U of Penn study of Metzitza:The story gets weirder and weirder!

The issue of whether metzitza is an inherent risk factor for herpes and therefore should be banned - has been debated for a while now. See previous post and its comments. The Aguda in its defense of metzitza against the NYC Department of Health cited a metastudy from the U of Penn which analyzed previously done studies and which the Aguda  claimed said that no causal relationship was found between metzitza and herpes in infants. Now the U of Penn has issued a statement - bizarrely through the Forward and not directly - criticizing the use of the study which they said in fact concluded the opposite of what the Aguda said it did. They also added the study was not only not published  it was not even peer reviewed and was meant purely for internal use at the U of Penn. The study was not released and not even doctors can get copies without some sort of protexia. At this point it is very unclear why the U of Penn did the study in the first place. It is highly unlikely that U of Penn was interested in knowing whether they should allow metziza in their medical facilities - so what purpose did it serve. They are not making the study available - so how did the Aguda get a copy? How could the Aguda conclude the opposite of what the U of Penn claims the study says? At this point all one can conclude from the information funneled through the Forward - is that the U of Penn is claiming that it is possible to get herpes through metzitza - a point that no one contests anyway! The only relevant question is whether metzitza done by a mohel following proper procedures causes herpes. In short the whole incident is weird, makes no sense and  even smells funny. It does absolutely nothing to resolve the issue.   

Update 4/16/13 Here is an Israeli study of complications in mila  IMA 7:368 Ben Chaim et al 2005

Update 4/16/13  New study indicates mohel is significant source of infection

Update 4/16/13 Israeli Rabbinate's directives for metzitza

Update 4/16/13 U of Penn just sent me a copy of the report in response to a simple request for one

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Forward   The authors of a research report on metzitzah b’peh say their study is being distorted by defenders of the controversial ritual circumcision practice who claim that the procedure poses no risk of neonatal herpes to infants.

In an April 9 press release headlined “Ivy League Study Casts Doubt on Claims that Jewish Tradition Leads to Herpes in Infants,” a public relations agency representing Agudath Israel of America and several other ultra-Orthodox groups sought to debunk the public health consensus on metzitzah b’peh, or MBP. The press announcement claimed that a study conducted at the University of Pennsylvania “found little evidence to support the claim that circumcision ritual is infecting infants” with herpes simplex virus.

The announcement noted that the UPenn study was submitted as evidence in an appeal filed by the ultra-Orthodox groups, who are plaintiffs in a suit opposing regulation of the practice by New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

“We have been saying for years that the evidence attacking this religious practice is highly dubious, and now we have world class doctors agreeing with us.” Rabbi Gedaliah Weinberger, chairman emeritus of the board of trustees of the Aguda, said in the press release.

But in a statement released Monday, the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Evidence-based Practice termed it “regrettable that our evidence review was manipulated for purposes other than advising physicians of important clinical risk factors for newborns.”

“The unpublished report was used without our knowledge or consent and importantly, without proper context,” the center’s statement said. “Further, a subsequent press release mischaracterized our review by implying that there is no causal relationship between circumcision performed with oral suction and the transmission of neonatal herpes simplex virus (HSV) when the full report on the existing evidence concluded this link does exist.” [...]

European Rabbis issue call to stop covering up abuse

Kikar Shabbat
 

רבני אירופה עושים סוף לטייוח מקרי אלימות:  אמש (ראשון) התכנסה מועצת רבני אירופה לישיבתה השנתית הנערכת בפריז. במהלך הישיבה הסוערת שנמשכה מספר שעות, דנו חברי המועצת, במספר פרשיות של התעללויות בילדים על ידי מחנכים בבתי ספר יהודיים ברחבי אירופה.

מועצת רבני אירופה החליטה לצאת בקול קורא מיוחד לכל מוסדות החינוך, בו היא קוראת להפסיק לחפות ולטייח פרשיות מן הסוג הזה ולטפל בכל פרשייה בליווי מקצועי צמוד.

בנוסף, החליטו הרבנים להקים וועדה מיוחדת, בראשות הגאון רבי בנימין יעקבס, רב ראשי בהולנד. והגאון רבי יצחק רובין, מחשובי הרבנים במנצ'סטר ויו"ר ועד רבני מחוזות אנגליה. הוועדה תעמוד בקשר עם מוסדות החינוך ותסייע להם בייעוץ וליווי בנושאים אלה.

Rabbi Michael Broyde takes "an indefinite leave of absence" from BD of America

Tablet [See previous post ]  The Rabbinical Council of America, the chief professional organization of Modern Orthodox rabbis, has granted Rabbi Dr. Michael Broyde, one of its most prominent scholars and a professor of law at Emory University, “an indefinite leave of absence” from its top rabbinical court, the Beth Din of America. Sources within the RCA confirmed the move, and Broyde’s biography has been deleted from the court’s web site, where he was previously listed as a member and judge.

“Rabbi Broyde has admitted to behavior that the Rabbinical Council finds extremely disturbing,” Rabbi Shmuel Goldin, president of the RCA, told Tablet. “We have determined and announced by the Beth Din of America, our affiliated rabbinical court, that he has ceased to serve as a dayan immediately and indefinitely.”[...] 

Why this ultra-Orthodox Democrat will observe Yom Hazikaron

JPost by Rabbi Mendel Horowitz    For the first time in my 17 years living in Israel I plan to observe Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day, not because I am Israeli – I am not – but because I am Jewish.

For me there was always a difference. Come April 15 I will escort my visiting American students to Mount Herzl where we will hear eulogies for those fallen. We will recite Psalms and grieve for dead Jews – husbands and wives, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters who died or were murdered as noncombatants on sovereign Israeli soil – a modern variation on an ancient theme. We may not care for “Hatikva” or “Jerusalem of Gold,” but we can care enough for tears.

I am, in my synagogue in Jerusalem, a pariah. A self-identified ultra-Orthodox Jew – complete with beard and sidelocks – I twice supported Barack Obama, the candidate my fellow  worshipers would hardly mention by name. Back home, in New York, I am a registered Democrat, a political affiliation increasingly unfashionable among my coreligionists. This past November I saw the political conservatism in my congregation mirroring its traditionalist theology. Recognizing a consistent reactionary agenda I shrank from both its expressions, and began assessing my allegiances. [...]

Throughout my childhood Zionism was mostly ignored, making it natural to pass over while engaging the spiritual elements of my Jewishness. Barring Rabbi Abraham Kook (1865-1935), who was viewed as an anomaly, the rabbis I grew up respecting attached little priority to the State of Israel and I became ambivalent regarding its being. Israel was at best a side-dish to the main course of my religion – the study of Torah and eminence of its laws.

That was then. Now, as I discover my liberal political views at odds with the elitist views of my congregation, I question too their other standoffish platforms – those that relegate Israel to the edge of the plate. Historically opposed to the State of Israel, my rabbi’s rabbi’s rabbis may have argued coherently against its establishment but today, such arguments seem beside the point. A dissent that began in earnest has evolved into a cultural diffidence, empty of clear reason. I cannot argue confidently against the existing Israeli state and more importantly, why would I want to? [...]

Anything wrong with high school students assigned to defend "Jews are evil"?

CNN  by Stephen Prothero, a Boston University religion scholar and author of "The American Bible: How Our Words Unite, Divide, and Define a Nation," is a regular CNN Belief Blog contributor.

School officials in Albany, New York, are racing to control the damage after a teacher at Albany High School gave students a persuasive writing assignment that challenged them to defend the proposition that “Jews are evil.”

After studying Nazi propaganda and rhetoric, sophomores in three English classes were instructed to imagine that their teacher was “a member of the government in Nazi Germany” and to prove that that they were “loyal to the Nazis.”

But this unidentified teacher is now caught up in a propaganda swirl of his or her own.

Albany Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard, at a Friday press conference at which she was flanked by members of the Anti-Defamation League and Jewish Federation of New York, apologized and promised disciplinary action.

One student, Emily Karandy, told The Times Union of Albany that she kept putting off the assignment “because I didn’t want to think about it” and she felt “horrible” when she turned it in. [...]

When I was an assistant professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta, I used to teach Nazi theology. My students read sermons by Nazi theologians arguing that Jews were evil and were responsible for killing Jesus. They also read a book called “Theologians Under Hitler” by Robert P. Erickson, who tried to explain how and why Christian thinkers could come to believe that exterminating Jews was somehow Christ-like.

I am not a Nazi. I was not teaching Nazi theology as the truth. I was teaching it as propaganda, just like this Albany High School teacher was doing. My purpose was not to make my students sympathetic to Nazism. My purpose was to unsettle them. And to teach them something along the way.

I had two goals when teaching this material.

First, I wanted my students to realize that smart Christians with doctoral degrees supported the Holocaust. Second, I wanted them to grapple with the implications of this fact on their own religious commitments. Do Christians today have any responsibility to know this history and to try to make sure it doesn’t happen again? If so, how can they exercise that responsibility without coming to understand the contours of Nazi thought?

But instead of grappling with these questions, my students almost universally tried to side-step them. The Nazis were not Christians, they told me confidently, because Christians would never kill Jews just for being Jews. Case closed. Time to move on to more comfortable topics.

Sexual harrassment: Women scientists face abuse by their supervisors or having careers ruined

Scientific American   Another day, another story. Again I’m out of town to give a talk, and an acquaintance and I are borrowing someone’s office for a meeting. This person is eager to meet, bright and interesting and motivated to do her research. There is a shift in her research trajectory, and I ask about it. Without skipping a beat, she explains the systematic sexual harassment she experienced at her field site, and the ways in which her lack of complicity led to her not being welcome there. There were obvious ways in which her departure from this field site has hurt her career. I was struck by her furious, fiery expression. [...]

But we also wanted to know who perpetrated these acts. In academia, it is normal for there to be a hierarchy from undergraduate, to graduate student, to postdoc, faculty, and tenured faculty. And people above you in the hierarchy can have control over your success in your career. For both harassment and assault, we found most of the perpetrators were individuals superior in the hierarchy than the victims – so for instance, a faculty member harassing a graduate student. [...]

 We found that many victims identified themselves as “young,” “naïve,” or “green,” and also questioned or blamed themselves at some point during or after their harassment. Both victims and witnesses to abuse, harassment and assault described themselves as paralyzed or scared. Several female respondents described feeling targeted or under scrutiny due to their gender. And sadly, many respondents expressed frustration that issues of abuse, harassment and assault interfered with their work, expressing different refrains of “I just wanted to do my science!”

One male participant detailed systemic, institutional abuse that happened at his site, with too many graphic, potentially identifying stories to impart here. But again and again, he came back to the awful helplessness he felt at having to bear witness to constant attacks on his colleagues, and his understandable fear of the consequences:

“As a man who was ambitious at the time and didn’t know how to intervene, it was a weird place to be because these are my friends. We spent time in the field so you can’t build friendships anywhere else and I was unable to, or paralyzed for fear that my dissertation would be shut down. I relied on the site and access would be shut down, my career would have been shut down, if I was going to stand up to this guy.”

In fact, fear of retribution, and in some cases, stories of retribution for speaking up, were common among witnesses and victims.[...]

Too many of us, the authors of this study included, have told ourselves and others that we just need to “suck it up,” just endure one more day, to keep our heads down and power through. Survival in field-based academic science can’t just be about who can put up with or witness abuse the longest – that is not an appropriate metric to measure who is the best at their science [...]

Female teacher admits sexual abusing 7th grade girl for years

YNet    The Haifa Magistrates' Court approved on Sunday a plea bargain in the case of a teacher from north Israel who confessed and was convicted of committing indecent acts against a female student and attempting to sexually assault her. The prosecution intends to demand a prison sentence for the teacher.

According to the original indictment, filed in February 2012, the teenage student told her relatives the teacher had committed sex offences against her for a number of years. The relatives convinced the student to file a police complaint, after which the teacher was arrested. However, she was released shortly thereafter and continued working as a teacher.

he Haifa Magistrates' Court approved on Sunday a plea bargain in the case of a teacher from north Israel who confessed and was convicted of committing indecent acts against a female student and attempting to sexually assault her. The prosecution intends to demand a prison sentence for the teacher.[...]

According to the original indictment, filed in February 2012, the teenage student told her relatives the teacher had committed sex offences against her for a number of years. The relatives convinced the student to file a police complaint, after which the teacher was arrested. However, she was released shortly thereafter and continued working as a teacher.  [...]

Attorney Tami Olman, who is representing the student's family, said "No one believed the father. Who could imagine that a teacher would do such terrible things to a student in the seventh grade?"

Rabbi Michael Broyde's bizarre alter ego Herschel Goldwasser

TJC Update, 1:00 PM: Broyde has written a letter admitting to having created the character, and apologizing for it.]  A leading Orthodox rabbi and esteemed law professor appears to have created a fake professional identity which he used to gain access to members-only correspondence of a rival rabbinic group and tout his own work. The fake identity may also have been used to submit letters to scholarly journals.

Rabbi Michael Broyde is well-known in both the fields of Jewish scholarship and law, and according to veteran British Jewish news reporter Miriam Shaviv, he was also on the shortlist of candidates being considered for chief rabbi of England in recent months, in an article saying that the chancellor of Yeshiva University had called him “the finest mind of his generation.” He is a rabbinical court judge, or dayan, on the largest rabbinical court in the United States, the Beth Din of America. Broyde is also a law professor at the U.S. News & World Report 23rd-ranked law school in the country at Emory University, where he is also Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion. His Emory biography declares that he “has published more than 75 articles and book chapters on various aspects of law and religion and Jewish law,” including in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy and the Emory Law Journal. The author or editor of several books, he is a prominent figure in rabbinic circles, where his detailed arguments and strong opinions regarding matters of practice and communal standards have produced alliances and opposition. He was also the founding rabbi of the Young Israel of Toco Hills, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Rabbi Hershel Goldwasser has been published in multiple scholarly journals and been a part of numerous online dialogues with other Orthodox rabbis. But Goldwasser does not appear to be a real person. In examining voter registration records, contacting rabbis in areas where he was said to have lived, and in research by yeshiva archivists, no record of his existence has been found over the course of The Jewish Channel’s investigation. Yet the Goldwasser character’s name and e-mail address have been used to publish correspondence that frequently touts Broyde’s work. The Goldwasser character has generated correspondence over nearly 20 years. Going back to the early 1990s, the Goldwasser character has published letters in such well-regarded journals of Jewish thought as Tradition and Conservative Judaism.[...]

Jordanian Parliament demands release of "hero" who killed 7 Jewish girls

YNet  An overwhelming 110 members of the Jordanian House of Representatives signed a petition demanding a pardon for a Jordanian soldier who shot and killed seven Israeli schoolgirls in 1997.

Ahmad Musa Mustafa Daqamseh shot the girls during a school fieldtrip in Naharayim, near the Israel-Jordan border, and is currently serving a life sentence.

Hussein Mjali, Jordan's former justice minister, previously referred to the imprisoned soldier as a "hero," and added that "if a Jew killed Arabs they would have built a monument in his honor."

Satmar: IDF draft worse than annihilation

YNet   Satmar Rebbe Aaron Teitelbaum this week lashed out at attempts to draft yeshiva students and advance an equal share of the burden in Israel, calling them "a decree worse than the annihilation of the Jewish people."

He went on to accuse the supporters of the move of being "worse than those who murdered us."  [...]

A black cloud is hanging these days over our brothers, the people of Israel living in the Holy Land," the rabbi said. "A malicious government has convened… and is seeking to uproot the Torah.

"Jews here don't understand the magnitude of this disaster, which applies to every single individual," he added, comparing the situation to the annihilation of the Jewish people.

"We, in the Diaspora, must be prepared for the moment when we will have to rise up with all our might against this terrible decree so that it is not executed, God forbid."

The radical ultra-Orthodox leaders appear to be sharpening their tone against the IDF draft recently. The other Satmar Rebbe, Rabbi Yekutiel Yehuda Teitelbaum, who visited Israel on the eve of the Knesset elections, stating that "the draft decree aims to make us forget all the other troubles Zionism has inflicted on us. We must fight it uncompromisingly so that such ideas won't even cross their minds."

He referred to the State of Israel and its Zionist residents as "the generation's Amalek," adding that "the Zionists came from the seed of Amalek. There has never been such a sect that caused so much damage to the Jewish people."

Special ed programs : Poor government supervision = Fraud, greed and incompetence

NY Times   But his success until then underscores how private contractors have taken advantage of this generously financed but poorly regulated segment of the special-education system, often called special ed pre-K, according to an investigation by The Times. 

At Mr. Park’s company, the costs to treat these 3- and 4-year-olds were enormous. The government routinely spent more than $50,000 in a single year on services for one child, according to an analysis of billing records. 

In all, that occurred 281 times from 2005 to 2012, the records show. 

The money went to Mr. Park’s company, Bilingual SEIT, and other providers of related services, including contractors that transported children to his schools. 

In the 2011-12 school year, Bilingual SEIT billed more than $17 million to the city and state, up from $725,000 it had billed a decade earlier.[...]

Yet The Times found that a network of contractors has arisen that routinely bill for questionable services. 

The Times’s investigation drew on interviews with more than 50 former workers at Mr. Park’s company, including teachers, therapists, administrators and clerks. Parents, city and state education officials, state auditors, and executives and workers at other contractors in the industry were also interviewed. 

Billing fraud appears to be common. Some contractors labeled overseas vacations and spa trips as business travel, or used corporate credit cards for jewelry or groceries. Others hired relatives for no-show jobs, or gave themselves exorbitant salaries and perks like fancy cars, even as they seldom showed up for work. One contractor put a grown son on the West Coast on the payroll, claiming he had opened a satellite office there. Another contractor lived out of state herself. 

The bar to entry was low. One preschool contractor had a previous career in Medicare fraud, federal records showed. Another was convicted of weapon possession and workers’ compensation fraud.

State and city education officials said The Times’s findings were troubling.[...]

Insensitivity to family: The Alter Rebbe admonished his son for being so engrossed in learning he didn't notice that his baby fell out of his cradle

In light of the discussion regarding Eiruvin (22a)  that a talmid chachom must be insensitive to his own needs and that  of his family - the following story raises questions. It is clear that the gemora in Eiruvin is not meant in an absolute sense. So what are the parameters? 

I would suggest that there is a constant obligation to be insensitive for the sake of Torah learning. However when a meis mitzva arises he must give up his learning until the mitzva is taken care of. In other words - Torah learning is the highest priority except in the face of a need which isn't being taken care of by others. Rashi says that one can be insensitive in providing food  - because G-d will provide. It would also following that if the wife or children can not accept living by bitachon - that this would also be a meis mitzva and the husband would have to give up his learning. However if the wife and kids can accept it - such as  the case of Rabbi Akiva's wife who accepted him leaving her for 24 years  - his obligation is to learn and not take care of his family.

Consequently the only reason the Alter Rebbe admonished his son - was that his son had accepted the responsiblity of watching the baby. It was a meis mitzva in regards to the son. Therefore doing anything other than the obligation to learn Torah is only a heter based on the immediate circumstances. Once the heter of meis mitzva goes away then the obligation of Torah learning is automatically reactivated

Chabad: Rebbe's Letters

By the Grace of G‑d
13 Kislev, 5723
[December 10, 1962]
Brooklyn, N.Y.

Greeting and Blessing:

I was pleased to receive the news of your forthcoming Dinner on the 20th of Kislev, the day after the historic Day of Liberation of the Alter Rebbe, Rabbi Shneur Zalman, author of the Tanya and Shulchan Aruch and founder of Chabad.

It is both timely and meaningful to recall the following episode from his life and teachings:

The Alter Rebbe shared his house with his oldest married son, Rabbi Dov Ber (who later succeeded him as the Mitteler Rebbe). Rabbi Dov Ber was known for his unusual power of concentration. Once, when Rabbi Dov Ber was engrossed in learning, his baby, sleeping in its cradle nearby, fell out and began to cry. The infant’s father did not hear the baby’s cries. But the infant’s grandfather, the Alter Rebbe, also engrossed in his studies in his room on the upper floor at the time, most certainly did. He interrupted his studies, went downstairs, picked the baby up, soothed it and replaced it in its cradle. Through all this Rabbi Dov Ber remained quite oblivious.

Subsequently, the Alter Rebbe admonished his son: “No matter how engrossed one may be in the loftiest occupation, one must never remain insensitive to the cry of a child.”

This story has been transmitted to us from generation to generation; I heard it from my father-in-law of saintly memory. It was handed down because of the lasting message it conveys, one which is particularly pertinent to our time. It characterizes one of the basic tenets of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement—to hearken to the cry of our distressed Jewish children.

The “child” may be an infant in years, a Jewish boy or girl of school age, fallen from the “cradle” of Torah-true Jewish education, or it may be someone who is chronologically an adult yet an “infant” insofar as Jewish life is concerned, an infant in knowledge and experience of the Jewish religion, heritage and way of life.

The souls of these Jewish “children” cry out in anguish, for they live in a spiritual void, whether they are conscious of this or feel it only subconscaiously. Every Jew, no matter how preoccupied he may be with any lofty cause, must hear the cries of these Jewish children. Bringing these Jewish children back to their Jewish cradle has priority over all else.

Rav Sternbuch: Media reports of his "Mizrachi speech" are not accurate

Rav Sternbuch has been visiting Tzfas for a few days. Someone who just visited him told me that Rav Sternbuch was very upset with the media accounts of what he allegedly said at the recent Satmar dinner.  He claims that "many things were inserted by the reporter that he never said."

I hope to get greater clarification in the near future.

Two more cases of babies' herpes linked to metzizah

CNN   Editor's note: The content of this story may disturb some readers.

update 4/9/13 JPost is reporting that the initial report was incorrect and that only one additional baby - not two - has herpes.
update 4/10/13 I am not poskening. I am providing a forum for people to discuss issues. There seems to be two approaches here. There are those who are saying "you are a moron for endangering your child for a practice which has absolutely no religious significance." These people's major goals are showing 1) MP has not religious significance 2) It is dangerous 3) no intelligent person would do it.
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update 4/16/13 U of Penn issues disclaimer and says study was misquoted
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update 4/11/13  U of Penn study finds no increased danger for MP

Jewish leaders this week pointed to a recent independent study by Penn Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania that found little evidence to support the claim that a circumcision practice known as Metzitzah B'Peh (MBP) leads to an increased likelihood of herpes in infants.

 In a study published in December last year, University of Pennsylvania's Center for Evidence-based Practice reviewed several studies linking circumcision with oral suction, a common ritual for many Orthodox Jews, and herpes simplex virus (HSV) type 1. Though four published studies since 2000 suggested that such a link does exist, Penn doctors found the evidence to be "small and significantly limited."

The study was cited in an appeal filed Monday in the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals challenging a New York City Department of Health (DOH) regulation that seeks to place limits on the practice.

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My approach is to try to provide cognitive empathy. I want everyone to understand the basis of thought underlying the two sides. So while Doc-J has provided an excellent example of those who are convinced that only delusional nut cases would do MP - I wanted to explain that it is possible not to be stupid or irresponsible and do MP. I am not advocating or rejecting it.

Historically MP was disavowed to the degree to which it was shown to the poskim that it is dangerous. See Sheilas Dovid cited in the Sdei Chemed's kuntres on MP. Very little is accomplished by telling frum people who have a clear mesora for many generations in their family and communities that they are ignorant savages and are violating halacha. Once this need for defeating the opponent fades it is easier to have a discussion and find a solution..[see comments  for the rest]

New York (CNN) -- Two more infants have contracted the herpes virus after undergoing an ultra-Orthodox Jewish type of circumcision, which has been linked to the spread of the potentially deadly virus to newborn boys, according to the New York City Health Department.

In the ritual, known as metzitzah b'peh, after removing the foreskin of the penis the person performing the procedure places his mouth briefly over the wound, sucking a small amount of blood out, which is discarded. Antibacterial ointment is applied and the wound is bandaged. The health department says the procedure is dangerous because the contact with the mouth could transmit diseases such as herpes.

Most adults are infected with the herpes simplex virus type 1, and while they may have no symptoms, the virus may be present in their saliva, according to the health department. (It is different from herpes simplex virus type 2, which is usually transmitted sexually.)

"While HSV-1 in adults can cause the common cold sore, HSV-1 infection in newborns is very serious," a department statement says.[...]