Letters to the Editor

Circumcision-generated emotions bias medical literature

Gregory J. Boyle et al. — Mon, 21 May 2012 16:54:38 PDT

Letter to the editor: Antibiotics and acute otitis media in children

Paul Glasziou et al. — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:31:29 PST

Extract:
In Reply: Because of space constraints, some analyses we conducted had to be left out of our article. Our Evidence Report1 assessed the data concerning the effect of age and laterality on the effectiveness of antibiotic therapy, and it included a detailed discussion of the individual patient data meta-analysis by Rovers et al,2 along with other evidence not included in that analysis and new meta-analyses we conducted ourselves.

Letters

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 15:59:35 PST

The first edition of the Public Infrastructure Bulletin was welcomed by many writers who agree that discussion about infrastructure in Australia is necessary and productive.

Is Wikipedia unsuitable as a clinical information resource for medical students?

Michael P. Pender et al. — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 17:18:37 PST

Development of a new surgical gown: A multicenter study

Eugene Sherry et al. — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:26:29 PDT

Extract:

Maintaining sterility in the operating room (OR) is essential for optimizing surgical outcome.¹ Many important aspects of gown design are often overlooked, including barrier efficiency, maintenance of sterility while robing, speed of robing and derobing, convenience, and comfort.² Remarkably, fewer than 8% of operations are free of breaches in sterile technique related to gown robing.³ We conducted this study to determine the acceptability, barrier efficiency, infection control, and comparability of a new surgical gown, the S-gown, with the traditional surgical gown.

¹ ² ³ See notes in article.

Issues associated with the introduction of circumcision into a non-circumcising society

Gregory J. Boyle — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 18:30:51 PDT

Circumcision in adults: effect on sexual function

Gregory J. Boyle — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 16:41:48 PDT

[Extract] Senkul et al(1) reported no adverse effect of male circumcision upon male sexual response. Our survey of the empirical literature reached a different conclusion.(2) We documented substantial adverse sexual effects of male circumcision, including significantly reduced penile sensitivity and significantly increased ejaculatory problems.(3)

Male circumcision and risk of HIV-1 infection

Gregory J. Boyle — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 05:43:07 PDT

The probability of acquiring HIV-1 is a function of exposure to risk and the likelihood of transmission when exposed to risk. The study is silent on this point, but few, if any, of the Muslim men in the study acquired HIV-1. It follows that the prevalence of HIV-1 among Muslims in Pune must have been very low. If their sexual relations did not expose the Muslim men to risk then it is likely that this, rather than any possible circumcision-dependent difference in the transmission rate, explains the difference in the rate of acquisition of HIV-1 by men of different religions. One could argue that HIV-1 prevalence among Muslims is low precisely because most Muslim men are circumcised, but this is the very point requiring proof. Pooling Muslim men with non-Muslims to find a lower incidence of HIV-1 in circumcised men obscures that requirement, besides introducing a host of confounding factors.