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.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    “My six-year-old needs to be protected from a deadly disease but I don’t trust vaccines. I know! I’ll call a midwife!”

    She is awful and deserves prison time, not just a fine, but the parents are also fucking stupid.

    • Snapz@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      The importantance of vaccines are “I need to do my part to protect OTHER kids AND adults from deadly disease”

      That’s the biggest part of this problem though, it’s not “my six year old” on the table here - it’s everyone’s six year old. I have a responsibility to understand that.

      If we can’t understand the above, then we don’t live in a functioning society.

        • Texas_Hangover@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          That sounds awfully similar to deaths from the flu every year, why didn’t everybody flip out and wrap their faces in panty liners before big scary covid came along and petrified the sheep? I’m old enough to remember all the terrifying “pandemics” that the media tried to scare everybody with every 5 or 12 years or so. Covid is the one that stuck.

          • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            That sounds awfully similar to deaths from the flu every year,

            If it does, it’s only because you’re profoundly stupid. They aren’t the same. Millions died from Covid, 1.2million in the US alone - Stop acting like it’s just a few randos…

            scare everyone? Scare everyone into what? How fucking weak are you that wearing a mask is too much? what a child

            panty liner? jesus you really are a 5 year old.

          • Snapz@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Everyone knows you’re afraid when they read your impotent posturing here.

            You’re trying so hard to get your Darwin award, and because you’re still here, I guess we’ll just add this latest one to the long list of failures in your life. You probably don’t admit it to anyone except yourself when it’s dark at night, but you know, as strongly as you know anything, that when you leave a room people laugh at you - lightly at first and then they just stop as they become overwhelmed with pity for the shell of a person you are.

            Just yelling at the sky trying to prove you’re the bravest coward, and fooling nobody.

      • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        I wouldn’t be surprised if her patient’s parents knew she was pencil whipping these vaccinations, otherwise she’d be in jail or being sued by the families.

      • girlfreddy@lemmy.ca
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        10 months ago

        Authorities never looked into whether or not the parents/guardians were aware of it, so they get off scott free here.

        Erin Clary, a health department spokesperson, said Thursday that while parents and legal guardians had sought out and paid Breen for her services, they weren’t the focus of the agency’s investigation.