Vitamin Injections the Next Target for the Anti-Vax Crowd.

I really don’t understand the mistrust a lot of people have for the medical profession. Whilst I try my darndest to be informed in all matters that concern me I know when I’ve reached the limits of my understanding and that’s when I reach out to experts. In terms of my health there really isn’t anyone better qualified than a medical professional to give me advice on that subject and there are numerous specialists available to give me the information I require. Yet everywhere I go I meet people who believe that modern medicine has it all wrong and we should trust some whacko who’s being kept down by Big Pharma. The latest incarnation of this mistrust has come down to the vitamin K shot that’s routinely given to infants which apparently has all sorts of bad consequences for your child.

A standard treatment for newborns is an injection, or sometimes orally administered drops, of a high dose of vitamin K shortly after birth. The reason behind this is pretty simple, newborns have a severe lack of blood clotting factors being on the order of 30% to 60% lower than what they’ll have in adulthood. What this means is when a newborn starts bleeding, for whatever reason, it will continue to do so for a much longer time which poses significant risks to the child. Breast milk is unfortunately quite deficient in the amount of vitamin K provided with formulas having about 100 times more for this exact reason. The incident rate of bleeding resulting from deficiency of this nature isn’t high, about 1.7% or so, but it’s entirely preventable which is why the shot, or drops, are used. However because of reasons I’ll never understand some of the anti-vax crowd has started rallying against it, which has led to an increased prevalence of this entirely preventable condition.

Digging into the “controversy” around the shots shows that the roots of this new dissent with a long practiced and safe procedure stems from a (shockingly) discredited study that linked the shots to an increased rate of childhood cancer. A review of that study done in 2000 revealed that there was no link between the two and the results were born out of poor testing methods and small sample sizes. Other sites seem to rely on other, less scientific things like the injection causes pain, the amount of vitamin K is too high and that an injection is apparently an opportune time for an infection to get in.

Those reasons don’t really stand up to casual scrutiny however. Sure there’s studies that say sustained neonatal pain causes problems down the line but drawing conclusions that any kind of pain, even if only temporary, leads to the exact same effects. Dosages of vitamin K have shown to be safe and effective to orders of magnitude higher than the ones given to infants, even over sustained durations. The jab at the injection site being an opportune time for infection to get in is the last grab at straws as this is most likely going to happen in a hospital where the sterile conditions are likely to be much more guaranteed than a doctor’s office. If the argument was purely for drops over injections then I’d have little issue with it but that doesn’t seem to be the case with this latest bout of crazy.

Honestly we’ve got decades of research behind many of the things we’re giving to our children and the proof is in the results we’ve got. Infant mortality has been reduced to it’s lowest levels in all of human history thanks to modern medicine and to simply throw that away on the back of emotional arguments is, at best, foolish. If you really think that these things that modern medicine recommends are as bad as they sound I’d encourage you to get educated and ask the experts in the field about it. Present them the evidence you have and see how they react. More often than not you’ll find good answers to your questions and your children’s health will be all the better for it.