A New York midwife who gave nearly 1,500 children homeopathic pellets instead of required vaccinations has been fined $300,000.

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.

  • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
    49·
    11 months ago

    Apparently the families came to her to try and get fake vaccines.

    • Bone@lemmy.world
      13·
      11 months ago

      Ah. Thank you for the additional information. It wasn’t clear from the headline and description, although I probably should have inferred that detail. As well, I did not read the article.

      • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
        161·
        11 months ago

        I didn’t make an assumption based on the headline, I made the assumption based on the statement at the end of the article, which I quoted in another comment.

        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.

        It’s still maybe an assumption - perhaps there were people who thought they were getting real vaccines, not a homeopathic alternative - but it’s what the health department said.

        I’m guessing you read that other comment after making this one, as you’ve since replied to that comment thread. So no worries.