Babies Are Bleeding to Death as Parents Reject a Vitamin Shot Given at Birth
propublica.org
propublica.org
https://maximumfun.org/episodes/sawbones/sawbones-vitamin-k/
(The ointment is also primarily for chlamydia these days.)
I guess I don't see the point in rejecting the shot. It's a vitamin, it has a clear benefit, and no drawback.
Whoever told you that is selling something. Vitamin K is fat soluble and even the cheapest, lowest quality formulae can deliver enough of a dosage for an elephant. Unless the newborn is already bleeding, immediate supplementation is unnecessary. (Unless you're expecting to injure the newborn, in which case please get in the back of the squad car, sir, and don't bump your head.)
I suppose it's possible the newborn is already bleeding, in which case somebody should probably figure out why and address that first.
> I guess I don't see the point in rejecting the shot. It's a vitamin, it has a clear benefit, and no drawback.
Please don't give medical advice. You're not good at it.
A big whack of K (either form) in a shot can't be pulled back if it turns out to be too much for the child. If the placental diffusion just so happened to be higher for a particular child, and their levels were not so very deficient, now you've got an overdose condition to deal with.[1] Normally that's not the end of the world, but to say there's "no drawback" is just wrong. Further, it's entirely unnecessary when there are safer, titratable methods that don't involve poking a hole in the newborn, such as adding K to pumped breast milk or painting the mother's nipple. Oral dosage can be spread out over many feedings, and at the slightest indication of excess (jaundice, for example) can be discontinued without further risk.
But of course, this requires the mother to have the wherewithal to remember to do the supplementation, and modern hospital protocols are designed with the assumption that the mother is incompetent at her job. Some of us have higher opinions of women and their ability to do what women have routinely done for millennia. A cynic might also point out that the hospital can't charge you as much for a bottle of cheap gel caps as an injection.
By the way, K1 is the plant-derived form, which some of us feel is a bit better to supplement with than K2, particularly when coupled with fat intake. On the other hand, if you do intend to let the hospital shoot up your newborn instead, maybe ask to see the vial first.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20251206091225/https://www.vinme...
Vitamin fortified formula can supplement vitamin K, though my understanding is that most formulas still contain insufficient vitamin K. Maybe parents who plan to formula-feed can have that conversation with their doctor. Oral administration still comes with the risk of vitamin K deficient bleeding, so I would encourage parents going this route to still carefully consider why a shot is considered the best standard of care.[1]
> now you've got an overdose condition to deal with.[1]
Funnily enough, I've read the same article, and didn't come away with the idea that vitamin K excess was a possibility warranting much concern. The symptoms of vitamin K overdose can be concerning, but typically require large repeated doses of vitamin K. I guess, if I am making an assumption, it's that since we have been doing this for decades with no real negative consequences, that doctors and nurses are well aware of the doses required to boost infant vitamin K without harming them. My understanding is that allergic reactions are the most common complication, and even those are rare.
https://health.ucdavis.edu/blog/cultivating-health/facts-and...
See my longer comment above regarding this vitamin deficiency, why shots should not be the first response, and hints at why we have this status quo.
Anti-vax activists like RFK Jr. https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/healthpolicy...
He's actively suppressing publication of studies showing vaccine safety as a government official.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/05/us/politics/fda-covid-vac...
That would be an extraordinary claim.
If you’re the top health official of the country and spread doubt about numerous public health interventions, including actively suppressing research showing their safety and efficacy, yes, you’re guilty as fuck.
Hope this helps clarify things.
It’s just so diffuse that it doesn’t fit in our crime model. Like polluters who shave years off an entire neighborhood’s lives via health impacts.
If your policy of letting kindergarteners play with grenades goes bad, you go to jail.
He's rather infamous for his part in the 2019 Samoa measles outbreak.
See: https://apnews.com/article/rfk-jr-samoa-measles-kennedy-vacc...
See: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/rfk-jr-samoa-measles-va...
See: https://www.newsweek.com/rfk-jr-denies-samoa-visit-was-vacci...
The changes he's made upon taking over HHS are almost certain to have far-reaching affects which eclipse that.
Fucking with vaccines kills people. Getting rid of USAID kills people. Selling cigarettes kills people. But none of these are crimes. Some of them probably should be.
Individual different is real. Law of large number is true only for large number. Until you can claim omniscience, I don't think we should make an individual responsible for a "statistical" crime for one individual.
Government policy, on the other hand, ...
Why not? We know tobacco execs lied about the dangers, even in Congressional testimony, and suppressed evidence. It's documented; no omniscience required.
Musk's DOGE cuts killed, at minimum, hundreds of thousands. It's highly likely he was aware of that likelihood.
The world has a lot of things it needs to figure out with all this stuff. Blanket statements just aren’t very valuable IMO.
No, I'd say the responsibility there lies on the car company execs making F-250s ever-bigger to the point they have worse forward visibility than a M1 Abrams tank. https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-v...
> What about the trees outside my home and their hundred pound limbs — if one breaks it will almost certainly be fatal.
If you don't maintain your trees and they kill your neighbor or damage their house, you'll often be on the hook for it, yes. Insurance won't cover you if it was negligence.
> why does an infant refused a vaccine constitute murder but 11 days earlier in the womb its life had no value?
Virtually zero abortions happen 11 days before term. When they do, they're medical emergencies, not voluntary.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_abortion_by_gesta...
“Do you understand what I'm saying?" shouted Moist. "You can't just go around killing people!"
"Why Not? You Do." The golem lowered his arm.
"What?" snapped Moist. "I do not! Who told you that?"
"I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People," said the golem calmly.
"I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be–– all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!"
"No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going PostalYour story is describing a situation where one person's decision so strongly and clearly affects numerous unrelated people's lives that it's statistically guaranteed that some of them died as a result. Moreover, there's no plausible argument presented that the decision was in any sense intended to prevent unintended/unpredictable harm to those who would be ultimately affected by it. It's for the "joy of the game".
Whereas the article is describing a situation where one person's decision is increasing the risk of death of one person (their own child). There's no statistical guarantee of anyone's death at the time of the parent's decision to not inject their child. Nor is the parent's decision affecting numerous people. Nor is the parent's decision affecting unrelated people - it's affecting exactly the people they have the most connection to & responsibility over: their own child. Nor are they refusing this "for sport" or "for the joy of the game"...
The statistical murder is done by the people spreading that disinformation. Wakefield. RFK Jr. Alex Jones. etc.
We kept it civil. But in the end, I came to the conclusion that being anti-vaxx was a core part of his identity as part of the wellness community, and I was never going to change that.
Infants are supposed to get vitamin K and other nutrients from breastfeeding, but we push formula.
Vitamin K is supposed to stabilize after a week, but we push booster shots.
Some parents believed the advocacy of actors, and withheld boosters and vaccines-- while feeding their children chemical slop that makes the news every so often after being found contaminated with toxins or deficient in some vital nutrient or mineral, leading to headlines like this.
For maximum hilarity we're putting infants' underdeveloped clotting mechanisms to the test with a battery of injections and performing cosmetic circumcisions just hours after birth.
If the assignment was "come up with a way to maim or kill as many children as possible while maintaining plausible deniability," these are the sorts of subversive pediatric policies I'd suggest. They'll bleed out days or months later, I feign ignorance and avoid attribution, mission accomplished.
Every step of this is handled in the dumbest way conceivable, and if you speak out about it you get blackballed. (Not that this is anything new; they did the same to Semmelweiss, committing him to a mental hospital and beating him to death for suggesting that doctors should wash their hands between surgeries.)
Babylonians/Jews wait until day 8--no sooner, no later--for reasons they could only have discovered through trial-and-error. They perform the same operations and get all the same vaccines we do but Israel's autism rate is 50% lower than the US. Maternal and infant mortality rates are also significantly lower for them. We trade in equipment and cross-train the same practitioners. The only differences are keeping infant nutrition organic/kosher and delaying ritual infant trauma just long enough so that they don't bleed to death in the absence of Vitamin K boosters.
This is literally nonsense.
From the article:
> All newborns lack vitamin K. No matter how much vitamin K a mother consumes, it doesn’t sufficiently pass through the placenta, and breast milk contains only small amounts. That puts babies who are exclusively breastfed at a higher risk for vitamin K deficiency bleeding. Formula is fortified with vitamin K, but even with that, experts agree, babies should still get the shot.
Is it possible that this article might have an agenda and is less than 100% accurate?
Did you just pull out of this out of the air?
Increased diagnosis and awareness, which is something Israel has caught up on recently, has brought the rate to effectively equal. Not 50% lower.
Pretending that it doesn't exist doesn't make it actually not exist.