You know, if these parents believe they know better than medical professionals, why are they going to a medical facility to have their babies anyway? I feel it is just a waste of resources. Medical staff are stretched pretty thin already. Why waste time on people that will just ignore professional advice? Let them deal on their own, they obviously know better.
Why do doctors have to listen to parents? If a parent abuses a child the child gets taken away but if he abuses a baby somehow it’s ok?
To a degree, parents have the right to reject medical treatment for a child. There must be an immediate threat to the child’s life or health to ignore their refusal. A preventative vitamin shot is not such a case. Superseding the parents’ wishes here would require a court order.
Tell that to the bloodless babies
To be clear: I think the parents that made this decision are stupid and short sighted, and it sucks that children suffered as a result. I’m just pointing out that the doctors’ hands are legally tied.
An HHS spokesperson did not respond to questions but in an email blamed the administration of former President Joe Biden for the rise in parents rejecting vitamin K shots. “Vitamin K at birth,” the spokesperson added, “remains the standard of care.”
For fuck’s sake. These assholes can’t even take responsibility for the results of what they’re spewing.
“party of personal responsibility”
It’s all projection.

Do you have a Justin Trudeau version for Canada.
Sorry, I was too busy being jealous of how much better he was than our president
Seriously, wtf was wrong with that guy?
So when do they arrest the parents for murder like they would a woman who had a miscsrriage?
Oh you know that only applies to the mothers and only before a successful birth because cruelty and hatred toward women is the point.
party of pro-life?
It’s wild how many parents are terrified of a vitamin shot but completely comfortable trusting random wellness influencers with zero medical background. And the really tragic part is that newborns don’t exactly get a second chance if the gamble goes wrong.
China recently decimated their (previously thriving) influencer ecosystem, simply by requiring that health influencers have documented health education, financial influencers have finance education, etc… China implemented the rule, and immediately banned like ~95% of all their health influencers. The rule targets both individual influencers and the platforms that host them. And no platform wants to stick their neck out and eat fines for some random influencer. So influencers who didn’t have documented education got banned basically overnight.
I was wondering when the MAHA vaccine fixation would bleed over to simply anything that comes from a needle.
This is horrific.
The part of me traumatized by our society drives my cynical obtrusive thought: this will cull some of the stupid genes from the pool.
Maybe idiocracy is not inevitable. Maybe the stupid, selfish,fear-consumed will remove themselves from the healthier parts of humanity. Too bad I won’t be around for the better world.
At this point I am much worried about the future effect of evil bloodlines then of stupid ones.
They do often go hand in hand, granted, but there are some wonderful stupid and/or mentally handicapped folks out there.
I don’t believe in evil bloodlines, except in genetics that cause a predisposition to sociopathy. Even those people can learn to have empathy with intervention.
well yeah, I imagine the passing down of the evil is taught much moreso than genetic.
The absolute numbers are still very low, and these folks tend to have more babies overall, so I don’t think there’s much silver lining here, even a grim one. They’re just accepting higher infant mortality for no good reason because they don’t understand statistics or that evolution doesn’t care about “perfect” or about any individual baby (or anything else of course, because it’s just a biological principle, but you take my meaning).
You have to work with who gets born and just try to bring as much critical thinking and empathy into the world as you can. If anything “good” will come of this, it will be as cautionary tales parents and doctors tell pregnant people.
Even worse, they’re accepting infant mortality because “master white race” and fear of being the minority in 2045.
Yeah, I’m of European descent and even I have some angst about a potential loss of identity for the future. Still, I’m not going to go all Nazi on the world.
We’re a collective series of mutations resulting from the colder, darker environments of the northern regions. I’d rather see the best/useful/beautiful characteristics of all ethnicities come together in a better humanity for all.
We might be the last remaining reservoirs of Neanderthal genes like the south pacific people might be the lat reservoir of denosivan genes. It would be a shame if all that were lost.
Still humanity is about the people who are alive now, and all deserve full recognition and rights. Genetic diversity improves the chances of species survival. That is what’s important.
This is the fault of the US healthcare system and not necessarily the parents. I’ve had two kids in American hospitals and it was the single most exhausting, tortuous experience of my life each time. They don’t let you rest, so your decision making is impacted, then they have over 30 injections they want to give your newborn and God forbid you want to discuss any of them, you must be an anti-science monster if you dare to question a single one. If the practitioners can’t express plainly what is necessary and what is superfluous? Okay so the newborn baby needs a vitamin K injection, a vitamin their body will make on its own in a few days, to stop brain bleeds? And why is my newborn at risk of a brain bleed? Something to do with the constant stream of injections you’re giving them? Or maybe the cuts? Oh because of the jaundice? Well if you would allow parents to get their children any kind of natural light maybe that wouldn’t be an issue, but instead we’re being held hostage here until you are satisfied that you’ve solved every issue you create.
You can all sit behind your keyboards judging the sleep deprived new parents who are being misled and taken advantage of by the healthcare industry, and act like they don’t deserve to procreate, but like any other issue there is a lot more nuance to the problem than just “American dumb”
sigh I knew alekwithak’s comment would get misinterpreted and downvoted.
FFS, the negative reaction against the stream of “unreasonable” questions posed above is exactly the problem. A question is asked of a professional warrants a clear compassionate response, not prejudice and derision.
Yes, the single aspect of Vitamin K1 injections/oral for neonates is highly effective uncontroversial science based medicine, but one needs to remember the context: so much of what parents are pushed to do medically around pregnancy and childbirth in a hospital-based birth is controversial and questionable, and in many cases the norms pushed by hospitals have evidence against them yet are still pushed by that system (for example: GBS testing & prophylactic antibiotics, gestational diabetes testing, routine induction before 42-43 weeks, continuous electronic fetal monitoring, circumcision).
In any case, prophylactic vitamin K1 can be offered orally if the parent is averse to shots for the newborn, sidestepping much of the perceived issue. It’s unconsciable that this is not offered in some places (USA).
There are greater risks to using sunlight to treat newborn jaundice than to use the blue lights hospitals provide.
From that link:
Why Sunlight is Risky
While sunshine does contain blue light, relying on it to help jaundice in newborns comes with significant risks:
- Unpredictable Light Intensity: The amount of blue light in sunlight varies depending on the time of day, weather conditions, and location. This makes it difficult to ensure the baby receives a consistent and therapeutic dose.
- Sunburn Risk: Newborns have very sensitive skin that burns easily. Even brief exposure to direct sunlight can cause sunburn, increasing the risk of skin damage and potentially skin cancer later in life.
- Overheating and Dehydration: Sunlight can quickly overheat a baby, leading to dehydration and other serious complications.
- Difficulty Monitoring: It’s difficult to accurately monitor a baby’s bilirubin levels while using sunlight as treatment. Medical phototherapy allows healthcare professionals to closely monitor levels and adjust treatment as needed.
On the flip side, the potential side effects of the hospital blue light treatment include mild “skin rash, diarrhea, or dehydration,” which are usually temporary and resolve on their own after treatment. I’d rather a baby get a mild skin rash that goes away after being taken out of the light, than get sunburn that takes weeks to heal from and can increase the risk of cancer.
Having a new baby is stressful, I get it. But it takes nearly 9 months for the baby to arrive. Is that not enough time for new parents to learn about the medical treatments their baby will receive?
30 injections to newborns? Im calling bullshit on that.
I have four natural born kids and all of them had their Vitamin K shots, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. I trust my doctors’ recommendations on what course of action is best, knowing that there are risks and benefits to any medical treatment, and we do these treatments because the benefits outweigh the risks.
With that said, the article doesn’t mention that the risk of the vitamin K shot is that the newborn’s bilirubin levels can be raised far enough that they have to be treated for it. One of my daughters had to be blindfolded and put under a very bright blue light for several hours or maybe it was overnight, which is not a nice thing to see your newborn go through.
But it is surely better than seeing them bleed to death.
One of my daughters had to be blindfolded and put under a very bright blue light for several hours or maybe it was overnight, which is not a nice thing to see your newborn go through.
Completely painless and done every single day in any NICU.



