For more than a decade, Dr. Joseph Mercola has warned parents about a potentially life-saving vitamin K injection for their newborn: “Vitamin K injections are completely useless for your newborn. »
But today, breaking with his past warnings, Mercola says he no longer believes them.
ProPublica recently contacted Mercola as she prepared an article about babies who died because their parents refused vitamin K injections. Mercola’s new view is just as unequivocal as the old: “The data is clear: vitamin K saves lives,” he writes in an article from April on his website two days after ProPublica contacted him. He added: “Based on the totality of published evidence, I support vitamin K prophylaxis for all newborns. »
He also asked parents to talk to their children’s pediatricians.
“Bleeding due to vitamin K deficiency is rare, but when it does occur, the consequences can be devastating and irreversible,” Mercola wrote. “Just one injection at birth can prevent it. Please talk to your doctor.”
Mercola is a leading vaccine skeptic and an ardent supporter of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He is a popular figure online, with a Facebook page that has some 1.7 million followers. It sends a daily newsletter and sells alternative treatments for various illnesses.
His turnaround comes at a critical time. Hospitals and research studies have documented an alarming increase in the number of babies not receiving the vitamin K injection, recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics since 1961 to help newborns’ blood clot. Without this, research showsbabies are 81 times more likely to have late-term bleeding due to vitamin K deficiency, which can be fatal.
Just as happened with measles and other vaccines, vitamin K shots have become the target of a deluge of misinformation online. This has led some parents to view it as an unnecessary pharmaceutical intervention amid continued distrust of the medical system following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some cite a 2010 article by Mercola, titled “The Dark Side of Routine Vitamin K Injection in Newborns.” A doctor in Tennessee recalled that reluctant families cited the article, as did doctors in Oregon.
In the years that followed, Mercola maintained his opposition. He reiterated his position in 2014, after four babies in Nashville, Tennessee, hemorrhaged due to vitamin K deficiency. And he did so again in 2019, after hospital staff contacted Illinois Child Protective Services and took temporary custody of a newborn whose parents had refused to get their baby vaccinated.
Instead of the injection, Mercola had recommended vitamin K drops, which are taken orally and have been touted online as a popular alternative. The drops, however, are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration and research shows they are not as effective as shooting, although they are used in some European countries.
In his April article, he addressed the misinformation spreading online about the vitamin K injection and acknowledged the role his writing may have played in its spread. “The Internet contains a significant amount of misinformation about vitamin K,” Mercola wrote. “Some of these may refer to my own 2010 article. This article reflects the state of a scientific debate that has since been resolved. Science has progressed, and so have I.”
In fact, the science around vitamin K injection has been established for decades. The discovery of vitamin K and its role in blood clotting won the Nobel Prize in 1943. More recent studies have confirmed and expanded on many of the findings available in 2010, but they do not represent a scientific departure from previous research. Some recent studies cited by Mercola in the April article the increase in the number of babies who do not receive the vaccine and the catastrophic bleeding in the brain it may follow, but again, both reinforce the same science that has encouraged the vaccine for over 60 years.
In previous articles by Mercola, he wrote about what he saw as risks of the injection, starting with “inappropriate” and “unnecessary” pain for the baby. He falsely claimed that the amount of vitamin K injected into newborns was far more than the dose needed. Additionally, he wrote that the vaccine could contain preservatives that could be “toxic” to the baby’s immune system.
Benzyl alcohol is often used as a preservative in vitamin K injections, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other organizations stressed that it was safe. In the 1980s, doctors realized that some extremely premature babies were suffering from benzyl alcohol poisoning, but, according to the CDC, this was because they were taking many medications containing it. Additionally, many hospitals now offer preservative-free options.
Some families have also expressed fears about a “black box warning” that appears on a medication label to alert providers of serious risks. The plan contains a boxed warning, as does more than 400 other medicines, but this mainly concerns adults and vitamin K given intravenously, not by injection into the thigh muscle, as is the case for doctors who usually give vitamin K to babies. None of the dozens of doctors interviewed by ProPublica said they had ever observed an adverse effect in an infant given a vitamin K injection.
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But even in 2010, Mercola dispelled a popular misconception that vitamin K injections increased the risk of cancer. This belief stems from two refuted older studies. In 2010, he wrote, “this conclusion was wrong.” In April, he reinforced that message.
The alternative treatments promoted by Mercola attracted the attention of the federal government. He and his companies had to pay millions of dollars to settle allegations that he made false claims about product safety.
During the pandemic, for example, the FDA sent Mercola a warning letter after it offered unapproved and mislabeled products on its website, including vitamin C, as ways to prevent or treat COVID-19.
In 2017, the Federal Trade Commission announced it would send $2.59 million to people who purchased Mercola indoor tanning systems. The agency accused Mercola and his companies of claiming that the tanning systems were safe and that research had shown that indoor tanning did not increase the risk of melanoma, a type of skin cancer.
Mercola did not admit wrongdoing. His online posts include a disclaimer that they are intended to share knowledge and information, not medical advice. He also said his 2010 article on vitamin K was based on an interview with a Dutch researcher who studied vitamin K.
Mercola, a doctor of osteopathic medicine, declined to be interviewed for this article, but said his current position was accurately reflected in the April article. “While I do not agree with all of the characterizations and conclusions in your summary,” he wrote in response to questions from ProPublica, “I have nothing further to add at this time.”
Even though Mercola has now changed its stance on vitamin K, many on social media are still clinging to debunked and distorted claims. On Facebook, TikTok and Instagram, unsubstantiated allegations often go unchecked.
A theme that has emerged on social media is the idea that God created babies perfectly and that there must be a reason they are born without enough vitamin K. In a video on TikTok, a woman who identifies as a nurse asked, “Did God really get it wrong?”
In response to another, someone wrote: “Just know that our creator didn’t make a mistake. Every baby is born this way for a reason.”
Others group the vitamin K injection, which is not a vaccine, with vaccines. One comment on a video about the vitamin K injection stated: “My baby is not getting any vaccinations. » It received more than 600 likes.
Mercola also isn’t the only doctor cited by vitamin K opponents. Commenters on Instagram, TikTok and Reddit have pointed people to Dr. Suzanne Humphries, who has been talking about vaccines and vitamin K injection for many years.
“My opinion is that the more I read about vitamin K,” she said in a video posted in 2014, “the more I can’t believe it’s injected into newborns.”
Last month, she appeared in a lengthy interview on the website of Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine nonprofit founded by Kennedy. She cited two studies dating back more than 30 years that linked the injection to cancer, even though they were both questioned shortly after their publication. As Mercola even noted in 2010, several additional studies found no increased risk of cancer after the injection.
“Those of us who believe in a divine creator,” she said, “believe that maybe it’s intentional, or that in fact it’s intentional, and that there’s a reason for it.”
Humphries did not respond to requests for comment.
During Kennedy’s tenure at Children’s Health Defense, the group published a paper in 2020 arguing that aluminum adjuvants — added components that boost the body’s immune response — contained in vaccines are “significant sources of early exposure” to aluminum. Some vitamin K injections contain a small amount of aluminum, but studies have not found any evidence of serious or lasting harm. Adjuvants, According to the CDChave been used “safely in vaccines for decades”.
Brian Hooker, chief scientific officer of Children’s Health Defense, said concerns about aluminum remain, as do fears of cancer, despite multiple studies that i found no basis for these concerns. He said he would like to see more research on the vitamin K injection, as well as other neonatal interventions like the hepatitis B vaccine.
“I want to look at the individual components of these injections in conjunction with whatever the infant is receiving,” he said, “and to me that body of literature is really incomplete.”
Hooker said he has worked with Kennedy for many years and while they are no longer in direct contact, he has full confidence in the nation’s top federal health official. But Kennedy’s silence reinforced experts’ skepticism.
“Now we’re starting to see something I’ve never seen, which is brain and intestinal bleeding in infants,” said Rep. Kim Schrier, a Washington Democrat who worked as a pediatrician for more than 15 years before running for Congress. “And it’s so scary and heartbreaking.”
At an April House subcommittee hearing, Schrier confronted Kennedy about vitamin K, saying he had influenced parents to distrust doctors and injections and that, as a result, some parents refused the vitamin K injection and other standard care.
“For now, Secretary Kennedy, given what I just told you about vitamin K, are you just going to say to pregnant women, for the record, ‘Yes, you should get your babies vaccinated against vitamin K?'” Schrier asked Kennedy.
Kennedy didn’t oblige her. He said he never said anything about the vitamin K injection.
An HHS spokesperson did not respond to questions from ProPublica, but said the CDC recommends that parents give newborns a vitamin K shot within 6 hours of birth to prevent bleeding due to vitamin K deficiency. She acknowledged that uptake of the vaccine has declined in recent years “as public trust in health care institutions has fallen, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, amid authoritarian mandates and of inconsistent messaging during the Biden campaign.” administration.”
“Rebuilding that trust,” the spokesperson wrote in an email, “requires honesty, informed consent, and respect for individual choices.”
Schrier said she sympathizes with parents who are inundated with so many mixed messages. She said she recently walked out of the Capitol building and heard a woman say — inaccurately — that every childhood vaccine contained glyphosate, which was an ingredient in some forms of Roundup weedkiller.
“I can just see how this is going to take a turn right now. It comes out, and then it’s on social media,” Schrier said. “All parents just don’t want to do the wrong thing.”