A duty to baby boys

In New York City in 2017, newborn baby boys are being endangered by herpes-infected men. Mayor de Blasio, admitting the failure of his lame attempt to cure the unacceptable problem through public outreach and community cooperation, is rolling out a new approach based on — you guessed it — public outreach and community cooperation.

Which will almost surely put more infants at risk of permanent damage or death.

Our story begins roughly a decade ago. Scratch that: thousands of years ago, when some Jews began performing ritual circumcision using a practice known as metzizah b’peh. It involves the mohel, who cuts the baby’s foreskin, sucking blood from the open wound on the penis with his mouth. (Today, a minority of mohels use this practice.) Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the city began noticing that not long after that eighth-day procedure, baby boys were getting rushed to the hospital. They tracked the virus back to mohels who used direct oral suction.

Over a 13-year span starting in 2000, 13 newborns were infected. Two died.

Bloomberg’s Health Department mandated that parents sign consent forms acknowledging the serious dangers to which they were subjecting their children, while issuing health alerts about new infections and working to ban herpes-positive mohels.

Mohels, seeing the public-health interventions as an attack on religious freedom, ignored the consent form order, defied the bans and filed suit.

Enter de Blasio. In his 2013 campaign, as he curried the favor of ultra-Orthodox Jews, he promised to back off the consent forms and work more closely with parents and mohels.

Cooperation — voluntary testing by and rooting out of mohels — would work where confrontation had failed, he said.

The painful results of the passivity are now clear for all to see. In 2014, baby boys suffered five cases of herpes as a result of metzizah b’peh. From 2015 to the present, another six did. (By the grace of science and early detection, none died.)

Now, de Blasio finally admits he was had. “I don’t think those community leaders did all they could have done” to police their own, he said.

Good for him for copping to the obvious. Bad for him for continuing to be timid in the face of imminent harm to kids.

The city’s new strategy is to step up public education to parents and issue orders banning mohels from direct oral suction when the city determines they have been responsible for infections.

In other words, to bring back two out of three pieces of the Bloomberg strategy that itself was incomplete.

Even now, health officials have flagged and told to cease and desist just two infected mohels; four more are yet to be found.

The punishment for being banned and continuing to put kids at risk is a $2,000 fine, a gentle sanction that isn’t so much as noted on the orders the commissioner issues.

And are you the parent of a newborn boy? Want to know who’s on the banned list? Good luck: Since names of infected mohels will be kept secret, the burden is all on you to pose this delicate question, then trust the mohels being up front.

Shielding the identities of people with communicable illnesses in the name of privacy makes sense in limited circumstances. Not when the carrier in question is an active threat to public health.

A man who knows he has herpes and infects a newborn — much less one who has been outright warned by the government not to do so, and defies the order — ought to be arrested and prosecuted for endangering the welfare of a child.

Prayer won’t fix this problem. Only action can.