Vitamin K, a lifesaver for newborns, is being abandoned by parents

My department is named for Edward A. Doisy, who shared the 1943 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for the discovery of vitamin K. He was the founding chair of my department, which was 100 years old in 2024. Naturally, I have more than average appreciation for this discovery and its medical impact.

“The rate of newborns not receiving the vitamin K shot within a day of birth in hospitals jumped more than 57% from January through June, a review of health records for more than 1 ​million births nationwide by health data and analytics company Truveta revealed.

“While vitamin K refusals have been on the rise for years, the Truveta analysis shows that in the first half of 2026, the rate of non-receipt was 2.5 times higher than the average rate from 2019 to 2024. It was 1.4 times higher than in 2025.”

 

OK, but so what?

“Babies are born with very low levels of vitamin K, which helps blood to clot, and are unprotected up until about six months of age, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which still recommends the shot. Without the injection, they are 81 times more likely in those first six months to have life-threatening bleeding in the brain or gut, the CDC says.

“One out of five infants who experience serious bleeding will die. Without the shot, such bleeding occurs in one out of 59 births.”

This is a natural extension of the distrust RFK Jr has been sowing for years in lifesaving vaccines for infants and children. On the one hand, he insists that women should be having more children. On the other hand, he’s doing his best to insure that many of those children meet an untimely and avoidable end.

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/exclusive-us-refusals-crucial-newborn-100213505.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubWVkcGFnZXRvZGF5LmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADbBhont_-gBajZdBHmGZiAiJsoUbOt4MLvhCfp2eG168XaB08qETf0HEunw5uWgeFnuXa9QslEH_6sfHo6_hg7pWdAqPmaPyGbGmIbM8aIX5-WlG_Ot4xFhZbFKfnVLzs5UcVy2mzAqhzjD96X6ohyPrRnvVoDNiMwoCuxZoK2a 

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