Reproduced below in full is a commentary about circumcision from the Zambia Post. It is massively sensible, but it misses a trick. Dr Phiri reminds us that some men are worried that they’ll have less fun during sex if they get snipped. He cites studies that show that circumcised men have as much fun (“no [...]
Since we learned last week that tattoo needles give good vaccine, I’ve been alert to body art. Wandering the streets of Madrid this weekend, I’ve been surprised at quite how many tattoo parlours there are. And with tattoos, of course, come the rings and studs of a good piercing. These pictures are from a shop-front [...]
The capital of the United States has HIV rates higher than those of Congo and Ethiopia. A lot of those infections are among drug injectors. Many in the city were hugely relieved when a ban on funding for needle exchange programmes in DC was effectively dropped just a couple of weeks ago. The city’s mayor [...]
A comment I made online in a debate about condoms in the British Medical Journal appears in the print edition this week. Readers’ poll: who agrees with me?
CDC researchers have reported three cases where kids were apparently infected with HIV through food fed to them after it had first been chewed by someone else. Three. Out of over 60 million infections worldwide. In order to be consistent with my earlier stand on the risks of transmitting HIV while on ARVs, I’m going [...]
Cynical about Bono and his “shop-your-way-to-heaven” approach to AIDS? A report in The New York Times reminds us that for the people whose lives are being prolonged with money bought off the back off a red i-Pod, drugs count for more than sneering. Reporter Ron Dixon talks to the sneerers, too, including the folks at [...]
I’ve been taken to task for not weighing in on the kerfuffle about whether people on ARVs can pass on HIV. In case you haven’t been following the debate, the Swiss AIDS Commission has reviewed studies of couples where one partner has HIV and the other doesn’t, and has looked at HIV transmission with and [...]
Buried in the controversial Swiss report on HIV treatment and transmission of the virus is a nugget about initiating treatment. (French report here, unofficial English translation here) They say that antiretrovirals should only be given when it is medically indicated, and not to prevent the onward transmission of HIV in discordant couples. Two reasons: in [...]
As citizens of a country founded on the slogan “No taxation without representation”, Americans living overseas get to pay taxes without any dedicated representation in Congress. But they do get to vote in primaries. The Democrats make it easier than the Republicans , even providing helpful on-the-spot voting sites in pubs in Dublin and donut [...]
Poor women in Manila are petitioning the courts so that they can get their hands on contraception, according to a Reuters report. Manila Mayor Jose “Lito” Atienza issued an executive order discouraging modern contraception in 2000, and the casualties have been piling up ever since, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights — more deaths [...]
