Did you hear this, men? Losing a little bit of your skin could cut your risk — and perhaps ours — of getting AIDS. The NIH reported yesterday that circumcision halves the risk of HIV infection. This is such good news that the agency decided to stop two trials early so they could offer circumcision even to men in the control arm.

The result isn’t entirely a surprise. A previous study had pegged the protection at 60% and ever since then, some experts — especially in Africa — have been clamoring for circumcision to be implemented.

And rightly so. In many parts of the world where AIDS is a problem, circumcision could save millions of lives.

But is it really so simple as all that?

For instance, in India, where I’m from, whether a man is circumcised is not an idle preference — it’s a matter of cultural and religious identity. As war movies have brutally shown, in a conflict between Hindu and Muslim, Jew and non-Jew, that is sometimes the only way to distinguish friend and foe.

It’s not going to be easy to convince these groups to give up their beliefs. Here’s hoping they understand that in the war against AIDS too, that little piece of skin could mean the difference between life and death.