Dr. Daniel Berman caught on tape trying to mislead a room full of people. Berman first claims that there is no DNA match between any of the sickened or dead babies and the mohel who did their circumcision that included metzitzah b'peh (MBP). He says that doubt allows us to continue doing MBP, and claims that even though mohels have refused to cooperate with the heath department, and even though that lack of cooperation was, at the time, the reason there was no match. In other words, Danny Berman lied. He also claims to be involved with the cases at that time, and he gives the people involved medical advice. This is enough, I think, for Berman to be prosecuted for negligent homicide.
A. Romi Cohn doing metzitzah b'peh earlier this week
Originally published at 10:11 pm CDT 9-13-2012
Thie audio posted below is excerpted from a class given at Congregation Beth Abraham on 12-25-2005 by a Yeshiva University rosh yeshiva Rabbi Yaakov B. Neuberger. When Neuberger finished, Dr. Perl spoke about the medical dangers of MBP. Dr. Daniel Berman interrupts him and starts lying, at which point Perl exposes him.
When Berman says there are no reported cases of transmission for several other illnesses, he doesn't say that most of those illness do not have mandatory reporting, so barring a very noticeable epidemic, there wouldn't be any reported cases. (HIV is an exception, but it doesn't transmit easily through saliva, so babies would not get it easily, if at all, from a mohel. A mohel would have a greater risk of getting it from a baby, but that would not be evident for a long time after the bris, making any link difficult to prove. Past that, babies who have HIV overwhelmigly get it from their mothers; they're born with it. And that is almost always known before a bris would be done. And almost all mohels have permission to skip MBP when there is any fear of HIV.)
Secondly, his claim that there are no historical incidents of herpes being transmitted through MBP is false. It's just another word game played by Berman to deceive people. See this post for the details.
His claim that herpes could have come from the babies fathers or nurses, etc., has been disproved in the more recent US Centers for Disease Control report and was so very unlikely when Berman said this in 2005, that it would probably count as a lie in a court of law.
Berman also makes deceptive claims about the health of Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer, whose MBP killed and maimed babies. He says Fischer never had a positive test. But Fischer had never tested positive at that point because on the advice of and with the backing of haredi rabbis – rabbis Berman may have been advising – he refused to be tested.
The first audio runs from the end of Neuberger's class onward.
The second starts with Berman.