In article <4g4if7$rki@canopus.cc.umanitoba.ca>, John Pritchard wrote: DOCN YUPD9430 TI CIRCUMCISION MAY PLAY IMPORTANT ROLE IN SPREAD OF HIV DT 940808 AU Edward Stim SO CONFERENCE NEWS: Published by The Organizing Committee of the Tenth International Conference on AIDS/International Conference on STD 1994 - Yokohama, Japan; Distributed Electronically by GENA/hivnet The most convincing data came from his 14-month prospective study that started with initially HIV- negative men. After 14 month, the highest numbers of HIV-seroconverters were the uncircumcised, genital ulcerpatients (48%) and the lowest, the circumcised, nongenital ulcer group(2.6%). In between in incidence were the uncircumcised, no-ulcer group(26% ) and the circumcised, ulcer group (12%). This highly significant finding, implicating the foreskin as a major AIDS risk factor is backed up by a meta-analysis of 28 studies, 26 of which suggest a strong correlation between HIV seroconversion and an uncircumcised penis. According to the combined data, the presence of a foreskin increases the risk of HIV infection 3-fold, and, if one includes a prospective 10-year period of usual exposure to HIV, circumcision has the potential of reducing the seroconversion rate of an at-risk population from 15% to 0.7% after 10 years. JP -I have abstracts and articles on the relationship between HIV and circumcision which I would be pleased to send by e-mail. GF- So do I. It looks like there's no difference, or else circ INCREASES HIV infection. See http://theorem.math.rochester.edu/no circ /med/00INDEX JP- Re hiv-1 and hiv-2 . I saw no reference to suggest that circ increases HIV. Hugh Young uses one report that states that 17.7% of uncircumcised men and 8.4% of circumcised men misclassified themselves. Hugh extrapolates these observations to undermine a different report made at a different time in a difference place - the Kreiss-Hopkins report. He criticizes the Kreiss- Hopkins report but fails to publish it. With Hughs writing it is difficult to know whether he is quoting or editorializing. The Kreiss-Hopkins report is given at the end of this posting JP- Re hiv 3. I will leave it to the reader to judge the merit of this report.