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.

  • mihies@kbin.social
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    6 months ago

    There is placebo effect as well, so it might somehow help. But not the way they think and it shouldn’t be a substitute for proper medicine.

        • stoly@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          I do think that you’re right here. Parents could give a placebo to a child without realizing that it is a placebo, calm down, causing the child to calm down. Children are like dogs and stare directly at the faces of the adults around them to know how they should react to a situation. A calm parent can make a calm child.

      • derpgon@programming.dev
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        6 months ago

        Actually, it does. A friend of mine uses homeopathic anal suppositories for his almost 1 y/o and it almost always calms her down.

        Guess having stuff shoved up your butt doesn’t need natural language to be understood lol.

        • derf82@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Probably more like “I better shut up, or mom will shove more stuff up my butt.”

        • stoly@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          You forgot the most important rule of humanity: everything is normal to a child. That child thinks that all kids get pills shoved up their asses every night and doesn’t think anything of it.

    • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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      6 months ago

      Placebo is a real peer-reviewed thing and a powerful tool in the right hands. But it has to be authorized and prescribed by a real doctor who knows what they’re doing…