A New York midwife who gave nearly 1,500 children homeopathic pellets instead of required vaccinations has been fined $300,000, the state’s health department announced this week.
Jeanette Breen, who operates Baldwin Midwifery on Long Island, administered the pellets as an alternative to vaccinations and then falsified their immunization records, the agency said Wednesday.
The scheme, which goes back least to the 2019-2020 school year, involved families throughout the state, but the majority reside on suburban Long Island. In 2019, New York ended a religious exemption to vaccine requirements for schoolchildren.
The health department said immunization records of the children who received the falsified records have been voided, and their families must now prove the students are up-to-date with their required shots or at least in the process of getting them before they can return to school.
I would say the risk still did increase for other kids at least some, though it may be relatively negligible.
When there was the religious exemption, the school still knew which kids were and weren’t vaccinated. Not that I expect public schools to be good at epidemiology, but they could contact trace in the case of any sort of outbreaks. When a kid that isn’t vaccinated comes in with a rash on them, you might think of measles and begin to take measures for that like sending a kid home or calling the local CDC. Even if it turns out to just be chickenpox or something else.
By falsifying records and saying the kids are vaccinated when they’re not, it completely throws a wrench into any of that. When they say they’re vaccinated and come in with a rash you don’t think of measles until more kids have gotten it and gotten sick.
I’d agree to that