

Doctors Perform the First Successful Penis Transplant - avinassh
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-13/penis-transplant-a-world-first-south-african-surgeons-say

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reubenmorais
> Circumcision reduces a man’s risk of contracting HIV by 60 percent,
> Skorochod said in an interview.

I was surprised by this, so I looked it up:
[http://www.who.int/hiv/topics/malecircumcision/en/](http://www.who.int/hiv/topics/malecircumcision/en/)

> There is compelling evidence that male circumcision reduces the risk of
> heterosexually acquired HIV infection in men by approximately 60%. Three
> randomized controlled trials have shown that male circumcision provided by
> well trained health professionals in properly equipped settings is safe.
> WHO/UNAIDS recommendations emphasize that male circumcision should be
> considered an efficacious intervention for HIV prevention in countries and
> regions with heterosexual epidemics, high HIV and low male circumcision
> prevalence.

The CDC reaches a similar conclusion: circumcision lowers the risk of HIV
acquisition by heterosexual men, but doesn't change male-to-female
transmission of HIV, and studies have found no statistically significant
protective association for male-to-male transmission.

[http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/pdf/prevention_research_malecircumcis...](http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/pdf/prevention_research_malecircumcision.pdf)

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wQb4d3jhz
> But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. As Boyle and Hill point out, the men
> who were circumcised got additional counseling about safe sex practices
> compared to the control group, and then they had to refrain from having sex
> altogether for the simple reason that their lacerated penises had to be
> wrapped in bandages until their wounds healed — leading to what Boyle and
> Hill refer to as “time-out discrepancy” in the quote above. By contrast, the
> non-circumcised men got to keep having sex during the full two month period
> during which the treatment group was in recovery mode. Then (due to a
> statistically significant effect having been detected) the trials were
> stopped early — which tends to lead to an overestimation the true effect
> size of the treatment.

[http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2012/05/when-bad-
scienc...](http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2012/05/when-bad-science-
kills-or-how-to-spread-aids/)

~~~
batrat
Circumcision is done very early(between 2-6). If you are doing after, is
either because some medical problem or you are moving to Islamism.

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curiouslurker
By the way this is a serious problem, highlighted on the page below. BE
WARNED: VERY GRAPHIC IMAGES:

[http://ulwaluko.co.za/Photos.html](http://ulwaluko.co.za/Photos.html)

It is good to celebrate cultural traditions but not at this cost!

~~~
Fiahil
This is, indeed, a serious problem.

I concur on the warning: this is graphic.

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junto
Serious question that the article doesn't appear to cover, but where did the
transplanted penis come from? Was it a recently deceased donor?

~~~
thefreeman
It was covered. They said that part of the initial problem was convincing
family members of deceased organ donors to allow them to use the penis.

They were finally able to convince a family by agreeing to construct an
artificial penis from left over skin for the deceased donor.

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dang
Url changed from [http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/13/8208183/penis-
transplant-s...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/13/8208183/penis-transplant-
successful-first-time-history#twt34), which points to this.

Submitters: HN prefers original sources. Everyone will appreciate it if you
track these down before posting.

~~~
avinassh
I did not know about that and I will do bit of homework next time. Thanks for
fixing the link!

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sheensleeves
I know reddit / slashdot style jokes are unwelcome here, but I can't resist.
The line of billionaires forms here -->

