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medpundit |
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Thursday, April 11, 2002A study in the New England Journal of Medicine would seem to back this up in a small way, but it’s advantage is more toward the man than his partner as the BBC story suggests. Human papilloma virus infections were defintely more frequent in uncircumcised men (19.6%) than in circumcised men (5.5%). Human papilloma virus causes venereal warts. It plays an important role in the genesis of cervical cancer, and it probably plays some role in squamous cell cancer of the penis, too. The study, however, did not find much of a difference in cervical cancer rates among those men’s partners. It compared 977 women with cervical cancer to 936 women who didn’t have cancer. 783 of the women with cervical cancer had partners who weren’t circumcised, compared to 760 of the women without cervical cancer. Furthermore, 194 women with cervical cancer had circumcised partners, as did 176 of the women without cancer. These numbers are about the same, and not even statistically significant. It would appear from the study that the women with cervical cancer have only themselves to blame. The biggest risk factor was the number of sexual partners they had. 315 of the women with cervical cancer slept with two or more men, compared with only 177 of the women without cervical cancer. Now that is a statistical difference. It’s true that within this group of women with cancer, their partners were more likely to be uncircumcised, but they were probably also likely to have more sexually transmitted diseases and other confounding variables that could contribute to a greater incidence of cancer. Circumcision probably provides a health advantage in that it reduces papilloma virus infection in men, but it’s not at all clear that it does anything to promote women’s health. This hasn’t stopped the media from portraying it as women’s health issue, though. They get more attention that way. posted by Sydney on 4/11/2002 07:47:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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