Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Microsoft's Bill Gates Pushes Circumcision

The anti-circs will go ballistic. Every time you buy a Microsoft product and help Bill Gates pump money into his foundation, you are circumcising a male somewhere in the world! That's because, according to the New Scientist (see below), Gates is pumping $50 million into a program to circumcise 650,000 Africans. Bravo, Bill!

Gates knows what most rational, thinking people know -- circumcision is good for public health -- and a foreskin-free country, whether in America or Africa, is good for every male and his partners. Of course, I just love the idea that every time we use a PC, we are helping to make the world a clean-cut, safer place. Any bets on how long it will be before the anti-circ fanatics organize a boycott of Microsoft?


"Bill Gates helps fund mass circumcision programme"

"Microsoft founder Bill Gates last week injected $50 million into a programme to circumcise up to 650,000 men in Swaziland and Zambia."

"The goal of the project is to curb the transmission of HIV in two of the AIDS hotspots of the world, as circumcision has been shown to more than halve the risk of men becoming infected.
Funded for five years through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the programme is the first to massively scale up provision of circumcision by fully trained medical practitioners."

"Traditional methods of circumcision sometimes harm and even kill boys and young men. The network of 250 teams of providers will be managed by Population Services International, a global health organisation based in Washington, DC."

"It's great news, and this is exactly what's needed," says Catherine Hankins, chief scientific adviser at UNAIDS. "We've been working on development of guidance and technical support, and these development partners are now being funded to take it forward," says Haskins.

"Hankins said that Kenya has the most advanced programme, with 20,000 men newly circumcised, and plans are also well-advanced in Botswana and Namibia. But she stressed that circumcision can't alone protect men or women against HIV, and that circumcised men should still take additional precautions, such as wearing condoms and not engaging in risky or promiscuous sex."

"Ensuring they understand how to maintain safe behaviours is key, and the procedure would be 100-per-cent accompanied by education to that end", says a PSI spokesman.

18 comments:

  1. Unfortunately the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation will look pretty silly whenever all doctors and nurses are trained on foreskin function, development and anatomy. As the practice also kills hundreds of American babies annually it is bound to kill just as many in the underdeveloped world.

    Psychologists and counsellors will have plenty of work to do in the future when the devastation increases with this unscientific public health tragedy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. linda,

    where do u get off!!
    spouting such utter crap, circumcision saves lives, the foreskin is a surpofoulous piece of skin and everyone who seeks the truth (i.e. dosent rely on no-circ propoganda to form their opinions) knows that circumcision has a raft of benefits!!

    you no-circ people crack me up!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Linda, you write: "the practice also kills hundreds of American babies annually." Proof, please. If this were true, few boys would be circumcised. Obviously, this is pure anti-circ crap.

    ReplyDelete
  4. HIV rates: Swaziland: non-circumcised men, 21.8%; circumcised men 19.5% (Source: National Health and Demographic Surveys) So how can INCREASING the circumcision rate DECREASE the HIV rate?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sorry circumcisers, that's CIRCUMCISED men 21.8%; NON-circumcised men, 19.5%

    ReplyDelete
  6. hugh7, why on earth do you think i would beleive the no-circ propaganda that you are regurgitating?

    are you suggesting the innitial study is some kind of fraud? are you suggesting that there is some amazing study that everyone but people like you are ignoring?

    go to bed, and for everyones sake admit defeat, the anti circumcision movement is officially dead thanks to EVIDENCE that shows plenty of benefits.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Mike It's certainly not dead in ireland or anywhere else that I know of with public health consultants who are educated in this field.
    I suggest you prove the foreskin does not have a function and also tell me hy not one medical association in the world advises the procedure as it is harmful to babies and the adults they will become.

    ReplyDelete
  8. linda, the so called 'functions' you refer to are constructed (by anti circumcision organisations funnily enough) and have no weight when it comes to circumcision being good or bad.

    no-circ is an organisation that will do anything to try and show circumcision in a bad light, and they do so with some quite dubious 'studies' there has been no conclusive proof there is any function other than to keep the head from getting scratched by grasses when we roamned naked.

    no circ is not interested in finding out the truth with solid scientific studies, but to show circ in a bad light, no-circ is not taken seriously by anyone who had two eyes, can read and has a brain.

    there is nothig harmful about circucision. unless you let no-circ manipulate you into thinking you have been harmed, should sue the doctor, your parents and who ever else you can find.

    no-circ is evil they use vulerable men as pawns to carry out their evil crusade. men who feel 'harmed' arent harmed at all, they have just been browbeaten by no-circ into thinking they have been and its disgusting and evil.

    ReplyDelete
  9. so you did not watch the video on the anatomy of the human penis and you als do not belive anatomist who work in academic departments. As I have said beofre the foreskin does have a function and those who belive it does not do not have one. Which is why no medical association recommends the practice and why the British Medical Association states there are psyiological and psychological consequences from its removal. When exactly do you believe the BMA joined NOCIRC.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hugh can never get his facts straight. Infection rates in one area supposedly being contrary to expectations according to a demographic survey is an oddity that does not compare to scientific studies in which many relevant factors are taken into account. Clearly, circumcision does provide protection from HIV.

    I infer that Linda is not producing any evidence of the validity of her previous statement because there is none. The claim is absurd. Circumcision is very rarely life-threatening when performed under proper conditions. Conversely, AIDS is very life-threatening.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Clearly circumcsion does not prevent against HIV otherwise America would have much lowere rates of infection yet it has the highest in the Western world.

    ReplyDelete
  12. That's one of the reasons I use GNU/Linux!

    ReplyDelete
  13. I only mentioned Swaziland because it's one of the countries Gates is targetting. There are at least seven countries (Cameroon, Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda, Swaziland, Tanzania) where more of the circumcised men have HIV.

    In only five others for which we have figures, more of the intact men have HIV, and quel coincidence, two of those are Uganda and Kenya where the controlled studies were done. Maybe something else altogether, something localised (such as "dry sex") is responsible for the results they found there.

    If you look at the studies themselves (has RS?) you find lots of things they haven't taken into account (such as non-sexual transmission - they just assumed the men with HIV who said they hadn't had sex at all were lying).

    It could well be that circumcision provides some protection from HIV. Penectomy would certainly provide total protection. RS and Mike, go for it!

    ReplyDelete
  14. go to bed, and for everyones sake admit defeat,

    A funny kind of defeat, really, one that is increasingly resulting in the achievement of the goals aimed for.

    As for Gates, Google OS will deal with him.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Produce credible evidence of circumcision being harmful or shut your festering gob. It does not exist. I am in the medical research field. There is no such evidence. I stress credible evidence again. It is a matter of choice or religion for some and none of your GD business.

    ReplyDelete
  16. now that that the Dutch Medical Alliance of 46000 doctors has confirmed that male circumcision is a human rights abuse of minors, harmful and unnecessary I take it this site is now closed

    ReplyDelete
  17. What's wrong with Linda? Right thinking women insist on circumcision of all males. An unpeeled banana isn't appropriate; so whittle all their carrot sticks! I think the FDA should ban foreskin restoration devices offered on EBAY. Non medical people should not have access to medical devices, including those designed with harmful effects in mind. I hope aliens land and force circumcision on all males everywhere!

    ReplyDelete