Health
A Life-Saving Vitamin for Babies Is Getting Swept Up in Vaccine Backlash
There’s a growing resistance to anything that’s injected into babies, vaccine or not.
Hospitals are seeing a rise in parents opting out of vitamin K injections for their newborns.
Photographer: Tanja Ivanova/Getty ImagesThe 2-month-old baby arrived at the hospital with the type of bleeding in and around his brain that was so unusual Miami neurosurgeon Heather McCrea had only read about it in textbooks.
The pooling blood indicated that the baby had a severe vitamin K deficiency — something usually prevented by a shot at birth. But his parents, like a growing number of Americans skeptical of injections, had declined to get the shot for their baby.