The headline to a recent New York Times article, South Africa is Seen To Lag in AIDS Fight, is misleading (something that should come as a shock to no one, least of all anyone who has ever written an article and suggested a headline only to have something wildly misrepresentative appear at the top instead). The article is in fact about male circumcision and how it has been shown to help in the fight against men contracting HIV from women, and how in that particular measurement, South Africa lags. This might appear like a subtle distinction, but it is not. And one must keep in mind in particular that the procedure in question is not infant circumcision, but rather adult circumcision, a decision that most men are not inclined to take lightly. I am not suggesting that South African men should not be encouraged to catch up with those elsewhere, I’m just saying that presenting this case as an example of South Africa “lagging” re-enforces South Africa as a bastion of AIDS denialism rather than reflecting a much more complex dynamic at work, and while the story is far more nuanced, almost everyone is guilty of skimming headlines at some point. Those who skimmed the headline for this story were given a dramatically wrong impression.
