ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the importance of careful consideration of the empirical evidence about the harms and benefits of circumcision in undertaking a moral evaluation of the practice. There are important studies that have reinforced the earlier evidence that circumcision has a protective effect against HIV. These studies were conducted in, respectively, South Africa, Kenya and Uganda, and they were all terminated early by their data and safety monitoring boards because the clear protective effect they demonstrated raised the ethical problem of withholding the option of circumcision from the control subjects in those studies. These have provided further evidence not only of circumcision’s protective effect against HIV but also of anti-circumcision advocates’ resistance to any evidence that circumcision may have benefits. Whether circumcision constitutes wrongful mutilation or whether it wrongfully violates bodily integrity cannot be answered without determining whether the practice is a net benefit or a net harm.
