(EDITOR'S NOTE: Should Jewish rabbis who circumcise children and Catholic priests who molest children be registered as sex offenders?)

The bizarre ritual of circumcision gets even weirder, as practiced by some Orthodox Jews, when, after chopping off the foreskin of the penis, the mohel or circumciser sucks the blood from the wound.

This so-called “oral suction” or baby fellatio is the center of a controversy in which an infant died in New York after contracting Type 1 herpes.

“Since February, the mohel, Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer, 57, has been under court order not to perform the ritual in New York City while the health department is investigating whether he spread the infection to the infants,” reported the New York Times.(http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/26/nyregion/26circumcise.html?ex=1125720000&en;
=7f688eb83442b177&ei;=5070&emc;=eta1)

The Times also reported that New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, mindful of a large voting constituency of “oral suction” advocates, said, "We're going to do a study, and make sure that everybody is safe and at the same time, it is not the government's business to tell people how to practice their religion.