Religious circumcision ritual leaves 2 Brooklyn infants with herpes

[struggle4progress]

59. Denouncing City’s Move to Regulate Circumcision

By SHARON OTTERMAN
Published: September 12, 2012

... The city estimates that metzitzah b’peh is used in some 3,600 local circumcisions each year. The city’s health department says that, between 2000 and 2011, 11 babies contracted herpes as a result, and 2 of them died. This spring, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared that the procedure created a risk for transmission of herpes and other pathogens and was “not safe” ...

Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik, the president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the international association of conservative rabbis, said he supported the Board of Health’s move to require parental consent. He said that direct suction was not required by Jewish law and that the serious risks of the practice were “inconsistent with the Jewish tradition’s pre-eminent concern with human life and health.”

In 2005, the Rabbinical Council of America, the main union of modern Orthodox rabbis, urged that a sterile glass tube be used for suction, rather than the mohel’s mouth. But the group opposes the city’s effort to regulate the practice; instead it has asked the city to work with Orthodox groups “to voluntarily develop procedures to effectively prevent the unintended spread of infection” ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/nyregion/regulation-of-circumcision-method-divides-some-jews-in-new-york.html