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No study of this topic has ever addressed the question of why circumcision has not provided some sort of protection for men in the United States, which has the highest rate of circumcision of any industrialized nation, the only circumcision rate of statistical significance in any industrialized nation. Circumcision is virtually unknown in Europe, South America, and East Asia.

Despite its extremely high rate of circumcision, the United States has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS of any industrialized nation. The HIV/AIDS rate is much lower in non-circumcising nations such as Britain, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Japan, and Taiwan than it is in the United States.

In fact, in recent years, the United States has had the highest rate of new infections of any country in the world except for six poor countries in Africa, which have little in the way of resources for medical treatment or educational efforts for prevention of the disease, in comparison to the United States. The United States position in that measurement is astounding; its unfavorable standing among non-circumcising, industrialized nations raises the question of whether circumcision might actually increase the risk of HIV/AIDS infection. If this seems a preposterous proposition, certainly it is no more preposterous than suggesting that polling and tracking truck drivers who have sex with numerous, diverse, partners of unknown identity and risk factors, can provide a basis for suggesting that circumcision status can decrease the risk of acquiring HIV/AIDS.

The only way a study can even nearly establish such a proposition, is to assemble a large enough number of men, say 600-1000, half circumcised, half not, all sero-negative for HIV/AIDS. Each man would then have sexual intercourse with each of a certain number of women who are sero-positive. Each man would engage in sex with each of the women the same number of times over a certain period of time. Of course, all the subjects would have to be controlled in movement and other human contact throughout the test. At the conclusion of the test all the men would be tested to see which are HIV/AIDS positive. Even those results would not be conclusive proof of what the statistics might indicate, but it would be a much more accurate indicator than any study done or proposed so far.

That said, such a study would surely be unethical because it would amount to experimenting with human subjects who would be exposed to a deadly disease with a certainty of many becoming infected.

Why not let the United States model resolve the issue? It shows clearly that circumcision has no prophylactic value in preventing or limiting the transmission of HIV/AIDS in a population of men who are mostly circumcised.

Money used for further studies of this issue could be much more wisely used for some other effort against HIV/AIDS, especially education about risky behavior. Every time some result of a study is published, indicating circumcision helps prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, more and more circumcised men are convinced they do not need to limit risky behavior or to limit their risks with condoms. That is in effect facilitating the spread of the disease.