It sounds like the parents went to her on purpose to get around the requirement. The parents should be held accountable, too.
No no no. You see, those parents were looking for a more natural way to protect their children, rather than things that work.
Parent: hi can you just sign off that you vaxxed my kid and I'll pay you?
Midwife: Yes, but only if they take my magic pill.
Parent: Sounds weird, but ok.
Kid: wait what
Measles is nothing to mess around with. A fine is a good deterant for some things, but something like this deserves your license to practice any kind of medicine in NY pulled permanently, as well as jail time.
I've met these people. They absolutely believe with the deepest convictions that they are doing the right thing. These people who literally refuse to review the science, and are willing to have blood on their hands, because of thoughts and feelings. I don't think fines are enough.
Hell yeah, charge them with manslaughter for every preventable COVID death of someone they "vaccinated"
At the very least they should have jail time for something like this
Imagine going to such lengths to avoid giving the COVID vaccine to your child but allowing some quack to give your child some questionable pellet to eat.
During the height of anti-vaxing the ones that opposed them had no issues smoking a pack a day and guzzling beer while exclaiming their bodies were a temple to preserve.
They didn't see the irony that their temple was filled with toxic smoke and drenched in a form of poison, but hey let's endanger more than just you and your loved ones, but the community at large with the anti vaxx stuff...
How is a midwife authorized to give vaccines in the first place? Seems like a job for pediatricians and nurses.
She’s graduated from nursing school with a master’s degree, which probably means she’s not a nurse (because why would you phrase it like that), but a professional equivalent.
I don't think the requirements for giving vaccines are that high. It's not that difficult to do (for most vaccines at least). Most pharmacists do it as well.
It’s not that it’s hard, but you need to have qualifications to avoid fakers.
And to that point why not authorize a midwife to vaccinate? They're already delivering a baby.
These were not newborns. They were school age kids.
Ah - yeah - I just mean that if you're going to trust somebody to be a midwife it's not much of a stretch to trust them to do vaccinations.
I mean, I don’t trust midwives as it is. But their “expertise” is limited to delivering babies.
I don't understand what you're objecting to. Why wouldn't you want more people being able to distribute vaccines? Making it easier for people to get vaccinated is a Good Thing(tm). What "expertise" do you think is needed?
This woman wasn’t distrusting vaccines, she was helping people fake them.
More people with fewer qualifications to offer them is more opportunity for antivaxxers to help people fake vaccination.
This woman wasn’t distrusting vaccines, she was helping people fake them.
I.. I know.
More people with fewer qualifications to offer them is more opportunity for antivaxxers to help people fake vaccination.
And less people with qualifications to administer vaccines means fewer people vaccinated.
Is that really a major problem? I know during the pandemic it was an issue, but who can’t get an MRR due to not enough doctors available?
So - you realize the issue here isn't one of competence but one of fraud right? It's not like she did this by accident. She did this on purpose. Nurses can commit fraud. The credentials of the midwife had absolutely nothing to do with what she did. I guarantee more nurses than you are comfortable with are anti-vax.
It would be easier to catch if not in some fly by night private practice. And certainly a practice that regularly vaccinated children like a pediatric office is less likely to see this happen.
And it still makes no sense. I’m not going to go to a cardiologist for a flu shot. Why bring pediatric patients to a birthing specialist?
Yes, there are way too many anti-vaccines nurses and doctors and every damn one of them should lose their license to practice medicine. And this woman should be jailed.
Okay - whatever. I don't even know what you're arguing for - just that you seem to be "opposed to bad things".
A pharmacist is still a medically trained doctor, they usually have at least one RN on staff as well, and the last time I got a vaccine at Walgreens it was the RN that administered it to me.
A midwife is by definition a nurse. The full title is certified nurse midwife (CNM). Midwifery is extra training beyond normal nursing duties but they still have all standard nurse training as well.
Ok. Why would you take a school-aged child to a midwife?
I don't see why not. Like I said, they're still a nurse. Being a midwife is additional training on top of that. At most hospitals when they aren't midwifing then they are still just doing other nurse stuff elsewhere. My mom is literally a midwife but she also frequently works shifts in various other departments. It doesn't take anything special to administer vaccines. Any nurse can give someone a shot.
I don’t see why when there are pediatricians.
And this wasn’t someone doing side work at a hospital, this was a charlatan selling fake vaccine records as a business.
Your original comment that I was replying to asked why a midwife could give vaccines when that was a job for nurses and pediatricians. I was pointing out that midwifes are nurses. I wasn't responding to the article. As far as administering a vaccine, which is what I assumed your second comment was talking about, any nurse can do that. Even a pharmacy intern can administer vaccines.
The fact that this person is a quack has nothing to do with what a midwife is or weather they can administer vaccines.
I am not arguing it’s hard to administer vaccines. I’m arguing, in this anti-vaccine world, who do we trust to actually do it and document it properly?
Intentional ignorance is stupidity. It's impressive that someone could be that stupid concerning medicine while actually practicing medicine.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A Long Island midwife falsified vaccine records for some 1,500 school-aged children, according to New York State’s Department of Health, which on Wednesday announced that it had fined her $300,000.
The authorities said the scheme began at the start of the 2019-20 school year after a measles epidemic had led New York to end religious exemptions for immunizations.
But instead of administering the required vaccines, the midwife, Jeanette Breen, of Baldwin, N.Y., gave thousands of homeopathic oral pellets to school-aged children and then falsified their immunization records, according to the authorities.
While most of the children with falsified records were on Long Island, many were from New York City, and some were from other parts of the state, including Erie County.
In a 2019 deposition, she said she had been running a midwifery practice in Baldwin for about 30 years and had graduated from Columbia University’s School of Nursing in 1984 with a master’s degree.
The deposition involved a case regarding whether a pregnant employee at a hospital should receive an exemption from a mandatory flu shot policy.
The original article contains 419 words, the summary contains 178 words. Saved 58%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Bring out the guillotine!
This is what re-education camps are for people!