This Week In Sex

"[Spermatogonial progenitor stem cells] neatly sidestep the ethical dilemmas that have hamstrung stem cell research over the past few years."

Maybe it's just my imagination, but it seems like every few months we hear about a new, non-embryonic stem cell source (blastomeres, amniotic stem cells, etc...). Has anything useful come from these other "ethical" stem cells?

Kind of gives a new meaning to the old line:

I'd give my left nut for a [fill in the blank]

I won't be lining up to donate.... I imagine pain.
Also, the note on fritters will take some time to recover from....

First of all, the African studies were not ended by The National Institutes of health, they were ended by the authors. The results were also questionable. The absolute difference was only 1.8%. But, we also have to look at other interventions as a comparison. For instance, the polio vaccine has only a 70% effectiveness yet wiped out polio in a single generation. If circumcision truly had a 61% protective factor, the vectors of transmission would be sufficiently broken that the infection could not survive and the only way HIV would be present in The US would be from constant and massive re-introduction into the country and that is just not happening.

On the equal pay for equal work issue, I can only speak from personal experience. In businesses I have owned and managed, the proportions of males and females was close to equal. But there were significant differences in the work ethic. When 5 o'clock came, you'd better not be standing in front of the door or the women would stampede you. The men would still be working often for additional hours. The women only worked overtime when it was required. The men would take the impetus to work even when it was not required. Only two of the women had children and one was an adult and the other was a teenager. This indicates a difference in motivation between the males and the females that would carry on during work hours and thus earnings. Comparisons can only be made if all factors are equal and they are obviously not equal.

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As for the comment about women stampeding to leave work because of some motivational deficiency, I beg to differ, Frank. Most of the women I know who work full-time are also carrying the load as a single mom or are married and still carrying a disproportionate load as a parent - picking up the kids, making dinner, etc. The majority of working women I have known and worked for over the past thirty years generally work rings around the men, honestly. Most churches would dry up and blow away if it weren't for the women working behind the scenes. Give me a break! Better yet, give the women a break, pal.

You're absolutely right that studying circumcision is tricky - not least because just everybody, including the researchers, has a vested interest in this most intimate modification. One of the most prominent, Daniel Halperin, is on record as thinking his descent from a ritual circumcisor means “maybe in some small way I’m ‘destined’ to help
pass along [circumcision] to people in [other] parts of the world … .” (Cover Story: The Case for Circumcision. By Gordy Slack. The East Bay Express Online. May 19-24, 2000.) Whatever else that it, it’s not science.

Every story about circumcision, including this one, seems determined to maximise the benefits and minimise or ignore the risks and actual harm. In the real (third) world, circumcision has an astonishing 18% complication rate in clinics, and 35% when "performed" by traditional circumcisors, according to the World Health Organisation.

As for gay men (and female partners), they're not asking what effect the penetrator's circumcision status has on the "penetree" - for example whether the hardened glans is more likely to create the micro-tears that facilitate the entry of HIV, or whether circumcised men become more vigorous/violent in intercourse as they try to stimulated their dramatically reduced number of nerve endings (there is ample evidence from US vs European porn that they do).