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.
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.
Not for babies, it won’t
It could to some degree through parents, but most probably not, indeed.
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.
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.
Probably more like “I better shut up, or mom will shove more stuff up my butt.”
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.
That’s child abuse. But it’s also an example of how strong beliefs in homeopathy can arise. With fluctuating conditions, people often seek a solution when symptoms (or the child’s cries) are at their worst. When they get better soon after, it creates an illusion of effectiveness.
A similar illusion is at work with the MMR vaccine. Autism becomes diagnosable at around the same age as the first shot is given, creating a powerful impression that the two events are connected.
It’s why we have randomised controlled trials. With no control arm for comparison, your friend has concluded that abusing their child is somehow useful.
I myself am note sure whether they are any useful or effective, to each of their own. It’s not like I can talk him out of it. I wouldn’t spend a dime on any homeopathic at all.
The placebo effect isn’t stopping measles or polio.
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…