Medicine: circumcision reduces the risk of HIV transmission?

As a rule, I've long been a member of the minority anti-circumcision crowd, because I've always felt that data supporting health benefits of the practice were too weak to be used to justify an otherwise arbitrary and barbaric practice whose cultural ulitlity (outside of most Jewish circles) is practically nill. I've never believed that "I want Billy to look like his daddy" justified whacking off a few million nerve endings of a newborn. The only benefit I'd previously seen that made me question my stance concerned transmission of HPV to women from uncircumcised men.

But, in a rare moment of Sparky revisionism, I might have to edit my opinion pending future exploration of this study:

In a potentially major breakthrough in the campaign against AIDS, French and South African researchers have apparently found that male circumcision reduces by about 70% the risk that men will contract HIV through intercourse with infected women, the (paid restricted) Wall Street Journal reports Monday, with caveats...

The circumcision findings were so dramatic that the data and safety monitoring board overseeing the research halted the study in February, about nine months before it would have been completed, on the grounds that it would be immoral to proceed without offering the uncircumcised control group the opportunity to undergo the procedure. While men were directly protected from infection by circumcision, women could benefit indirectly because circumcision would reduce the chances their partners would be HIV-positive.

Researchers in the field have been aware of the study's basic findings, but they haven't been published, so most experts haven't evaluated them. The British medical journal the Lancet decided against publishing the study, but for reasons unrelated to the data and scientific content, according to people familiar with the matter. Lancet officials, following standard policy at the journal, refused to comment on why the study was turned down...

Still, the fact that the research hasn't yet been published makes experts in the field wary about commenting. "Confirm, confirm, confirm," said Seth Berkley, a veteran HIV researcher and president of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. But if the study holds up, said Dr. Berkley, who wasn't involved with the research, it would be "quite important" because circumcision would be "an intervention that works over a person's lifetime and could reduce HIV in a community setting."

Apparently this isn't at all a new debate, as the circumcision vs. HIV transmission story has been tossed about since 1986. And without knowing why The Lancet doesn't want to publish the study, I'm not about to abandon my vehement anti-circumcision views just yet. But if the practice could create real decreases in HIV-transmission, the cost-benefit equation becomes quite another critter.