Changes

|last=Holt

|first=L. Emmett

|title=Tuberculosis acquired through ritual circumcision

|journal=JAMA

}}</ref> It has been documented that the practice poses a serious risk of spreading [[herpes]] to the infant.<ref name="Gesundheit">{{REFjournal

|last=Gesundheit

|date=2004-08

|title=Neonatal Genital Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1 Infection After Jewish Ritual Circumcision: Modern Medicine and Religious Tradition

|pubmedID=15286266

|issn=1098-4275

|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060723081226/http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/114/2/e259.pdf

}}</ref><ref>{{REFnews

In three medical papers done in Israel, Canada, and the US, oral suction following [[circumcision]] was suggested as a cause in 11 cases of neonatal ''[[herpes]]''.<ref name="Gesundheit"/><ref>{{REFjournal

|last=Rubin

|last2=Lanzkowsky

|title=Cutaneous neonatal herpes simplex infection associated with ritual circumcision

|journal=Pediatric Infectious Diseases Journal

}}</ref><ref>{{REFjournal

|last=Distel

|last2=Hofer

|last3=Bogger-Goren

|last4=Shalit

|last5=Garty

|title=Primary genital herpes simplex infection associated with Jewish ritual circumcision

|journal=Israel Medical Association Journal

|format=PDF

}}</ref> Researchers noted that prior to 1997, neonatal ''[[herpes]]'' reports in Israel were rare, and that the late incidences were correlated with the mothers carrying the virus themselves.<ref name="Gesundheit"/> Rabbi Doctor [[Mordechai Halperin]] implicates the "better hygiene and living conditions that prevail among the younger generation", which lowered to 60% the rate of young Israeli Chareidi mothers who carry the virus. He explains that an "absence of antibodies in the mothers’ blood means that their newborn sons received no such antibodies through the placenta, and therefore are vulnerable to infection by HSV-1."<ref name="Halperin">{{REFjournal

|first=Mordechai

|author-link=Mordechai Halperin

|translator-first=Yocheved