ABC News, U.S.A., by Susan Donaldson James, March 12, 2012
New York City is investigating the death last September of a baby who
contracted herpes after a "ritual circumcision with oral suction," in an
ultra-Orthodox Jewish ceremony known in Hebrew as metzitzah b'peh.
The district attorney's office in Kings County Brooklyn is
investigating the death of the 2-week-old baby at Maimonides Hospital,
but would not disclose the name of the mohel or whether there would be a
prosecution.
The 5,000-year-old religious practice is seen primarily in
ultra-Orthodox and some orthodox communities and has caused an alarm
among city health officials. In 2003 and 2004, three babies, including a
set of twins, were infected with Type 1 herpes; the cases were linked to
circumcision, and one boy died.
The mohel who performed the procedures, Yitzchok Fischer, was later
banned from doing circumcisions, according to
The New York Times. It is not known if he was involved in this
recent death.
"It's certainly not something any of us recommend in the modern
infection-control era," said Dr. William Schaffner, chair of preventive
medicine at Vanderbilt University.
"This is a ritual of historic Abraham that's come down through the
ages, and now it has met modern science," he said. "It was never a good
idea, and there is a better way to do this." (The modern Jewish
community uses a sterile aspiration device to clean the wound in a
circumcision.)
In the 2004 death and the more recent one, a mohel infected the
penile wounds with Type 1 herpes I (HSV-1), which affects the mouth and
throat. It is different from Type 2 or genital herpes (HSV-2), which is
a sexually transmitted disease and can cause deadly infections when a
newborn passes through an infected birth canal.
Neonatal herpes is "almost always" a fatal infection, according to
Schaffner. "It's a bad virus. [Infants] have no immunity and so it's a
very serious illness. Now we have another death -- an unnecessary,
incredibly tragic death."
