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Midwife who gave 1,500 kids homeopathic pellets instead of vaccines put “lives in jeopardy,” New York health officials say
A New York midwife who gave nearly 1,500 children homeopathic pellets instead of required vaccinations was issued an unprecedented $300,000 fine for putting “lives in jeopardy,” 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.
“Misrepresenting or falsifying vaccine records puts lives in jeopardy and undermines the system that exists to protect public health,” State Health Commissioner James McDonald said in a statement.
Breen, a state-licensed healthcare provider, supplied patients with the “Real Immunity Homeoprophylaxis Program,” a series of oral pellets that are marketed as an alternative to vaccination but are not recognized or approved by state or federal regulators as valid immunizations, according to the health department.
She administered 12,449 of the fake immunizations to roughly 1,500 school-aged patients before submitting information to the state’s immunization database claiming the children had received their required vaccinations against measles, mumps, rubella, polio, chickenpox, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B and a host of other diseases, the department said.
“By intentionally falsifying immunization records for students, this licensed health care professional not only endangered the health and safety of our school communities but also undermined public trust,” State Education Commissioner Betty A. Rosa said in a statement.
Breen’s lawyer said Thursday that his client cooperated with investigators, paid her fine and intends to comply with all other requirements of her agreement with health officials.
“Suffice it to say, Ms. Breen has provided excellent midwifery services for many years to many families, especially on Long Island. She is now toward the end of her career,” David Eskew wrote in an emailed statement. “From her perspective, this matter is over, done with, and closed and she is now moving on with her life.”
As part of the settlement, Breen has paid $150,000 of the $300,000 penalty, with the remainder suspended contingent upon her complying with state health laws and never again administering any immunization that must be reported to the state, according to the health department. She’s also permanently banned from accessing the state’s immunization records system.
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.
State health officials say they’re now in the process of notifying hundreds of affected school districts.
Director of Investigations Joseph Giovannetti called the case against Breen a “first-of-its-kind investigation.”
“Anyone involved in immunization fraud is on notice: Rooting out, combating, and preventing all forms of vaccination fraud is a top priority for the Bureau of Investigations, and we will continue to bring enforcement action against any offender who endangers the health of our communities and abuses our public health systems with this type of illegal activity,” he said in a statement.
Writer Delia Ephron, famous for rom-coms like “You’ve Got Mail,” knows how to dream up a fairy-tale storyline. But Ephron’s Broadway debut later this month comes directly from the pages of her life.
Ephron has written about intimate things before, but now it is her own life that is on the stage for everyone to see. She said it was not easy, “because I am basically introverted.”
But she sure makes it look easy. When “Sunday Morning” first interviewed Ephron two-and-a-half years ago, she’d just finished a best-selling memoir, “Left on Tenth.” Now she’s turned that book into a play, telling her remarkable story of beating the odds. She said, “It’s the story of a woman who loses her beloved husband of 38 years, and a man from her past drops into her life and she falls madly in love. And then shortly afterwards I got diagnosed with a terrible disease, a fatal leukemia. And I survived.”
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That’s right: seven years ago, because of her blood cancer, Delia Ephron was given four months to live. She’d already lost her sister, Nora, and her husband, Jerry, to cancer. But she somehow found love again, and got married in the hospital while undergoing chemo (a wedding that Dr. LaPook, a friend of Ephron’s, recorded).
Five-time Tony Award-winner Susan Stroman is directing the play. “It’s about second chances, and love, and life, and being brave enough to take those second chances, ’cause most people aren’t,” she said.
Stroman and Ephron share something in common they wish they didn’t. “I sadly lost my husband to AML, to leukemia,” Stroman said. “So, when I started to read the play, I knew everything about what was going on. I didn’t have to research anything, ’cause I had lived it, too.”
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She said it is “tricky” to direct the play’s turns from humor, to tragedy, and back again. But it’s a trick Stroman mastered – as “Sunday Morning” watched, tagging along every step of the way, from the first meet-and-greet, to an early rehearsal, to the stage of the James Earl Jones Theatre.
Emmy Award-winner Julianna Margulies plays Ephron. “They’re saying it’s a rom-com, and it is,” Margulies said. “It’s romantic, and it’s funny, and it’s wonderful, but bring tissues, in case you need them.”
LaPook asked stage legend Peter Gallagher (who plays Peter Rutter, Ephron’s newfound love), “The play is about two people falling in love who are not in their 20s or 30s; they’re older than that. What’s the significance of that?”
“Well, you know, you’re closer to death!” Gallagher replied. “Everything is precious. And I think that’s another thing that the audience is going to recognize and feel.”
Asked about the play’s life lessons for the audience, Ephron said, “We plan our lives out as a young person: ‘Oh, I wanna get married. I wanna have children. I wanna have a career.’ You know, you make all these things. But then you don’t think, ‘Oh, what’s gonna happen to me after I’m 50? What life do I want then?’ It’s a much more open book. And this is about seizing those years and really creating something.”
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Story produced by Amiel Weisfogel. Editor: Remington Korper.
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An Israeli airstrike hit a mosque in central Gaza and Palestinian officials said at least 19 people were killed early Sunday. Israeli planes also lit up the skyline across the southern suburbs of Beirut, striking what the military said were Hezbollah targets.
The strike in Gaza hit a mosque where displaced people were sheltering near the main hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah. Another four people were killed in a strike on a school sheltering displaced people near the town.
The Israeli military said both strikes targeted militants, without providing evidence.
An Associated Press journalist counted the bodies at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital morgue. Hospital records showed that the dead from the strike on the mosque were all men, while another man was wounded.
In Beirut, the strikes reportedly targeted a building near a road leading to Lebanon’s only international airport and another formerly used by the Hezbollah-run broadcaster Al-Manar.
Hussein Malla / AP
Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the Lebanon border almost daily since the day after Hamas’ cross-border attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 Israelis and took 250 others hostage. Israel declared war on the Hamas militant group in the Gaza Strip in response. As the Israel-Hamas war reaches the one-year mark, nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory, and just over half the dead have been women and children, according to local health officials.
Nearly 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon in the latest conflict, most of them since Sept. 23, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.