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Circumcision of the heart or circumcision of the flesh?
I wrote this page about 20 years ago, and many of the links have died off.
Maybe some day I'll try to fix up this article.
There are two types of people, the circumcised and the uncircumcised. The strange thing however, is that the uncircumcised claim that they are the real circumcised, because they claim that their hearts are circumcised.
The reality is of course that the uncircumcised are simply not circumcised. Whatever anybody believes for the rest has no bearing on reality. And we see in the real world that circumcision in the flesh, which is the one and only real circumcision, can literally save somebodies life. This is because somebody who is circumcised has a considerably lower chance of being infected with the HIV virus, which causes AIDS.
On the African continent, where AIDS has reached pandemic proportions and is going round like the black death in the bad old days, circumcision is estimated to have saved about 8 million lives.
Here we see that those who fulfill Gods laws literally are much less afflicted by this modern scourge, while those who fulfill this law "in the spirit" are being wiped out.
So what would the Almighty prefer concerning this?
More information about the life saving aspects of circumcision can be found here:
Bay Area Reporter: Uncut men more likely to be HIV-positive link 1
BBC: The kindest cut? link 2
BBC: Circumcision cuts HIV risk link 3
Salon: Circumcision may cut AIDS risk link 4
Male circumcision could prevent millions of HIV infections link 5
Here are a few excerpts from above pages:
Link 1: A recent review of 32 studies from eight countries has revealed that men who are uncut (uncircumcised) are two to eight times more likely to be infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and in regions where circumcision is widespread, there appears to be a direct correlation with lower HIV infection rates.
In West African countries, where circumcision in infancy is common, only 1 to 5 percent of the population is HIV-positive, while nearly a quarter of people in the predominately non-circumcising Eastern and Southern African nations are infected.
Link 2: There is a growing weight of statistical evidence that uncircumcised men seem to be far more at risk of contracting the Aids virus than circumcised men.
Link 3: Uncircumcised men are at a much greater risk of becoming infected with HIV from heterosexual sex than circumcised men, say researchers. They found a man who is circumcised is up to eight times less likely than one who is not to acquire HIV from "straight" sex.
A team from Australia have analyzed data from more than 40 studies. They found evidence that the HIV virus targets specific cells from the inner surface of the foreskin. These cells possess HIV receptors, making this area particularly susceptible to infection. The researchers suggest that male circumcision provides significant protection against HIV infection by removing most of the receptors.
Circumcision also reduces the likelihood of contracting other sexually transmitted diseases, such as gonorrhoea and syphilis, which make a person more vulnerable to HIV infection.
The most dramatic evidence of this protective effect comes from a new study of couples in Uganda, where each woman was HIV positive and her male partner was not. Over a period of 30 months, no new infections occurred among 50 circumcised men, whereas 40 of 137 uncircumcised men became infected - even though all couples were given advice about preventing infection and free condoms were available to them.
When you read this, then the question arises: "If it is really so obvious that circumcision greatly reduces the chance of acquiring an AIDS infection, then why don't they routinely circumcise male infants in Africa, just like is done with the majority of North American infants?
The answer is simple: Circumcision just doesn't fit the generally accepted religious and political viewpoints. Circumcision on a large scale would be an enormous uplift for the Jewish religion, and a slap in the face for the Christian "circumcision of the heart", only comparable to Italy which in the 14th century adopted the Jewish ritual purity laws from the Bible book of Leviticus in order to subdue the black death epidemics, because it turned out that Jews were much less susceptible for the plague and other disease than the rest of the population.
And because of the fact that circumcision doesn't fit the mainstream viewpoints, this simple, cheap, and proven effective measure is neglected and millions of people in Africa keep on dying needlessly.
Here are some statements of experts on that sorry state of affairs:
Link 1: Biological and epidemiological evidence linking male circumcision with the virus that causes AIDS has been widely known among researchers for years. Yet policy-makers and educators have failed to direct adequate resources to inform people with the potentially life-saving information, according to the report entitled "Male Circumcision and HIV Infection: 10 Years and Counting," published in this month's issue of the Lancet, a prestigious medical journal.
"The number of infections probably caused by lack of male circumcision already reaches into the millions," said the study's lead author, Daniel Halperin, Ph.D., an assistant adjunct professor of community health systems and medical anthropology at University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). "We would expect the international health community to at least consider some form of action, but male circumcision remains largely unexplored as a tool against AIDS."
Prevailing attitudes against adult circumcision, shared by the vast majority of males throughout the world, are often attributed to religious, cultural, or sexual beliefs.
"There's a huge anti-circumcision movement, particularly in the Bay Area. It's a politically charged issue," Halperin said.
Link 3: In many countries circumcision is frowned upon for cultural or religious reasons. However, the scientists, led by Professor Roger Short, from the University of Melbourne Royal Women's Hospital, wrote in the British Medical Journal: "In light of the evidence presented here, circumcising males seems highly desirable, especially in countries with a high prevalence of HIV infection."
Link 4: "It's fascinating that the one intervention that is simple, apparently effective, cheap and lifelong is the one most violently opposed by men in this field," said Brian Williams, a South African AIDS researcher who is studying the disease in the mining communities west of Johannesburg. Even members of his own government health department do not take the issue seriously, he said. "There is a strange reluctance even to discuss it."
With hope for a vaccine a distant dream and the cost of medications out of reach, circumcision could be a low-cost, one-time intervention that could slow the spread of this global plague.
Link 5: A simple, outpatient procedure could potentially save millions of men and their partners from becoming infected with HIV, but health professionals have been reluctant to provide the needed information and resources, say the authors of a Lancet editorial review.
A preliminary analysis by Halperin and Malcolm Potts, MD, PhD, Bixby Professor of Population and Family Planning at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, estimates that the practice of male circumcision has so far prevented at least 8 million HIV infections in the 15 African and Asian countries cited in the editorial review alone.
Many health professionals have been hesitant to integrate circumcision with other HIV prevention strategies, say the authors, perhaps because it is embedded in a complex web of deeply held cultural values and religious beliefs.
And because of the fact that the world health organizations keep on ignoring the facts, the millions keep on dying unnecessarily.
Christians answer to this; "If everybody would monogamously, there would be no AIDS problem."
In absolute sense this is correct, but in the real world we see that also Africans converted to Christianity are being wiped out by AIDS, together with all the other cultures where circumcision is not standard practice.
So despite 2000 years of Christian conversion attempts the results are far from satisfactory, and there is not much hope that in the coming 2000 years things will improve very much.
In short: Everybody living monogamously is an utopia which is not going to become reality any time soon.
Other facts to be taken into consideration is that circumcision gives almost 100% protection against penile cancer, which causes in the USA alone every year more than a thousand mutilations and hundreds of deaths.
And circumcision cuts the incidences of prostate cancer, which stands for 27% of all the new found cancers in men, in half, just like cancer of the cervix in the partners of circumcised men. These diseases are mainly caused by the HPV virus, with which circumcised men are about half as often infected compared to uncircumcised men. More information about that can be found here: http://www.circinfo.net/#AIDS
If anybody wants to know why the New Testament is not divinely inspired, look here: https://tinyurl.com/Notestament
P.S: Now, in 2005, there is scientific evidence for the protecting effect of the circumcision against AIDS.
Three big randomized clinical trials have been performed, with 3000, 5000, and 3000 young men.
In Orange Farm, a county in South Africa where 32% of all the pregnant women tests positive for AIDS, more than 3200 young sexually active young men between 18 and 24 have been recruited to join a trial. They were all coming from the same non-circumcising culture. By means of a lottery the group was divided in two groups, one half got circumcised, the other half not. The men were then followed for 18 months, and regularly AIDS test were taken.
The initial plan was for the study to last several years, but after 18 months it was already very clear that the circumcision has a strong protective effect: Of the uncircumcised 49 men were infected, and of the circumcised only 20. This despite the fact that in interviews during the trials it turned out that the circumcised had 18% more sex than the uncircumcised.
Because of the fact that the protective effect of circumcision was beyond all doubt, and it was considered to be unethical to expose the uncircumcised to a strongly increased chance of AIDS infection, the trial was halted prematurely.
Here is a link to Science News which reports about this trial: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20051029/fob1.asp
And here is a link to PLoS, Public Library of Science, a medical open access peer reviewed journal, in which the trial is published: http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020391*-255
In 2007 two more of those trials have been concluded, one with 5000 participants, and one with 3000, in respectively Uganda and Kenya.
Both trials are halted prematurely, for the same reason as the first trial.
The first results gave a reduction of AIDS infections with 48 and 53%. After cleaning up of the data, taking into consideration those who should have been circumcised but who didn't, and those from the uncircumcised group who had themselves circumcised, the protective factor came out a lot higher, with a maximum of 75% less AIDS infections.
The average protection factor of the three studies is 65%, which means that of 10 AIDS infections, circumcision prevents 6 or 7 of them.
The last two trials are published in The Lancet, number 369, page 643–656, en 657–666.
Here is a page which speaks about those last two trials: :
http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/dec2006/niaid-13.htm
The following links point out how the WHO, the World Health Organization, and the UNAIDS, the program of the United Nations which must coordinate the worldwide reaction on the HIV/AIDS epidemic, recommend circumcision as an effective AIDS intervention:
The following links show how after years of follow up the protection factor of male circumcision has risen to 73%:
https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/featurestories/2015/december/20151203_circumcision
For the main article: "Why don't the Jewish people recognize the New Testament", Look here