Circumcision Plays a Key Role in Preventing AIDS

In a study by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that was ended last December, it was discovered that circumcised men were 50% less likely to become infected with HIV than uncircumcised men. As reported then, the NIH stopped the study only part way through because the treatment was so overwhelmingly effective that "it would have been unethical to continue without offering circumcision to all 8,000 men in the trials." For the studies that are to be published yesterday, the data was re-examined, "excluding a few men whose H.I.V. status was misdiagnosed during the trial and combining the results of three trials," producing "a protection rate of about 65 percent."