There is a fantastic episode of Sawbones that goes into how we discovered vitamin K and why doctors started giving it to newborns. It cut infant mortality by a significant amount. I recommend it for anyone who has doubts or who just geeks out over science.
Speaking as someone with kids, many people I know rejected all of these. The eye ointment that they gloss over is to protect from gonorrhea. Which presumes that everyone having a kid has it in the first place. This is easy to test for before the baby comes though - what about Vitamin K?
Per 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." Even vitamin fortified formula may not be enough to provide infants with enough vitamin K to prevent bleeding. The open question in the medical community is not which newborns lack vitamin K (they all do), but why some vitamin K deficient newborns develop bleeding while others don't.
I guess I don't see the point in rejecting the shot. It's a vitamin, it has a clear benefit, and no drawback.
> Even vitamin fortified formula may not be enough to provide infants with enough vitamin K to prevent bleeding.
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.
> Vitamin K is fat soluble and even the cheapest, lowest quality formulae can deliver enough of a dosage for an elephant.
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.
If your newborn is bleeding in their brain, you may not realize something is wrong until there are irreversible consequences. Preventative supplementation with vitamin K seems to be the best thing you can do to address it before it happens.
As the OP, I'm not surprised. I had hoped that this would inspire some good discussion, but I don't think it really bore out. I'm not sure if your "well behaved" comment is sarcasm or not, but if it's not, then I can't really say I agree. Lots of flagged comments in here and, honestly, I think the comments started to veer off-topic almost instantly (and I am not blameless in that regard). I do think it is an interesting, albeit depressing, story, and I think that health and medicine have a place on HN, so it is disappointing we couldn't be more normal about it.
He said nothing about the medication in question, so does your original comment mean that RFK is guilty of statistical murder and should be punished for his general vaccine skepticism? I'm not sure how else to read "another case of statistical murder that can't be punished as it should, unfortunately".
If you witness child abuse and say nothing, you bear some responsibility for its continuation.
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.
Because an opinion can’t rise to homicide, even if it influences policy. That’s not what homicide is. Instead, it’s simply bad policy, to be punished at the ballot box.
This is a broken system. When somebody allegedly steals a backpack they get thrown in Riker's. When somebody with substantial power causes a whole bunch of people to die in aggregate via pollution, misinformation, or whatever our society has no mechanism to punish them.
It means you’re deliberately killing people, but indirectly enough it can’t be prosecuted.
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.
It's not the same for an individual choice vs government choice.
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.
> I don't think we should make an individual responsible for a "statistical" crime for one individual.
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.
There is no way to have enough nuance for this to actually mean anything. If I drive my child in a small car instead of a massive truck, is this statistical negligence? Or driving at all, very likely the most dangerous thing people do daily. What about the trees outside my home and their hundred pound limbs — if one breaks it will almost certainly be fatal. But many people accept that death is inevitable and minimizing the chance of it isn’t worth doing. Society also speaks out both sides of its mouth — why does an infant refused a vaccine constitute murder but 11 days earlier in the womb its life had no value?
The world has a lot of things it needs to figure out with all this stuff. Blanket statements just aren’t very valuable IMO.
> 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.
“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 Postal
If that's what it is, then -- regardless of whether it should be punished or not -- this is manifestly not statistical murder.
Your 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"...
It's absolutely fascinating how much of these comments have to do with vaccines when the article is very clearly about a vitamin shot. Wellness culture and influencers have truly broken how we think and talk about medicine.
I got in a series of debates over the Covid vaccine on Facebook with a guy I like and respect, who hosts sound baths, promotes psychedelic therapy, and does a bunch of other wellness-related stuff along with his wife. The idea was maybe we could civilly come to some kind of understanding.
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.
All of our pediatric policy has become iatrogenic in the US. There's a reason our maternal mortality rates are worse than the third world.
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.
> Infants are supposed to get vitamin K and other nutrients from breastfeeding, but we push formula.
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.
There is a fantastic episode of Sawbones that goes into how we discovered vitamin K and why doctors started giving it to newborns. It cut infant mortality by a significant amount. I recommend it for anyone who has doubts or who just geeks out over science.
https://maximumfun.org/episodes/sawbones/sawbones-vitamin-k/
Speaking as someone with kids, many people I know rejected all of these. The eye ointment that they gloss over is to protect from gonorrhea. Which presumes that everyone having a kid has it in the first place. This is easy to test for before the baby comes though - what about Vitamin K?
The people who won’t let a kid get ointment aren’t gonna consent to a mandatory STD test either.
(The ointment is also primarily for chlamydia these days.)
Per 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." Even vitamin fortified formula may not be enough to provide infants with enough vitamin K to prevent bleeding. The open question in the medical community is not which newborns lack vitamin K (they all do), but why some vitamin K deficient newborns develop bleeding while others don't.
I guess I don't see the point in rejecting the shot. It's a vitamin, it has a clear benefit, and no drawback.
> Even vitamin fortified formula may not be enough to provide infants with enough vitamin K to prevent bleeding.
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 K is fat soluble and even the cheapest, lowest quality formulae can deliver enough of a dosage for an elephant.
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...
Vitamin K is needed for clot formation. Babies are born with a Vitamin K deficiency. This makes any bleeding much more likely to be fatal.
If your newborn is bleeding there is something wrong and you need to address it.
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.
If your newborn is bleeding in their brain, you may not realize something is wrong until there are irreversible consequences. Preventative supplementation with vitamin K seems to be the best thing you can do to address it before it happens.
Flagged? This is interesting and the comments are well behaved.
As the OP, I'm not surprised. I had hoped that this would inspire some good discussion, but I don't think it really bore out. I'm not sure if your "well behaved" comment is sarcasm or not, but if it's not, then I can't really say I agree. Lots of flagged comments in here and, honestly, I think the comments started to veer off-topic almost instantly (and I am not blameless in that regard). I do think it is an interesting, albeit depressing, story, and I think that health and medicine have a place on HN, so it is disappointing we couldn't be more normal about it.
Another case of statistical murder that can't be punished as it should, unfortunately.
What does 'statistical murder' mean in this case?
It means making an informed choice that you know raises fatality rates.
Who did that in this case? The parents? Isn't it more likely that they don't believe it raises fatality rates (however incorrectly)?
> Who did that in this case?
Anti-vax activists like RFK Jr. https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/healthpolicy...
by not saying anything about it, he committed statistical murder?
Don't be disingenuous.
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...
He said nothing about the medication in question, so does your original comment mean that RFK is guilty of statistical murder and should be punished for his general vaccine skepticism? I'm not sure how else to read "another case of statistical murder that can't be punished as it should, unfortunately".
That would be an extraordinary claim.
If you witness child abuse and say nothing, you bear some responsibility for its continuation.
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.
Of course he’s probably wrong about much of that. Punishing him for it in a court, if that’s what you mean, would be illiberal and grotesque.
Why? It’s negligent homicide.
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.
Because an opinion can’t rise to homicide, even if it influences policy. That’s not what homicide is. Instead, it’s simply bad policy, to be punished at the ballot box.
Bad policy that needlessly kills thousands of people should be punishable outside the ballot box.
If your policy of letting kindergarteners play with grenades goes bad, you go to jail.
This is a broken system. When somebody allegedly steals a backpack they get thrown in Riker's. When somebody with substantial power causes a whole bunch of people to die in aggregate via pollution, misinformation, or whatever our society has no mechanism to punish them.
Yes.
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.
It means you’re deliberately killing people, but indirectly enough it can’t be prosecuted.
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.
It's not the same for an individual choice vs government choice.
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, ...
> I don't think we should make an individual responsible for a "statistical" crime for one individual.
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.
There is no way to have enough nuance for this to actually mean anything. If I drive my child in a small car instead of a massive truck, is this statistical negligence? Or driving at all, very likely the most dangerous thing people do daily. What about the trees outside my home and their hundred pound limbs — if one breaks it will almost certainly be fatal. But many people accept that death is inevitable and minimizing the chance of it isn’t worth doing. Society also speaks out both sides of its mouth — why does an infant refused a vaccine constitute murder but 11 days earlier in the womb its life had no value?
The world has a lot of things it needs to figure out with all this stuff. Blanket statements just aren’t very valuable IMO.
> If I drive my child in a small car instead of a massive truck, is this statistical negligence?
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...
If that's what it is, then -- regardless of whether it should be punished or not -- this is manifestly not statistical murder.
Your 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 isn’t by the parents who fell for disinformation; they’re victims, to at least some extent.
The statistical murder is done by the people spreading that disinformation. Wakefield. RFK Jr. Alex Jones. etc.
It's absolutely fascinating how much of these comments have to do with vaccines when the article is very clearly about a vitamin shot. Wellness culture and influencers have truly broken how we think and talk about medicine.
It’s the same core phenomenon, and the same activists pushing it.
I got in a series of debates over the Covid vaccine on Facebook with a guy I like and respect, who hosts sound baths, promotes psychedelic therapy, and does a bunch of other wellness-related stuff along with his wife. The idea was maybe we could civilly come to some kind of understanding.
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.
All of our pediatric policy has become iatrogenic in the US. There's a reason our maternal mortality rates are worse than the third world.
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.
> Infants are supposed to get vitamin K and other nutrients from breastfeeding, but we push formula.
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.
> From the article:
Is it possible that this article might have an agenda and is less than 100% accurate?
Big K is at it again!
> but Israel's autism rate is 50% lower than the US
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.