I’VE LINKED BEFORE TO STUDIES showing that circumcision reduces AIDS risk. But here’s a new report suggesting that it’s more complicated than that:

Male circumcision, which had previously been found to lessen the risk of contracting HIV, is largely irrelevant, suggests a new study. Rather, it is the number of prostitutes in a country that determines the spread of HIV infections, says researcher John R. Talbott, in the journal PLoS ONE.

After conducting statistical empirical research across 77 countries, Talbot contends that prostitute communities are typically very highly infected with the virus, and because of the large number of sex partners they have each year, can act as an “engine” driving infection rates to unusually high levels in the general population.

He adds that while male circumcision may indeed reduce the risk of transmission by around 50 percent in each sexual encounter, reducing single encounter transmission rates alone cannot control the epidemic. Why? Because individuals in highly infected countries have multiple contacts with the infected, so reducing transmission rates only defers the inevitable.

Hmm. Read the whole thing.