[September 19, 2010] Australian doctor urges circumcision to ward off HIV Tweet SYDNEY, Sep 19, 2010 (dpa - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Routinely circumcising baby boys is an effective way of fighting the spread of the AIDS virus among heterosexuals, an Australian doctor said Sunday. Alex Wodak, writing in The Medical Journal of Australia, described the removal of the foreskin as a "surgical vaccine" against HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Wodak, from Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital, said doctors were wrong to discourage circumcision and urged the health department to subsidise the operation. Queensland is alone among the six states in providing a rebate for parents who pay for circumcision for male babies. "A wealth of research has shown that the foreskin is the entry point that allows HIV to infect men during intercourse with an infected female partner," he said. "Circumcision of males is now referred to by many as surgical vaccine against a wide variety of infections and adverse medical conditions over the lifetime." Wodak said that, with no likelihood of an HIV vaccine in the next 20 years, authorities should be active in removing the stigma from male circumcision. "If we're trying to prevent an epidemic in the 2030s, we should start thinking about this in the 2010s," he said. Less than 20 per cent of Australian boys are circumcised, a proportion that has risen from 13 per cent in the last decade. To see more of dpa, go to http://www.dpa.de/English.82.0.html Copyright (c) 2010, dpa, Hamburg, Germany Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com, e-mail [email protected], or call 866-280-5210 (outside the United States, call +1 312-222-4544). [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]