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European attitudes towards personal cleanliness

  In the February 18 (1999) issue of Time Magazine, the journalist Calvin Trillin writes about his experience in France, writing that "some friends of mine returned form a stay in Provence last week, and I had to restrain myself from asking how the French are smelling these days". This quasi-humorous remark is, however, not without foundation. Statistics about the level of personal hygiene in many European countries make for some really disturbing reading. E.g., according to an article that appeared in the New York Times not so long ago, only 47% of the French bathe on a daily basis.

Urinary-tract infections are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics

  A study of the treatment of urinary-tract infections (UTI), published in the February edition of the Journal of the American Medical Society, has shown that UTI are increasingly becoming resistant to a treatment with antibiotics. The results of the study showed that nearly 18% of the infections present today - i.e. double the percentage in 1992 - are resistant to the most widely used antibiotics. What is furthermore very alarming, is that other drugs that are penecilin-based no longer work in 33% (i.e. 1 in 3) infections.

  Since circumcision is known to reduce the risks of UTI substantially - see the Sections The Benefits of Circumcision and The Lack of Circumcision and Urinary Tract Infections - these findings once again underline the very valuable prophylactic nature of circumcision.

WebMD interview with D. Halperin on the connection between AIDS and the lack of circumcision  

  WebMD Health recently held an interview with the noted HIV/AIDS researcher Dr. D. Halperin of the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies and Medical Antropology Program of the University of California at San Francisco.

  To read the interview, click here. To read the article in question (published in the Medical Journal, The Lancet), click here.

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