Always punch up, never down.
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Joined September 2021
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The 'Big Lie' of the @WHO's VMMC programs is that they're "voluntary". The goal has always been to create a self-perpetuating circumcision culture in Africa that extends into future generations. Public health authorities intend to do it by focusing on infants who can't object.
Rooted in never-before-seen government records, THE NORMAL THING TO BE tells the full story of how a group of powerful circumcision enthusiasts turned a heavily-contested American norm into a global public health iniative, at the expense of children's rights. punchup.press/books/the-norm…
The medical "consensus" on circumcision was never as independent as it looked.
FOIA documents show a small group of advocates worked the system from the inside. A thread on what the emails revealed. 🧵
A paper once argued this whole field was run by an insular, self-reinforcing network.
The network's response? A private email chain where they whether or not to engage.
The coordination was the exact thing the paper described.
The full story is told in my book, THE NORMAL THING TO BE, recently published on Amazon. amazon.com/Normal-Thing-Be-I…
When the CDC opened its proposed circumcision guidelines for public comment, it got 3,275 responses.
99% were critical.
The agency's own internal note: positive comments came in at "approximately 1 for every 100 posted."
They finalized the guidelines anyway.
a.co/d/09nkDNGQ
Punch Up Press retweeted
A handful of circumcision advocates held key positions inside the WHO, CDC, NIH, and a few elite universities.
Public records show they coordinated behind the scenes in ways the official record doesn't reflect.
It's all in their own emails.
a.co/d/027DBSa7
Punch Up Press retweeted
Not to mention @USAID and @PEPFAR's use of "incentives" to motivate "mobilizers" to recruit more adolescent boys for the surgery in Mozambique. ccp.jhu.edu/2019/05/13/makin…
Punch Up Press retweeted
7. Bere appeared in court on charges of embezzling appx. $2.8 million from SACTWU. He later received bail, at which point the @CDCgov shockingly offered him a flight back to the US, effectively allowing him to escape justice. Alfred Bere never faced trial. bere-email.tiiny.site
4. The @CDCgov audited SACTWU after granting millions in tax-payer funds. Shockingly, the auditor placed the responsibility of preventing fraud into the hands of SACTWU's management, and offered no opinion on their ability to actually carry out that duty. pdfhost.io/v/DaYMbY57c_South…
7. Bere appeared in court on charges of embezzling appx. $2.8 million from SACTWU. He later received bail, at which point the @CDCgov shockingly offered him a flight back to the US, effectively allowing him to escape justice. Alfred Bere never faced trial. bere-email.tiiny.site
2. In 2013, Nikki Soboil, head of the SACTWU's Worker Health Program, called for male circumcision to be incorporated into the trade union's HIV programs (for reasons?). This proved quite lucrative, as they were later granted nearly $40 million for VMMC. equaltimes.org/here-s-what-t…
3. The health ministry awarded circumcision funds to the SACTWU through a closed tender process, which does not allow for open bidding for contracts. This facilitates favoritism and corruption more than open tender because it generally lacks transparency. pmg.org.za/files/RNW2355-181…
1. Financial corruption is an enduring and underexplored aspect of the troublesome VMMC initiatives that have swept across Sub-Saharan Africa since 2007. The case of the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union is an illustrative tale of how poor oversight enables it.
Punch Up Press retweeted
Is this him on this panel of people ignoring the ethical quagmire of circumcision? Africa needs Prep, not mutilation. xitter.cf/PunchUpPress/status/17…
When confronted on this basic hypocrisy, the @UNICEF rep offered a self-contradictory answer, claiming she both agrees on human rights, but that this is also a matter of "risks v. benefits", and that the human right to decline treatment does not, in fact, belong to the child.