Ritual Infant Genital Mutilation Rule Change Could Give Penis Sucking Rabbis More Leeway To Spread Herpes Via Barbaric Snip-N-Suck Circumcision

Gothamist: New York Mayor Bill de Blasio is moving to repeal a Bloomberg-era health code requiring mohels to obtain written consent from parents before they perform a controversial circumcision ritual that has given infants herpes.
Anonymous city health officials announced the news during a conference call with reporters last night; under the new agreement, mohels suspected of infecting a baby with herpes will be DNA-tested, and if a mohel's herpes virus matches the infant's strain of herpes he will be banned from performing circumcisions for life. The baby will also have herpes for life, and possibly brain damage.
Officials believe that since the year 2000 over a dozen infants have been infected with neonatal herpes in NYC from the ritual, known as metzitzah b’peh [MBP], in which the rabbi uses his mouth to suck blood from the boy's freshly snipped foreskin. Two children are believed to have died after contracting herpes from MBP.
In 2012, the Health Department voted to approve a regulation requiring mohels to obtain a signed consent form from parents before performing a MBP circumcision. But the regulation was not enforced, and health officials tell the NY Post they received only one consent form from a mohel since the policy began. A group of rabbis also filed a federal lawsuit against the city over the consent form requirement.

As part of the new arrangement—which is not yet finalized—health care providers in the ultra-Orthodox community will distribute information about the risks of MBP. But while ultra-Orthodox leaders have agreed to participate in the DNA testing, the current agreement would allow a mohel to continue performing MBP if he tests positive for herpes that is a different strain from the one infecting the child in question.
The de Blasio administration also says it's unlikely that it will make public the names of mohels found to test positive for herpes. But The Forward reports that administration officials are "unsure whether the board of health would grant the city’s request to rescind the consent form regulation." Not that the regulation is actually changing anything anyway. From The Forward:

From the outset, the city never planned much in the way of enforcing the law. Mohels were instructed to keep signed copies of consent forms for one year. But the health department never conducted spot checks to see if mohels were complying with the rule. Instead, they only asked for copies of the forms if a parent complained, or if there was an investigation into a suspected cases of MBP-related herpes. In the two years since the regulation was brought into force and despite five confirmed cases of neonatal herpes following MBP during that time, the city has only identified two mohels, only one of whom had a consent form.
In the other cases, ultra-Orthodox parents refused to identify the mohel who circumcised their son. The two mohels who were identified were banned from performing MBP. But the city will not release their names so parents have no way of knowing which mohels to avoid.

De Blasio criticized the consent forms while campaigning for mayor, and promised to change the rules if elected. Brooklyn's ultra-Orthodox community traditionally votes as a bloc, and one blogger who closely follows the Satmar sect believes de Blasio's MBP campaign promise won him 10,000 votes.
In a statement, the de Blasio administration said, "While the de Blasio administration continues to believe that MBP carries with it health risks, given the sacred nature of this ritual to the community, the administration is pursuing a policy centered around education of health risks by the health care community and respect for traditional practices by the religious community."
Reacting to last night's announcement, blogger Failed Messiah wrote:

The easiest way for haredim to scam this agreement is to send in a mohel who did not do the circumcision of the baby found to be infected. By switching out one mohel for another, haredim insure that even if the ringer mohel is found to be infected with Herpes, nothing will happen. He'll still be able to do circumcisions and the actual mohel who gave the baby herpes will, too. But the HSV-1 virus is so hard to gather and so hard to test that one of the most common test-related failures is a false negative, meaning actual herpes carriers who infect babies have a very good chance of having their DNA test not match the baby's virus sample.
And that means no matter how haredim play this game, they win.

 Jewish Rabbi sucking blood

from a baby's penis!

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Two more babies stricken with herpes after ritual ultra-orthodox Jewish oral blood sucking circumcision in New York City

By Nina Golgowski: Two more infants have been infected with a deadly herpes virus in the last three months after undergoing a controversial religious oral circumcision in New York City.
The latest cases bring the count to 13 infants since 2000, two of which suffered brain damage and two died from the virus which can rapidly spread throughout its body.
The ultra-Orthodox Jewish practice of metzitzah b'peh requires a practitioner to orally suck the baby's penis to 'cleanse' the open wound following its circumcision, making them susceptible to the virus.

The department of health says one of the latest infants to contract the virus developed a fever and a lesion on its scrotum, seven days after the procedure. The boy later tested positive for HSV-1. That virus differs from HSV-2, the genital herpes, which is contracted during sexual intercourse.
'A herpes infection in a newborn baby has the risk of leading to severe illness and death,' Jay Varma, deputy commissioner for disease control at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene told ABC News.

The religious practice that dates back to more than 5,000 years defies warning by the city's department of health which says there is no safe way to perform the oral suction on an open wound.
More modern Jewish practices use a sterile aspiration device to clean the wound or a pipette opposed to the oral sucking.
But some rabbis stand grounded behind the practice, calling it a religious freedom while noting its long history.
In September the department voted to require parents to sign forms consenting to the risks of the practice after the death of two children who contracted the virus through the practice.
The parents of those newly infected boys are said to have not signed those forms.
According to Rabbi David Zwiebel, executive vice president of the Orthodox Jewish organization Agudath Israel of America, two-thirds of boys born in New York City's Hasidic communities are circumcised in the oral suction matter.
The health department claims they've had complaints in past by parents who say they weren't made aware that the oral practice would be performed on their child.

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