It's not just vaccines - parents are refusing other routine preventive care for newborns

[dalton99a]

Last edited Sat Mar 21, 2026, 10:53 AM - Edit history (1)

https://apnews.com/article/babies-newborns-pediatricians-vitamin-k-hepatitis-b-erythromycin-9126463f0cb38b9778fb77bc0d071776

It’s not just vaccines — parents are refusing other routine preventive care for newborns
By LAURA UNGAR
Updated 6:20 AM CDT, March 21, 2026

One day at an Idaho hospital, half the newborns Dr. Tom Patterson saw didn’t get the vitamin K shots that have been given to babies for decades to prevent potentially deadly bleeding. On another recent day, more than a quarter didn’t get the shot. Their parents wouldn’t allow it.

“When you look at a child who’s innocent and vulnerable — and a simple intervention that’s been done since 1961 is refused — knowing that baby’s going out into the world is super worrisome to me,” said Patterson, who’s been a pediatrician for nearly three decades.

Doctors across the nation are alarmed that skepticism fueled by rising anti-science sentiment and medical mistrust is increasingly reaching beyond vaccines to other proven, routine, preventive care for babies.

A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which analyzed more than 5 million births nationwide, found that refusals of vitamin K shots nearly doubled between 2017 and 2024, from 2.9% to 5.2%. Other research suggests that parents who decline vitamin K shots are much more likely to refuse getting their newborns the hepatitis B vaccine and an eye ointment to prevent potentially blinding infections. Rates for that vaccination at birth dropped in recent years, and doctors confirm that more parents are refusing the eye medication.

...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[walkingman]

1. Astounding that the masses would rather believe politicians over a medical doctor?

[Johonny]

2. I trust some high school drop out on TicToc

Rather than methods proven to be safe and affective, says everything about how fucking stupid this country had become.

[dalton99a]

3. +1

[Diamond_Dog]

4. Make America Stupid Again

[karynnj]

8. I get the reference, but back in the time when these were not done,

it wasn't stupidity. They didn't exist. Doctors who saw enough babies, likely saw some with damaged eye sight or who were harmed by uncontrollable bleeding. They were likely extremely happy when scientists found an eye ointment that worked and vitamin k shots that were effective.

They could FIRST HAND tell mothers and fathers how they could see that these interactions led to those risks greatly declining. In addition, this was a time when the word of a doctor was given very large weight.

[haele]

13. Here's the problem. Of the medical people (doctors, nurses, ect..) who birthed these parents...

Few of them are still in practice that remember what it was like before the Vitamin K shots, the ointments, the vaccines.
Few doctors now-a-days have gone to poor countries where babies are still being born in 1920's poor farming community conditions, where parents were resigned to a sickly or disabled baby only surviving two, maybe three years requiring constant care and scarce resources - because leaving a struggling newborn out in the wilds to die naturally, so the family could morn, then try to have another, heathier baby the next year just wasn't socially acceptable anymore.
Parents in poor countries make difficult resource allocations decisions that mean life and death for their families.
And today's GOP Conservatives seem perfectly willing to go back to a Bronze Age society, where sickly elders, disabled, and newborns unable to thrive are abandoned to die in back allies or wilderness if other family members are "doomed into poverty for sins" and don't have the resouces to care for the sick or disabled.
Hell, the current cult of Conservatives would eagerly buy or sell the healthy, good looking children of the poor for their own use or amusement; why should they worry about the wellbeing of their neighbor's brats if those kids aren't attractive or useful to them?

[AllaN01Bear]

19. ding! this

[Solly Mack]

5. Yet they will expect sympathy instead of the anger they deserve should their child die.

[Rebl2]

9. Got that right

[harumph]

6. I would like to see a nationwide geographic distribution

showing where said refusals are more common. I would guess there are more per capita refusals in Idaho that say, Colorado.

[underpants]

7. More (stupidity)

One common thread that ties together anti-vaccine views and growing sentiments against other protective measures for newborns is the fallacy that natural is always better than artificial, said Dr. David Hill, a Seattle pediatrician and researcher.

“Nature will allow 1 in 5 human infants to die in the first year of life,” Hill said, “which is why generations of scientists and doctors have worked to bring that number way, way down.”

At a February meeting of the Idaho chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, doctors said they knew of eight deaths from vitamin K deficiency bleeding in the state over the preceding 13 months, said Patterson, who is president of the chapter.


“There’s more mistrust from the conservative side, but there’s plenty on the more liberal side as well,” he said, “It’s across-the-board mistrust.”

[hatrack]

10. The same parents who will be first to sue the doctors whose care they rejected . . .

Assholes. Malignant, filicidal assholes.

[Rebl2]

11. I wonder

before they started giving the vitamin K shot, how many children died.

[haele]

18. Lots of kids.

Two of mom's neighbors (she grew up in a working class/immigrant Los Angeles neighborhood a couple miles away from the oil fields) had newborn babies die of a bleeding sickness.

The mother living next door to her had delivered seven live birth babies but only four survived the first six months. Those kids grew up fine and healthy, but still.
Three babies that everyone in the neighborhood knew within the first couple days were failing to thrive, and would die.
Mom still remembers how that affected everyone, including neighbor families.
The delicate social dance of playing or visiting at playmate homes that had been set up to welcome a new baby sibling, but were now being reset in anticipation of a funeral.
The anxiety of all the parents in the neighborhood. A feeling of holding one's breath, considering one's words, waiting for the inevitable.

And this was in the early-mid 1940's. And neighbors were more likely to look after each other in these situations, even if there were conflict between families.

[Rebl2]

22. I feel

we will see this once again.

[Maru Kitteh]

12. I-DUH-ho is an absolute HOTBED of nuttery.

I mean, I live in Montana, but that state is nucking futz. Seriously.

[bluestarone]

14. Idaho in my mind is possibly the worst state

To raise a family.

[Joinfortmill]

15. 'Brain Worm Head' is also demented.

[Auggie]

16. Righteousness today, crying tomorrow

[TommieMommy]

17. OMG what the hell 😡 stupid people are putting their babies in danger.

[mwmisses4289]

20. The irony is that many of the of these refusenik parents

had parents who made sure they got all of this.

[Exp]

21. Fucking idiots. nt