A New York midwife has been fined $300,000 for giving homeopathic pellets to 1,500 children instead of their required vaccinations for diseases like hepatitis, measles and polio.
The penalty, announced by the state’s Department of Health on Wednesday, came after an investigation found that Jeanette Breen had entered nearly 12,500 false vaccine records into New York’s Immunization Information System since 2019.
It’s the first settlement of its kind for a scheme to create false immunization records, the department said.
The pellets Breen administered were taken orally as a series and supplied by an out-of-state homeopath, the department said in a release. They are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as an immunizing agent.
Erin Clary, a public information officer with New York’s health department, said the nature of the scheme suggests that the affected children’s parents or guardians “sought out and paid Breen related to their children’s immunizations and immunization records,” but that the parents or guardians were not the subject of the investigation.
Breen told NBC News that she had no comment. Her attorney David Ekew wrote in an email that when Breen was informed of the investigation, she “fully cooperated.”
“She paid the fine, entered into the stipulation of settlement and intends to fully comply with the requirements of the agreement. From her perspective, this matter is over, done with, and closed and she is now moving on with her life,” Ekew said.
The children whose vaccine records were falsified ranged in age from around 4 to 18 and attended 300 different schools, mostly in Long Island where Breen practiced. Their immunization records have been voided, so they will have to receive all the required vaccinations before returning to the classroom.
None of the fake records were for Covid vaccines. Rather, the list included tetanus, hepatitis B, chickenpox and the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot, among others.
By law, New York requires health care providers to submit accurate vaccination information to its immunization system. In 2019, the state eliminated religious and other nonmedical exemptions to vaccine mandates for schoolchildren, following a series of major measles outbreaks that sickened more than 1,100 people. Breen’s falsification scheme appears to have started several months after New York’s rule changed.
Currently, a measles outbreak in Philadelphia has led nine people to be diagnosed. None had immunity, meaning they either never got vaccinated or had not contracted measles before.
Dr. Arthur Caplan, head of the division of medical ethics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, said he had heard of Breen before the penalty was announced because her name was mentioned in Facebook groups where users discussed how to dodge vaccination requirements.
“I saw people saying, ‘If you want to avoid a vaccination but still be able to send your kids to school, go here,'” Caplan said. “She put so many people at risk for communicable diseases by lying.”
Breen has paid $150,000 of her fine. The rest was suspended, contingent on her compliance with state laws and the terms of the agreement, which prohibits her from accessing the New York State Immunization Information System and from administering any vaccine that would be reported there.
But Caplan said the state should go further.
“She has been found guilty and fined a huge amount for lying and promoting quackery so her license should go,” he said. “She’s dishonest and putting innocent people at risk.”
Eskew did not comment on questions about whether Breen should lose her license.
The New York State Education Department, which is responsible for prosecuting misconduct among medical professionals — including the loss of a license — said it could not comment on Breen’s case for confidentiality reasons.
The New York State Association of Licensed Midwives denounced the vaccine fraud in a statement, saying it opposes “any actions that harm the public and stands firm against outliers in our profession who operate outside clinical and moral standards.”
“It is the hope that the recent news stories concerning one NYS midwife will not detract from the vital work that over a thousand NYS midwives are doing every day,” it added.
Although Breen’s penalty is a first in New York, a California doctor was arrested in 2021 for falsifying Covid vaccination records after administering similar homeopathic pellets.
