How a glossy brochure conveys anti-vaccine messages in Jewish Orthodox communities

In its 40 pages, between cartoons mocking the medical world, PEACH magazine wrongly suggests that vaccines consist of "toxins". Without any evidence, he says vaccines are the biggest threat to public health in the country, linked to autism, ADHD and sudden infant death. Syndrome, miscarriage and other diseases.

A note from the editor of the manual explains why parent education and advocacy for children's health is an anonymous organization: "Please forgive us our anonymity. It's not because we do not believe in our cause. We do! This is because many of us have been abused by other members of the community for questioning medical authorities and advocating for children's health. "

Yet, according to the State Department and the Internet Domain Registration Registries of the State of New York, PEACH appears to be tied to both a decade-old misinformation hotline targeting the community Orthodox and Enriched Parenting, a website that peddles Jewish remedies from a Jewish perspective. hoaxes of vaccines.

The Enriched Parenting website features retouched photos of kids picking flowers in lavender fields, as well as articles explaining the anxiety sparked by the measles outbreak. There are articles on how to beat back-to-school blues and treat urinary tract infections with herbs. There is also a forum where members exchange sourdough recipes and alternative cancer treatments.

It's not just trendy, it's efficient. Research shows that the combination of false information about vaccines with alternative medicines, homeopathy and diet content is in this way one of the most prevalent techniques and the more persuasive used by advocates of anti-vaccination to convey their program.

"When an element of misinformation is associated with other beliefs, attitudes, values ​​and behaviors that we already accept, it becomes easier to understand and accept," said Meghan Bridgid Moran, Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "And anti-vaccine websites can take advantage of this by combining misinformation about vaccines with alternative medicines or holistic health care."

In 2017, members of the Pittsburgh Orthodox Jewish community – who have widely adopted the vaccination – complained on Facebook that PEACH was targeting their neighborhoods by mailing unsolicited copies of the manual.

Since the beginning of the measles outbreak in New York in October, 285 cases have been confirmed in the city, most of which were unvaccinated or partially vaccinated children, resulting in 21 hospitalizations and five admissions to the unit intensive care. This epidemic, like others in New York and New Jersey last year, has spread to Jewish Orthodox communities.

Blima Marcus, Nurse Practitioner at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and a member of the Orthodox Jewish Nurses Association, told the New York Gothamist blog that the magazine "was an anti-vaccination propaganda document" particularly effective in the Orthodox community because of "an almost genetic fear of whether what the government says is true."

City Health Commissioner Dr Oxiris Barbot said on Tuesday that the epidemic "is being fueled by a small group of anti-vaxxers living in these neighborhoods, spreading false false information based on false data. scientists. "

For the past decade, through the Akeres Habayis Hotline, a registered message center for Orthodox Jewish women, PEACH has spread unfounded fears about vaccines in the Orthodox community and helped skeptical parents avoid them. Chany Silber, 41, has been moderating teleconferences since at least 2011, according to advertisements in Jewish magazines. In 2014, according to Internet registration records, Silber bought the domain name PeachMoms.org – a website that never seems to have gone beyond the "next preparation" phase.

Silber declined an interview when the Gothamist website rang last month, but said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "say a lot of wrong things," Gothamist reported. Silber did not respond to an e-mail or text message requesting a comment. A woman coming out of Silber 's apartment Thursday ignored the questions of a NBC News reporter.

There are several links between PEACH and Enriched Parenting in the online and public archives. PEACH is registered as a non-profit group with the State Department of the State of New York. In these registers, PEACH lists Enriched Parenting, which describes itself as "informing parents on how to promote physical and emotional well-being throughout their children's lives," on its website. Previously, the "donate" links to the Enriched Parenting site, accessed through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, led donors to a PEACH donations page. In addition, the website enrichedparenting.org was registered in 2015 under the e-mail address of current founder and president Rebecca Fleischmann, and is named after her organization, "Educating and Advocating Parents for Children's Health". after the historical data of the Internet domain.

Calls and emails sent to Enriched Parenting and Fleischmann have not been returned. In a text of the phone number listed on the Enriched Parenting website, a person who refused to identify himself denied any association with the manual.

A copy of the magazine, which lists Enriched Parenting among the first of eight "useful websites," is currently on the Enriched Parenting website in a section titled "Assets."

Asked about the many associations, another answer came by SMS.

"Enriched Parenting is an administrator of parents who educates and defends the interests of children's health, Inc.," reads the text. "Our organization is not affiliated with Peach magazine. We are an organization that supports religious, philosophical and medical choices. We have never been and have never been opposed to coercion and the loss of civil liberties. We support informed decision-making and the right to choose for all parents. Our activities are geared towards education and health options on a wide variety of topics, not just the information about vaccines. "

From 2015 to the fall of 2018, just about the beginning of the current measles epidemic, the Enriched Parenting website featured a large section on its vaccines homepage, based on historical information from the Internet. .

The entire vertical, which included dozens of articles and links to resources and research pushing for vaccine misinformation, was removed when the group changed names and relaunched the website shortly after last August.

The new brand has come with a new, flashy website, a renewed presence in social media and a less effective method of advocating for the fight against immunization. Enriched Parenting seems to aspire to become a lifestyle brand.

Through Enriched Parenting, Fleischmann has organized events bringing together holistic health practitioners such as Long Island Pediatrician Lawrence Palevsky, a world anti-vaccine star who has appeared in at least one anti-vaccine documentary, and Dr. Leonard Kundel, a dentist with records in Connecticut and New York after being accused of mishandling a patient in 2011, who practices a "whole body" approach to dentistry. According to his Instagram account, Kundel is Fleischmann's personal family dentist and maintains in his waiting room an "enriched library" that contains almost exclusively books on vaccination.

"I do not associate Enriched Parenting with an anti-vaccine only," said Lena Podolsky, the practice manager at Kundel, who responded to a request for comment. "I went to two seminars and it's pretty cool. So, I do not think they are controversial. They are really avant-garde. "

Other events include a "Spa Evening for the Body, Mind and Soul" featuring a homeopath who advocated herbal treatments for depression and anxiety. . Recently, the group organized smaller group sessions for locals in six states with monthly themes such as "Bloom, where you are planted".

The Enriched Parenting Facebook page has more than 1,900 subscribers. And its reach exceeds the Orthodox community, with its president and a partner who have published articles and published articles in 162,000 members of Stop Mandatory Vaccination, Facebook's largest and most active private anti-vaccination group.

Moishe Kahan, 47, from Brooklyn, cited as contributing editor in the PEACH handbook, often posts on the Enriched Parenting Facebook page. In addition to helping administer the Enriched Parenting page, Kahan also leads the Jewish and Vaccine Group, formerly known as Jewish Skeptics for Vaccines. He did not immediately respond to questions sent by email.

On Wednesday, there were only a few articles on vaccines on the Enriched Parenting site. An article by Binyamin Rothstein – an anti-vaccine lawyer whose medical licenses were revoked in Maryland and New York in 2005 and 2012 respectively, for improperly treating patients with intravenous vitamins and peroxidase. Hydrogen – suggested that measles was not a threat to human life and unvaccinated people. should simply take Vitamin A. (Like other advocates of immunization, Rothstein says he's not opposed to vaccination while spreading misinformation about their alleged dangers.)

Rothstein, who currently heads the PEACH conference calls on the Akeres Habayis hotline, is licensed to practice in Pennsylvania, but he is on probation by the medical board. The article was removed from the website on Wednesday after an investigation by NBC News.

The YouTube channel and Instagram profile of Enriched Parenting are always full of anti-vaccination content.

The current mailing address listed on the Enriched Parenting website is home to two school bus companies. The workers present told a reporter that they had never heard of Enriched Parenting.