I don’t know how old you are. However, since the advent of antibiotics about 70 years ago and the great advances in drugs to stop bleeding, deaths due to circumcision complications are certainly much less common. Deaths and permanent damage caused by antibiotic resistant bacteria, viruses (herpes, as you mentioned) still occur. However, Judaism actually has a long history of debating how to deal with deaths due to circumcision. Here are readily accessible articles about circumcision related death: 1) Talmud: Exemption from ritual circumcision due to death of previous sons (cirp.org) and 2) Circumcision Deaths (cirp.org) . BTW, keep in mind that while deaths are believed to be uncommon in a modern setting, other complications are actually quite frequent. As a matter of fact, just this month, the Lavine family filed a major lawsuit against the medical practice at the hospital where their son was born and also is suing the AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) for fraud over their circumcision policy history. You can read the lawsuit at Circumcision is a fraud. The Lavine family is just one of many people with Jewish background who have suffered major complications/death as a consequence of circumcision. I’m not surprised you don’t hear much talk about circumcision complications/death. Very few people want to acknowledge it, regardless of their religious/tradition/cultural background. Also, BTW, I happen to briefly appear in an excellent documentary: CUT: Slicing Through the Myths of Circumcision, 2007, by Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon. www.cutthefilm.com You would be quite surprised by a lot of the things said by all the rabbis and mohels in this documentary.