Putting baby boys at risk

Acircumcision ritual with a rare but real track record of infecting infants with herpes is continuing to put newborn boys at risk. And this time, the blame is shared both by the practitioners who appear to be transmitting the virus and a lackadaisical mayor who is letting them get away with it.

Hasidic mohels who perform metzizah b’peh — a religious ritual that involves placing the mouth on an eight-day-old’s circumcised penis and sucking out blood — can, when infected with herpes, transmit the virus from their saliva to the child.

The procedure’s risk can be eliminated if a small straw is used to draw away blood.

Over the Bloomberg years, some dozen infant boys in the city contracted herpes as a result of that direct oral contact. Two died.

In 2012, Mayor Mike’s Board of Health required mohels to distribute, and parents to sign, consent forms explaining the risk, even as it sent out alerts after each infection from the procedure.

Those forms were hardly ever signed; instead mohels, claiming an affront to religious freedom, took the city to court, and eventually won a ruling that would’ve made enforcement an uphill climb.

But Bloomberg at least tried to stand up and protect the vulnerable little ones.

De Blasio claimed to have a better way: cooperation, he claimed, rather than what he perceived as needless and alienating confrontation.

As a candidate, while cultivating a close partnership with the city’s ultra-Orthodox Jews, he promised to repeal the Bloomberg regulation.

In 2015, he struck an agreement with a small group of politically connected community leaders to replace the form with an informational pamphlet and a supposedly iron-clad commitment to, in the wake of newborn infection, identify and test mohels for the virus, then remove them from service lest more babies be put in danger.

If applied in good faith, the new approach might have had a chance. It hasn’t been.

De Blasio’s Health Department has all but stopped alerting the public when baby boys contract herpes from the procedure. No data on transmissions was released until this week.

There’s no sign mohels are holding up their end of the bargain either. In just two of six cases since 2015 has the man who performed the bris been identified. And there’s no knowing whether he or they have retired their knife.

Wednesday came an out-of-the-blue alert that a baby had been rushed to the hospital 15 days after his bris. That very day, the city said that there were also three cases in 2015 and two in 2016.

“We expect full cooperation from the community,” said de Blasio about case number six.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. And shame on all those who continue to put infant boys in jeopardy.