“Circumcision may offer Africa AIDS hope: Procedure linked to much lower rate of new HIV infections,” by Sabin Russell, San Francisco Chronicle, 6 July 2005, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/07/06/MNGANDJFVK1.DTL&type=printableL (from Drudge Report).

 

First, the news

 

French and South African AIDS researchers have called an early halt to a study of adult male circumcision to reduce HIV infection after initial results reportedly showed that men who had the procedure dramatically lowered their risk of contracting the virus.

The study’s preliminary results, disclosed Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal, showed that circumcision reduced the risk of contracting HIV by 70 percent — a level of protection far better than the 30 percent risk reduction set as a target for an AIDS vaccine.

According to the newspaper account, the study under way in Orange Farm township, South Africa, was stopped because the results were so favorable. It was deemed unethical to continue the trial after an early peek at data showed that the uncircumcised men were so much more likely to become infected.

 

Then, the theory

 

Laboratory studies have found that the foreskin is rich in white blood cells, which are favored targets of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. So the theory is that men who are uncircumcised are much more likely to contract the virus during sex with an infected woman, and that the epidemic spreads when these newly infected men have sex with other women within their network of sexual partners.

 

Last, the philosophy

 

The Law of Moses contributed to the survival of the Jewish people for a number of reasons. One of the ways was by mandating sanitary living. In a world racked by disease, prohibitions against the worst carrier animals and handling corpses kept people alive.

 

More generally, this story shows how Rationalism is still trying to approximate Tradition. Rationalism is a top-down exercise, like Sovietism or Microsoft Windows, where the world is assumed to be a machine that can be fine tuned. Traditionalism is a bottom-up project, like open source programming or 4th Generation War, where the world is assumed to be a chaotic, turbulent sea.   (In computer science terms, tradition is a genetic algorithm).

 

The world is not a machine. It is an ocean. Just as man has yet to solve the traveling salesman problem, but ants had a good-enough solution millions of years ago, we will never “solve” some problems. But “good enough” solutions will naturally arise.

 

It is our job to stop trying to be perfect and rationally, and embrace the imperfect, the good-enough, the traditions.