Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association © The Author 2008; all rights reserved.
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The riches of cohorts
E-mail: shah.ebrahim@lshntm.ac.uk
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Having recently returned from a scientific meeting at Arusha, near Kilmanjaro in Tanzania my attention was attracted to a letter in this issue on male circumcision and risk of HIV infection.1 One of the Ugandan participants at our meeting had spoken about the depressing experience of the Rakai research group's thoughtful and well-coordinated attempts to turn their trial findings2 into national policy. Despite consistent findings of a halving in HIV incidence from three recent trials of circumcision among heterosexual men in sub-Saharan Africa, there does not seem to be much appetite for translating these findings into health policy. The social scientists participating in the meeting were, of course, not at all surprised by this policy inaction and were