Making the cut: Male circumcision, HIV/AIDS prevention, and the production of a scientific fact

In 2007, the World Health Organization (WHO) and Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) endorsed the use of male circumcision to prevent HIV transmission. Through an historical, qualitative analysis of print news media articles, academic articles, and published reports, this thesis examines how male circumcision came to be an accepted HIV prevention method, and how the biomedical perspective shaped understandings of HIV/AIDS transmission. Concepts from Actor-Network-Theory and theories of biomedicalization guide the analysis. While evidence that male circumcision protects men against HIV transmission is substantial, the WHO and UNAIDS declaration effectively, and problematically, obscured the preceding twenty-two years of political and scientific debate. Moreover, as an HIV prevention method, male circumcision can in the best case be only partially effective, since it fails to account for and address the extra-bodily forces (such as social, political, economic, and gender factors) that expose people to the virus in the first place.