Quick question for you...

"Circumcision removes natural skin, exposes your [glans] to dryness it isn't supposed to feel" Yes, that's the point. The explanation that I've seen is that the foreskin is susceptible to micro-tears during intercourse that create pathways for the virus. The glans is much less susceptible to these, so there aren't easy pathways for the virus to exploit. Boom, there's your "mechanism".

Keep in mind re hygiene, you're looking at national statistics, NOT a scientific study. There so many variables that aren't being controlled for that it's pretty much irrelevant. Off the top of my head, Europe has evil "socialized" medicine, which means that all socioeconomic classes get access to affordable care, so you'd expect to see lower incidence rates of STD's and UTI's than in the US, where lower classes often might not have access to good healthcare, so they would be more susceptible regardless of circumcision status, which would massively skew the data. You're absolutely right, "looking at the numbers" is not science, and it's stupid to brng up correlations or anecdotes and think that they are viable evidence to scientific studies.

"the ONLY place that has ever "proven" that circumcision was effective was AFrica" Well no shit, we're discussing this relative to Africa. People aren't dying of AIDS by the millions in the US. It's a serious problem there. It's a minor one here.

"By the way, if you *really* think it's a good idea, then do it at 16 or 18, before the kid has started having sex," Then why not wait until 16 or 18 to vaccinate them? After all, I'm sure they'd appreciate they input before looking at the evidence! We wouldn't want to unduly force people to have medical procedures as a kid, even though we do it for vaccinations and appendicitis and deformities, no, never!

BTW, you still haven't answered my original question of "where do you draw the line between "For the good of public health" and "My right to privacy trumps the medical well-being of others around me"?". Please do so, my intention in my thread was for you to answer that, not randomly spew claims on the subject.

When is it "for the public good?" When you can come up with studies that actually make sense, and are provable. Not ones that are incomplete.

the numbers of 60% are a GROSS over statement of something that *Might* be 10% but more like 2-5% (CDC by the way - it's linked on another page). I'm not going to advocate "safety" when we cannot prove this.

Give me studies that are compelling, show that micro tears really exist (the reports I've read say this is a POSSIBLE reason it works, again - it's not been studied), and give me numbers that are more compelling than 5 percent and fine - you have something. But that's not these studies.