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For more than ten years, medical science has provided mounting evidence that circumcision brings substantial health benefits. Last week, the release of data from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) made worldwide headlines and gave new impetus for an ancient practice.
“Circumcision’s Anti-AIDS Effect Found Greater Than First Thought,” the New York Times declared, updating the results of clinical trials involving 8,000 men in Kenya and Uganda. In December, initial analysis showed that circumcision reduced the risk of HIV transmission through heterosexual sex by at least 50%. The latest figures in The Lancet, the British medical journal, show that the actual risk reduction is closer to 65%.
“Look,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which financed the trials. “This is a one-time, permanent intervention that’s safe when done under the appropriate medical conditions. If we had an AIDS vaccine that was performing as well as this, it would be the talk of the town.”
He said that the $15 billion U.S. AIDS initiative and the World Health Organization were considering paying for circumcisions in high-risk countries. Daniel Halperin, an AIDS specialist at Harvard, cited a positive trend leading to greater acceptance of circumcision among African men. A review of 13 surveys in different African communities showed that 29 percent to 87 percent of uncircumcised men said they would be willing to be circumcised as protection against AIDS.
For religious Jews, these developments look intriguing, but neither startling nor particularly significant. We’ve been circumcising our baby boys for 3,000 years because of holiness, not health. Some research may suggest medical benefits from this sacred rite, just as the Biblical dietary laws may (or may not) confer health advantages to keeping kosher. The point of both practices, however, isn’t physical, it’s spiritual: making distinctions in behavior (and even in the most intimate part of the anatomy) based on a covenant with God. Of course, we welcome the good news about using a timeless procedure to protect against a modern pandemic, but encouraging studies in the Lancet won’t alter our basic commitment to circumcision any more than some prior research eagerly trumpeted by circumcision’s opponents who deny the utility of the practice.
Meanwhile, there are various factors about this horrible plague of AIDS that deserve special attention from all those who take Scripture seriously.
For many years, we’ve known that the best way to contract AIDS is to engage in a practice (male homosexual “intercourse”) strictly prohibited by the Bible.
Now we learn that one of the best ways to protect against the disease is to follow a procedure solemnly commanded in the Bible (circumcision).
These observations in no way prove that AIDS represents some sort of divine scourge, or that a supernatural God goes out of his way to reward those who are circumcised.
The emerging facts, however, provide haunting reminders that the Bible doesn’t outline the way the world should work in some Messianic future, so much as it describes, with sometimes uncanny accuracy, the way the world does work in the painful and imperfect present.
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