#2839: Patricia Finn

Patricia Finn, P.C., is “a Vaccine Injury and Exemption litigation firm” run by Patricia Finn, Esq., a delusional anti-vaccine activist and lawyer who has built a legal career out of helping anti-vaccine loons and parents obtain exemptions from vaccine requirements – she did, for instance, represent anti-vaccine nurse Suzanne Field in the latter’s 2009 case challenging New York’s regulation requiring health care workers to be vaccinated – and in cases concerning alleged “vaccine injuries”. She at least used to be a minor celebrity on the anti-vaccine conspiracy circuit, landing interviews and feature articles with InfoWars and Mike Adams, conspiracy theory institutions that were quick to rush to Finn’s defense when she landed herself in legal troublesin 2012, presumably due to violations of the Rules of Professional Conduct for New York regarding advertising, crying – predictably – persecution; according to Adams, for instance, the real reason the State of New York was going after Finn was to get her client list so that CPS workers (agents of “Communist Pedophile Services”, as Adams sees it) could identify unvaccinated children, kidnap them and sell them into sex slavery.

 

Yes, that’s the scene at which Finn is performing and offering her services. According to herself (and we find it worthwhile to quote her at some length):

 

“The practice of vaccinating is dangerous. People are being deluged with vaccines because of fear mongering and profit. Mobilizing a global community to line up and inject should not be taken lightly, after all what if it is indeed weird science out of control, terrorism or maybe just a dose of bad shots because the contractors making and transporting the vaccines were skimming [sic] on ingredients, safety controls or refrigeration because it simply cost too much to adhere to pesky safety standards and formulas. Cutting corners might save a few bucks also. And what if the Pharma factory workers simply don’t like Americans and could care less if the shot is safe? The ProVax Choice community is not saying you can’t get the shot if you want it, but it is saying do so with caution because others could be affected”.

 

Yep; not only are vaccines unsafe, as Finn delusionally sees it, but everyone involved in developing, producing, transporting, offering and defending vaccines are evil, greedy and corrupt.

 

Whatever her legal troubles back in 2012 were about, Finn seems to be still going strong, offering her services to various anti-vaccine litigations (such as the case of Anthony Marciano). In 2014, for instance, Finn represented Dina Check, who claimed that her child had been improperly denied a religious vaccine exemption in a New York suit. (Check, in fact, rejects all of modern medicine, including vaccines, because of a religious revelation she had telling her that “disease is pestilence, and pestilence is from the devil. The devil is germs and disease, which is cancer and any of those things that can take you down. But if you trust in the Lord, these things cannot come near you.”) The suit was dismissed, and Finn couldn’t resist dismissing media commenting on the story as “pharma trolls” because everyone who disagrees with her must be dishonest and do so on behalf of a nefarious conspiracy.

 

In 2019, Finn was a vocal opponent of a push to end religious vaccine exemptions in New York after a number of measles outbreaks. Finn, ever the conspiracy theorists, saw the push to end religious exemptions as part of a “scheme” to benefit the pharmaceutical industry, and complained that opponents of such exemptions have embraced the “herd immunity” premise that outbreaks can be prevented from occurring if at least some 97 percent of the population has been vaccinated. “They want to eliminate exemptions to achieve herd immunity but herd immunity doesn’t exist [yes, it most certainly does],” claimed Finn because just asserting it can make a perfectly false claim true. Moreoever, “vaccines can actually spread measles and that is probably [most certainly not] what is happening.” As a lawyer, her lack of understanding of the role and function of evidence is sort of striking.

 

When the city did impose more stringent vaccination requirements, Finn, who is apparently also affiliated with Robert Kennedy jr.’s anti-vaccine organization The Children’s Health Defense, was part of a team, together with Robert Krakow and Kennedy, representing five parents of unvaccinated children protesting the requirements; they lost, and in his ruling on the case, Judge Lawrence Knipel correctly pointed out that the arguments presented by the plaintiffs amounted to little more than “unsupported, bald faced opinion”.

 

Diagnosis: Yes, even anti-vaccine activists deserve legal representation and has the right to challenge vaccine-related laws, and it is, of course, entirely legitimate for Finn to represent them. But Finn is also not only an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist herself, but one that is completely unfettered by reason and reality; one would think it wouldn’t usually help the case of her clients that Finn’s own conspiracy and pseudoscience commitments are even more insane than their own.

 

Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence, sciencebased medicine