Revision History

A JAMA study of over 5 million U.S. births found that refusal of vitamin K shots for newborns nearly doubled from 2.9% to 5.2% between 2017 and 2024, with parents also increasingly declining antibiotic eye ointment and hepatitis B vaccination. The trend, driven by medical mistrust and social media misinformation, has already produced documented infant deaths and brain hemorrhages—while some of the refused interventions, like erythromycin eye ointment, have been dropped by countries like Canada and the UK as medically outdated.