” I’ve seen you previously acknowledge there is no evidence of harm from MBP.”
Actually there is. It just isn’t clear how MUCH of a risk that it is, and whether it can be contained. Agudath Israel deliberately misinterpreted a University of Pennsylvania study by claiming falsely that it showed that MBP was safe, and nobody in the frum community has been willing to do the right kind of study to prove whether or not it is safe or not. (This would requiring testing mohels, mothers, and babies.)
Here is what the UPenn study concluded:
” Neonatal HSV infection can cause severe morbidity and death, so mitigating potential risks for infection is critical. Current evidence suggests that direct orogenital suction during ritual circumcision was the likely source of infection in recent cases that resulted in significant illness and death. Future research using cohort or case-control designs that fully capture all of the relevant data are needed to more rigorously examine this association.”
(Such studies are not hard to design but they would require cooperation from the frum community.)
This is what the earlier version concluded (the version AI misinterpreted):
“Neonatal infection with HSV-1 carries a risk for potentially severe morbidity, including the possibility of death, so exposure to infection should be carefully considered. The available evidence indicates that circumcision with direct orogenital suction may be a risk factor for infection, but this evidence base is small and significantly limited. Hopefully, future studies will provide additional evidence on this and other risk factors for neonatal HSV-1 infection.”
As you can see this is NOT a statement that MBP is totally safe.