Mayor & Rabbis to Deal on Circumcision Rule

In November last year, a newborn boy in Brooklyn was brought to his pediatrician’s office because he was being unusually fussy after feedings. The doctor discovered a cluster of lesions on the boy’s penis, then learned that during the boy’s recent circumcision ceremony, the circumciser who performed it had used his mouth to suck blood away from the incision.

Like three other babies last year, the boy had a potentially fatal herpes infection following an ancient Jewish ritual known as metzitzah b’peh, or oral suction. The administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had tried to regulate the practice, over the fierce objections of ultra-Orthodox rabbis, by requiring that the circumcisers have parents sign a consent form that acknowledged their awareness of the procedure’s risks.

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