Anti-vaccine parents lose custody of sick baby in New Zealand

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A six-month-old New Zealand baby with heart problems needed surgery to stay alive. The health system in the country of Oceania had already approved and organized the procedure, but an obstacle stopped the surgery: the child’s parents. They did not accept that she received blood from donors vaccinated against Covid-19.

On Wednesday (7), however, the New Zealand Justice contested the parents’ bizarre observation and took temporary custody of the baby until the surgery is performed and the child’s recovery is complete.

The newborn has a severe case of Pulmonary Valve Stenosis (PVS), which means that his or her pulmonary valve is too narrow to allow blood to flow from the heart to the lungs normally.

His parents, however, allege that the proteins in the blood of people vaccinated with immunizers that use messenger RNA would be causing unexpected deaths related to transfusions – theory, it is worth mentioning, without any proof.

Technology is one of the main targets of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, which erroneously claim that immunizers of the type can modify DNA, cause numerous diseases or cause the same diseases they should fight, among other supposed problems.

Theory, by the way, is more important to parents than the child’s life. “It’s much bigger than us. It’s much bigger than the baby. God doesn’t want this to be perpetrated on mankind. He doesn’t want this to be perpetrated on the baby,” the father said, according to The Washington Post.

It was then up to the New Zealand Justice to decide on the baby’s life. Still at the end of November, the state public health service filed a lawsuit asking for temporary custody of the child to perform the surgery and, on Wednesday, the Auckland Court concluded that the treatment proposed by the doctors “is in the best interest” of child.

“He continues to urgently need an operation, and every day the operation is postponed, his heart is under strain,” said the magistrate responsible for hearing the action. The surgery was scheduled for Friday (9) and should last 48 hours.

With that, the court ordered that the baby be placed in partial guardianship at least until January, when the post-surgery period is supposed to be over. The court also ruled that parents will remain guardians “for all other purposes” and will be kept informed of the status and progress of the baby’s condition and treatment.

The origin of the imbroglio dates back to October, when the child reportedly underwent surgery and subsequently received blood from a donor vaccinated against Covid-19. Upon learning about the transfusion, the baby’s parents were nervous and asked the doctors that such a procedure was no longer performed.

When the need for a second surgery arose, health professionals warned the child’s parents in November that it would not be possible to perform the transfusion without using the country’s blood bank – and such a procedure was essential. New Zealand states that it does not distinguish between materials from vaccinated and unvaccinated donors.

The information, however, was poorly received by the child’s parents, who would have been “extremely upset”, according to the court order, which the Washington Post had access to. The baby’s mother, meanwhile, accused doctors of “cornering her without any support present”.

According to the judge in the case, the parents would also have obstructed the efforts of the medical team to prepare the baby for surgery. “You touch our son, and we will file criminal charges against you,” they told the team, according to the lawsuit.

This case has been singled out by experts as particularly illustrative of the dangers of the antivax movement. According to them, the pseudoscientific arguments used by the family exemplify the reach of conspiracy narratives and continuous flows of disinformation.

This month, a 62-year-old man was arrested for plotting to knock out New Zealand’s power system to draw attention to his anti-vaccination convictions, in what was the first court conviction for sabotage in the country’s history.

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