Stopping government funded circumcision in the USA through DOGE?

JL0101 · 2025-02-21T12:35:51+00:00

I just heard some news that DOGE is cleaning up now with all kinds of unnecessary funding and other wastes of money, also looking into Medicaid next and even...

Bonemail666

What did I say that betrayed any confusion about relative risk? A 60% reduction in relative risk means that if 100 uncircumcised men would have acquired HIV, only 40 circumcised men would in the same conditions. This is a substantial effect at a population level– like [Login to see the link]

Using condoms and avoiding sex with HIV-infected partners is not alway an option in contexts where (e.g.) men often refuse because they find condoms reduce pleasure, or they’ve been fed misinfo about condoms spreading HIV, or where condoms are simply not available.

I’m appealing to multiple randomized controlled trials and systematic reviews of same – literally the furthest thing from an appeal to authority or fabricated/cherry-picked data.

By contrast, your image is obvious propaganda. Look at those bullet points - e.g., ‘trials were terminated early once statistical significance was reached.’ The trials were ended early because circumcision was found to be so effective that it would be unethical to retain a control arm where patients are not offered circumcision. And it contains blatant contradictions: one bullet point says, “Circumcised cohort could not copulate 4-6 weeks post-circumcision as the wound healed” Another says, “Circumcision offered no protection to women - increasing their risk as the wound healed” Which is it— is the healing period supposed to be increasing or decreasing risk transmission? In fairness, I can’t accuse you of appealing to an authority with this unattributed nonsense.

xevv

I have a link to a reddit thread that goes into detail in the whole HIV thing.

There’s links to several critiques of those studies from several authors, as well as dozens upon dozens of studies showing that circumcision doesn’t prevent any STDs. Articles from several local African news sources have suggested that circumcision hasn’t helped combat HIV rates. This was split into two comments, so you’ll have to click the link and view the replies.

I also have links to two more newer studies that have been published sometime after that comment was made, which show again that circumcision doesn’t prevent HIV:

[Login to see the link]

Also, I find it very odd that every systematic analysis almost exclusively cite the same studies from pre-2010 when almost every newer study has generally shown that circumcision doesn’t prevent STDs. Just saying.

zigzag

Bonemail666 The WHO, UNAID, etc. Is pushing RIC in africa. Google EIMC (early infant male circumcision) and you’ll see countries that has VMMC programs are trying to implement EIMC as well. This is always the case like in the US claiming its safer and cheaper then adult circumcision. That’s why I’m against this bs. Also VMMC is also targeted to adolescent ages 10 up not just 15 up. Doesn’t matter it’s sadly happening regardless what we believe didn’t really join a porn forum to argue circumcision in africa lol.

JL0101

wow, that’s really some mental gymnastics here.

seems like some guys here rather have millions and millions of boys continuously and unnecessarily tortured and mutilated right after birth than god forbid having the wrong party doing something against it, if there is the chance.

so do you want to end this child abuse or is it more important to you that your “only left-wing politicians are against circumcision”-worldview doesn’t have a chance to get shaken up?

at least at this open window of opportunity everything that could be done to convince the current government that this shouldn’t be funded any longer should be tried - and if they still want to fund it, then you still can blame them for it and have 1 more reason to hate them.

Bonemail666

JL0101 Go back and read what I said: I did not say that we should support these projects in Southern Africa because the GOP supports them. I said that we should support them because, according the highest quality scientific evidence available, these projects have prevented >500,000 HIV infections.

intact

Bonemail666 As I say, the data indicates that circumcision reduces transmission by 60% – these are the findings of [Login to see the link], the absolute pinnacle of scientific evidence.

You must love circumcision to believe that.

The double-blind, placebo-controlled study is the best humans have come up with.

In the case of circumcision, it’s already been done between the U.S. (experiment) and Europe (control). In fact, even better, it’s essentially triple-blind: We didn’t even know we were conducting an experiment.

Seventy years and hundreds of millions of circumcisions later, the STI and HIV stats for U.S. vs. Europe are virtually the same. That also applies to any other malady that circumcision is supposed to cure or prevent.

Circumcision is a boondoggle no matter whether its victim is an infant boy or grown man.

These Tuskegee-style experiments on poorly educated black people prove nothing.

xevv

intact I’d also like to add that the 60% figure is bullshit and [Login to see the link] is correct. The studies were ended early when data technically reached statistical significance, but they still haven’t reach clinical significance. Those studies still don’t quite have enough data to factor out margin of error.

This is talked about in the reddit thread I linked to.

And if I recall correctly, two of the African randomized trials lasted 2 years. One of them lasted 4 years. That’s actually pretty short, all things considered. Clinical trials normally take a decade or longer.

xevv

Bonemail666 The 500,000 figure was taken from the randomized trials which are questionable at best and rigged at worst. And Numerous newer studies have shown that circumcision doesn’t help prevent HIV.

Bonemail666

[Login to see the link] - a few things: the double-blind, placebo controlled trial is not the best type of study humans have devised. The best type of study is a systematic review and meta-analysis of every study done on a topic. Those studies have been done, and produced the finding that circumcision leads to a 60% relative risk reduction in the Southern African context. Also, the US/EU was not a randomized controlled trial. And there are dozens of confounding factors: terrible access to health care in the EU; higher stigma of AIDS and same sex relationship; higher income inequality; much worse sexual education, etc.

It is also not true that this research is based entirely on 3 studies from the 2000s. A [Login to see the link] looked at those three RCTs, plus two extended follow-up of former RCT participants, five cohorts of men at high HIV risk, four community-based cohorts before and six during circumcision scale-up, and two studies of changes in HIV prevalence in men by circumcision status during circumcision scale-up.

I would also note that, by default, I am opposed to routine circumcision, so my conclusion here runs counter to my confirmation bias. My outlook is simply that I am not epidemiologist, so I should trust the gold standard of scientific evidence– systematic reviews and metanalysis– of which there are now a few, all concluding that these programs prevent HIV transmission. Somehow this is characterized as ‘mental gymnastics’, while others cut and paste GIFs and stuff they found on reddit.

xevv

Bonemail666 Convenient that the review you linked avoids the dozens of studies that have shown otherwise. Just saying.

Bonemail666

Point me to one of those studies.

xevv

Bonemail666 Scroll back to the comment I made with the reddit thread and read it through.

Bonemail666

xevv Oh so you don’t actually know whether/which studies were nefariously excluded from the systematic review? It’s my responsibility to do the research proving your point?

I don’t think you appreciate how damaging it would be to the reputation of the scientists authoring a systematic review to willfully or even unintentionally exclude studies that meet their search criteria. It’s not like making an anonymous reddit post, where you can cherry pick any study that supports your priors, and pretend that an apples-to-oranges comparison of US to EU HIV rates is a randomized controlled trial.

xevv

Bonemail666 I skimmed through the list and it was missing the Cambridge study, the Ontario study, and the Danish study, which are the newest studies on my list. It was also missing a couple of other various studies like Chao’s 1994 study, Millet’s 2007 study, Gust’s 2010 study, etc.

There’s over 20 studies listed in the Reddit thread. I’m not going to pick through every single one of them, but you can’t claim that there’s no evidence that circumcision doesn’t prevent HIV with that number of studies.

Bonemail666

xevv The 60% reduction rate is from a review of studies of Southern African countries where HIV prevalence is ~20%. I’ve granted that the risk/benefit calculation will differ in places like the US and Canada, where prevalence is under 1%. Look at the systematic review– it’s all studies from Southern Africa.

xevv

Bonemail666 The Cambridge study looks into statistics from several southern African countries and shows there’s no significant difference in HIV rates between circumcised and uncircumcised men.

[Login to see the link]

JL0101

cut-cocks-are-ugly

that’s absolutely right! even if the 1,3% would be actually right, which I doubt, cause the number is so low, that there is surely a margin of error and there is probably no difference at all - it would still mean the Chance to get AIDS is only 1,3% points higher and that 60% is - while it is mathematically correct to say it that way - completely manipulative and would people believe it actually gives you a 60% protection, while a condom would be 99% or whatever. that is so wrong on so many levels and probably causes more HIV than if those people would have just been left alone.

Also: If you let them cut your foreskin off, in the best scenario you maybe reduce a HIV risk by questionable 1,3% points - but at the same time you get a (probably even higher) percentage of very serious complications like losing your whole cock, making it completely useless or even death. and in 100% of the cases you do end up with a mutilated penis that doesn’t have all its previous functions anymore, that’s for sure.

Bonemail666

xevv ‘Convenient’ is one word for that study’s exclusion, but ‘logically inevitable’ would be more accurate- it was published 2 years after the systematic review I mentioned.

xevv

Bonemail666 There’s still an argument to be made that you can’t definitively say that circumcision prevents HIV. Results are mixed at best.

Bonemail666

True, epidemiology addresses complex, multifactorial phenomena that resist absolute certainty. We have to go with the highest quality, peer-reviewed evidence available, namely systematic reviews & meta-analyses and not reddit posts. That point is inarguable.

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