Babies bleed to death as parents reject vitamin injection given at birth

They entered the world as babies should, with shrill cries announcing their arrival. They passed their newborn screening tests. Some attended their two-week wellness visits without worry.

Then, without warning, their systems began to shut down. A 7-week-old boy in Maryland developed sudden seizures. In Alabama, an 11-pound girl stopped breathing for 20 seconds at a time. A little boy in Kentucky vomited before becoming lethargic. In Texas, a brown-haired girl, less than 2 weeks old, was bleeding around her belly button.

Desperate to save them, records show, doctors inserted tubes into their airways and hooked them up to IVs. They ordered blood transfusions. They spent half an hour trying to resuscitate a boy until his parents told them they could stop. They shaved another boy’s limp locks to stick a needle directly into his skull to relieve pressure in his brain.

None of this was enough.

At the morgue, the babies were brought in their diapers and blankets and with their hospital identification bracelets still wrapped around their little ankles. The pathologists’ findings were similar to those typically seen in sick adults, not newborns – the type of bleeding seen during a stroke or loss of brain tissue similar to what occurs when radiation therapy is given to treat cancer.

Their autopsies, which took place over the past several years, all came to the same conclusion: The deaths were caused, in whole or in part, by a rare but potentially fatal condition known as vitamin K deficiency hemorrhage.

In almost all cases, the babies’ deaths could have been prevented with a long-term vitamin K injection. But across the country, families — first in small numbers, now in droves — are refusing the single, inexpensive injection given at birth to newborns to help their blood clot.

Many of them do it out of caution, well-meaning but misinformed. Hoping to protect their newborns from what they view as unnecessary medical intervention, they have avoided any basic, scientifically based pharmaceutical intervention. This trend is also fueled by a contradictory combination: families’ fierce desire to protect their babies and a cascade of false information infused into their social media algorithms.

Although it is not a vaccine, the vitamin K injection has been swept away by the same post-pandemic wave that has led to a decline in major childhood vaccines, particularly for measles and whooping cough.

The vitamin K injection is one of three main interventions, along with the hepatitis B vaccine and antibiotic eye ointment, that newborns usually receive before leaving the hospital. Leading U.S. institutions and the World Health Organization recommend that newborns be vaccinated.

In December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped recommending that all newborns receive the hepatitis B vaccine, which has been shown to be highly effective in fighting a virus that can lead to lifelong infections and liver cancer. In March, a federal judge temporarily blocked the revised childhood vaccination schedule that included this recommendation. Some families also reject eye ointment.

Two weeks ago, at a House subcommittee hearing, Rep. Kim Schrier, D-Wash., pressed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to reassure parents that the vitamin K injection is safe. He refused and pushed back.

“I never said, literally never said anything about it,” Kennedy said.

“That’s exactly the problem,” replied Schrier, who is a doctor. “You don’t say anything about it, but the doubt you have created about all of medicine and science is pushing parents to make dangerous decisions.”

An HHS spokesperson did not respond to questions, but in an email blamed former President Joe Biden’s administration for the increase in parents rejecting vitamin K shots. “Vitamin K at birth,” the spokesperson added, “remains the standard of care.”

Meanwhile, families continue to be inundated with advice from self-proclaimed experts using medical terms incorrectly and misunderstanding science to convince parents that getting vaccinated could expose their newborn to serious danger.

Nearly a century of research and medical progress demonstrates the opposite.

Babies who do not receive vitamin K, research showsare 81 times more likely than those who do to develop late-onset bleeding due to vitamin K deficiency, where in many cases oxygen cannot reach their brain and blood pools around their skull. Perhaps most alarming is that, according to the CDC, 1 in 5 babies with bleeding due to vitamin K deficiency will die.

It is difficult to determine precisely how many babies died or suffered serious brain damage due to a lack of vitamin K. State and federal agencies do not track data regarding vitamin K injection refusal or subsequent bleeding, hampering their ability to quantify and track outcomes, including deaths.

The number of deaths directly attributed to hemorrhage due to vitamin K deficiency appears low — less than a dozen per year — but has begun to increase in recent years, according to death certificate data from federal and state agencies.

But these figures reflect only a fraction of deaths, which are often classified only by other, more immediate causes, such as brain hemorrhages. In 2024, for example, more than 700 newborns died from spontaneous brain hemorrhage, which could have been complicated by liver disease or prematurity. Yet six medical specialists and a CDC official said a significant portion of these deaths were likely due to vitamin K deficiency. Many other babies survive the hemorrhage, but suffer massive brain hemorrhages and lasting injuries.

“A lot of providers don’t have this on their radar,” said Dr. Jaspreet Loyal, a pediatric hospitalist at Yale Medicine. “The lack of data almost reassures families that this risk is worth taking.” »

Although it is difficult to quantify deaths attributable to vitamin K deficiency, there is clearly a sharp increase in the number of parents refusing the vitamin K injection. Some hospitals have seen refusal rates more than double. A national study of more than 5 million births, released in December, found that the rate of U.S. babies not receiving vitamin K at birth would exceed 5% in 2024, an increase of 77% from 2017.

The success of this injection was so remarkable that it almost eliminated bleeding due to vitamin K deficiency. The science was established decades ago.

“We didn’t even bother to put a lot of educational effort into this,” said Dr. Allison Henry, director of neonatal medicine at Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s in Los Angeles, “because there was this simple, safe intervention.”

A series of cases 13 years ago was one of the first major signs that something was wrong.

Four babies were rushed to a children’s hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, after suddenly falling ill months apart. Stunned, doctors ran tests that revealed severe bleeding and contacted Dr. Robert Sidonio Jr., their blood disorder specialist. They learned the parents had refused vitamin K injections for the babies, each aged 6 to 15 weeks.

Once they realized this, the medical team rushed to treat them, injecting them with vitamin K and hoping it wasn’t too late. To the great relief of the doctors, they all survived. Only one infant had developmental delays.

The parents explained that they refused the injection for a number of reasons: a fear, based on long-disproven claims, that the injection could cause leukemia; the belief that the shooting was unnecessary; and the desire to reduce their baby’s exposure to “toxins.”

The CDC and state health department opened an investigation and later released a report finding that when parents refused to be vaccinated, their awareness of the risk of bleeding was “incomplete or absent.”

Dr. Anna Morad, a pediatrician at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt in Nashville, said she has seen a gradual increase in the number of families refusing vitamin K before hospitalizations.

She and her colleagues traveled to the Nashville community to speak at birthing centers and advise families about the benefits of vitamin K. A mother who had refused the shot for her newborn partnered with Morad and described how she realized the shot could save lives.

More than a dozen pediatricians interviewed by ProPublica said they strongly recommended all three typical interventions for newborns, but agreed that the vitamin K injection was the most life-saving.

“I choose vitamin K every day,” Morad said. “Absolutely.”

Over time, the number of families refusing to be vaccinated has decreased. As the need for community outreach diminished, Morad lost contact with the mother she had teamed up with and refocused her energy on running Vanderbilt Health’s newborn nursery.

“I’ll be honest, I thought we had turned the corner,” Morad said. “Naively, I thought that would be enough.”

All newborns are deficient in vitamin K. No matter how much vitamin K the mother consumes, not enough of it passes through the placenta, and breast milk contains only small amounts. This puts exclusively breastfed babies at higher risk of bleeding due to vitamin K deficiency. Infant formula is fortified with vitamin K, but even with that, experts agree that babies should still get vaccinated.

Doctors have yet to understand why some babies who don’t get the vitamin K injection do well while others bleed uncontrollably. But they know that the risk increases considerably. For babies who do not receive the vaccine, the risk of bleeding due to vitamin K deficiency from one week after birth to 6 months ranges from 1 in 14,000 to 1 in 25,000 births. With the vaccine, research shows, the risk drops to less than 1 in 100,000.

The role of vitamin K is so crucial that researchers were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1943 for discovering its ability to form clots and stop bleeding in babies. The official who presented the prize called this discovery of “the greatest practical importance” and ranked it among the discoveries that brought great benefit to humanity.

In 1961, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that all newborns in the United States receive an injection of vitamin K. The CDC also supported newborns by getting vaccinated, devoting several pages online to raising awareness about bleeding due to vitamin K deficiency, and writing that babies can bleed “into their intestines or into their brain, which can lead to brain damage or even death.” For decades, medical textbooks and conferences have touted the vitamin K injection as a public health policy success story.

After reports that bleeding due to vitamin K deficiency was increasing, the American Academy of Pediatrics updated its policy statement in 2022 to emphasize the safety and effectiveness of the injection. The document included talking points for pediatricians to help address common misconceptions: “Vitamin K injection does not contain mercury. Vitamin K does not cause cancer. Vitamin K injection used in newborns is safe. The dose is not too high for newborns.”

“We are victims of our own success,” said Dr. Ivan Hand, director of neonatology at Kings County Hospital Center in New York and co-author of the American Academy of Pediatrics statement. “Since we’ve been treating babies with vitamin K, we haven’t seen a lot of bleeding from deficiency, so people think it doesn’t exist.”

Seeing photos online of healthy babies who haven’t received vitamin K and reading comments from parents who felt justified in their refusal, it’s easy to think that the risk of bleeding isn’t real, or at least exaggerated.

On Facebook, comments about the shooting include: “Don’t do it!” » “Huge lie!” and “It’s a scare tactic.” One person wrote: “I would never inject my baby with poisons from big pharmaceutical companies. »

Families also pointed to a 2023 episode about vitamin K injections by conservative podcaster Candace Owens, who said, “What big pharma is saying is we realize babies are born wrong. They don’t have enough vitamin K, and so we’re going to give them what they always need. God designed us wrong.”

Owens did not respond to a request for comment.

The agony of parents who mourn the loss of their baby is hidden. Some are still in denial.

ProPublica spoke with five of these families, but none wanted to be publicly identified.

Obituaries, social media posts and GoFundMe pages capture the families’ utter desperation, even though none of them factor in the decision not to get the vitamin K vaccine.

“No one could have prepared us for the heartbreak we faced six weeks after the birth of our little miracle,” one mother wrote. “She had a spontaneous and unexplained brain hemorrhage which led to brain death.”

“We miss his sweet smell,” another family wrote.

A third family, who made their decision after hearing about vitamin K on social media and talking with their midwife, rejected the vitamin K injection altogether. Instead, the father expressed outrage at the hospital for not delaying clamping the umbilical cord. He said he believed this would have allowed his son to receive vitamin K from cord blood, a popular theory on social media. Research shows, however, that while delayed cord clamping can increase a baby’s hemoglobin levels, it does not have the same effect on vitamin K.

“I thought the hospital was already mad at me because we hadn’t vaccinated at all,” he told ProPublica. “They lost all the money through this.”

The family’s anger has calmed somewhat since the baby’s death, in part because of their trust in God’s plan.

“I can sit here and be upset and sad, but it has brought me closer to God,” the father said. “I just can’t wait to be with him.”

Two of the families who had other children found themselves faced with the same decision: would they refuse the vitamin K injection again? Both received the vaccine for their newborn.

Morad has observed an increase in the number of families suffering from vitamin K deficiency over the past year.

In January, she contacted Sidonio, her former colleague who first recognized the 2013 cluster of cases, for advice. Sidonio, now a pediatric hematologic oncologist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and a professor at Emory University School of Medicine, said he is more worried than ever.

During this group, Sidonio recognized the need to collect data on how often parents refuse the vaccine and what happens to those babies. But in discussions with the CDC, he said, he was told it would be too difficult.

More than a decade later, nothing has been done. In a recent email to ProPublica, federal officials said bleeding due to vitamin K deficiency has never been submitted for review as a reportable condition.

“If you don’t track it, you don’t document it,” Sidonio said, frustration growing in his voice. “They need to make this a reportable health issue, just like a new case of measles. That’s the only way things will change.”

Like him, Dr. Kristan Scott, lead author of the national study that found an increase in the number of babies not receiving vitamin K, also stressed the need for a robust system to monitor vitamin K refusals and their subsequent consequences.

“We don’t have a clean data repository provided by public health systems or by the state that would allow us to track this in a more systematic way,” said Scott, a neonatologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Some doctors failed to recognize the role of vitamin K when a baby showed up in the emergency room, and even fewer knew how to reverse the damage caused by refused injections. Many of them have only encountered this disease in medical school textbooks.

Some hospitals have started managing their own numbers, but efforts are scattered. The data is also usually kept internally, so there is no wider awareness of the problem. Aware of the urgency of the issue, officials at a handful of hospitals agreed to share their data with ProPublica.

Doctors at St. Louis-based Mercy, which operates birthing hospitals in Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, began noticing an increase in families refusing the vitamin K shot during the pandemic. Last year, 1,552 babies across all Mercy hospitals did not receive the shot. In 2021, this number was 536.

And in Idaho’s largest hospital system, refusal rates have increased every year since the pandemic began and, in some cases, more than doubled. In 2020, 3.8% of families in the St. Luke’s Health System declined vitamin K injections for their babies. In 2025, this figure increased to 9.8%. One hospital even reached 20% of babies who were not receiving vitamin K injections.

At least two babies treated at St. Luke’s have died in the past year from complications related to hemorrhaging due to vitamin K deficiency, hospital officials confirmed. But Dr. Tom Patterson, a pediatrician who treats newborns at some St. Luke’s hospitals and has been one of the most vocal to warn about rising refusal rates, suspects there could be more.

Patterson recently begged a family to allow their baby to get vaccinated. The father refused and shocked the doctor by going even further. He went to the nurses to complain about Patterson’s insistence on this matter.

How we reported this story

As part of our reporting, ProPublica contacted 55 hospitals and birthing centers across the United States; interviewed more than 30 doctors; and filed nearly 90 public records requests with state and local health departments, medical examiners and other agencies. ProPublica also analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and reviewed hundreds of pages of medical and autopsy records.