According to the Canadian Jewish News:
Toronto’s Vaad Harabonim was not available for comment, but last summer, when the medical report on metzitzah be’peh was published, Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Lowy, a spokesperson for the Va’ad Harabonim said, “Those in the Torah world, the yeshiva world, use the procedure, unless there’s a problem.”
He said that “haredim or those who feel they still want to go with the old way of thousands of years [of tradition] and they feel the mohel is careful” accept oral metzitzah. He mentioned Satmar, Bobov, Lubavitch and others as examples of communities who generally use the traditional method.
In 1994, when a Toronto baby became sick with herpes transmitted from a mohel, the Va’ad Harabonim investigated and issued a brief statement saying “there is no clinical basis in ceasing to perform metzitzah be’peh.” However, the Va’ad also said that if the mohel exhibits cold sores, lesions or flu, oral metzitzah should be avoided, Rabbi Lowy added.
Apparently, an occasional death or maiming from herpes transmitted through oral-to-genital contact from the mohel to the baby during circumcision is an acceptible risk in Rabbi Land. That is most likely why Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv has ruled that oral-to-genital contact should continue, and why Rabbi Fievel Cohen's report on the matter reportedly found 'no clinical risk.' The actual finding is more likely to have been an "unknown but probably uncommon" clinical risk.
The haredim have decided to sacrifice an occasional baby on the altar of opposition to modernity. This is especially sad because the oral procedure is meant to improve the health of the baby. That is the only reason it is done. But resisting modernity is obviously more important to Rabbi Elyashiv and his cohorts than saving the lives of a few, easily disposable infants.
It's time to stop banning books and to start banning rabbinical 'leaders' instead.