not the type who enjoys wearing rubber, then maybe circumcision could work for you.

But before you separate ways with your foreskins, and then going on an all-out rampage thinking you'd be immune from HIV forever, you better sit down and read the rest of this post. Getting circumcised don't give you an all-encompassing power that makes you untouchable by the disease. It does, however, cut down the risk by about 50%. That's still a big chunk, actually.

This was the finding of two studies conducted in Africa, the leading victimized continent. At the end of 2005, an estimated 24.5 million people were living there with HIV, and by the end of the year, approximately 2.7 million new infections were recorded. Just last year, the African statistics of people who died of the disease rose to two million people. More than 12 million children have been orphaned in the region because of AIDS.

Now, back to the circumcision trial. The Kenya trial gave out the result that there was a 53% reduction on new HIV infections in circumcised heterosexual men, while there was a 48% drop in Uganda. It was said that the findings are so striking, the US National Institutes of Health decided to put an early halt to the study as they deemed it unethical to not offer circumcision in the men who were acting as controls.

Yeah, we guess they wouldn't really be happy to be infected with HIV because they were part of some study, eh.

Anyhow, there are said to be a variety of reasons why circumcision may provide protection against HIV infection. Supposedly, there are specific cells in the foreskin that may be potential targets for HIV infection. Also, with circumcision, the skin under the foreskin becomes less sensitive and is less likely to bleed, thus reducing the risk of infection.

But as mentioned earlier, this should not be taken as the ultimate preventive solution against infection. Says Dr. Kevin De Cock, director of the World Health Organization's HIV/Aids department, "This is an intervention that must be embedded with all the other interventions and precautions we have. Men must not consider themselves protected. It's a very important intervention to add to our prevention armamentarium."

Exactly. So, while we may deem the results to be a "significant scientific advance", it most definitely is far from being the ultimate protection, and most certainly would never replace existing prevention strategies. 

Right. Precautions should remain guys. ALL necessary precautions.