Infants are bleeding out after parents decline vitamin K shots given at birth
Infants are bleeding out after parents decline vitamin K shots given at birth
婴儿因父母拒绝出生时注射维生素K而失血死亡
They entered the world the way babies should, with piercing cries announcing their arrival. They passed their newborn screening tests. Some made it to their 2-week wellness visits without concern. Then, without warning, their systems began to shut down. 他们来到这个世界的方式本应如此：伴随着宣告到来的尖锐啼哭。他们通过了新生儿筛查测试。有些婴儿甚至在没有异常的情况下完成了两周大的健康检查。然而，毫无预兆地，他们的身体机能开始衰竭。
A 7-week-old boy in Maryland developed sudden seizures. An 11-pound girl in Alabama stopped breathing for 20 seconds at a time. A baby boy in Kentucky vomited before becoming lethargic. A brown-haired girl in Texas, not yet 2 weeks old, bled around her belly button. 马里兰州一名7周大的男婴突然出现癫痫发作。阿拉巴马州一名11磅重的女婴曾出现长达20秒的呼吸暂停。肯塔基州一名男婴在呕吐后变得昏昏欲睡。德克萨斯州一名不到两周大的棕发女婴，肚脐周围出现了出血。
Desperate to save them, records show, doctors inserted tubes into their airways and hooked them up to IVs. They ordered blood transfusions. They spent half an hour trying to resuscitate one boy until his parents told them they could stop. They shaved another boy’s soft locks to embed a needle directly into his skull to reduce the pressure in his brain. None of it was enough. 记录显示，为了挽救他们的生命，医生们竭尽全力，为他们插管并接上静脉输液。医生下令进行输血。他们曾花半小时试图抢救一名男婴，直到其父母要求停止。他们还剃光了另一名男婴柔软的头发，将针头直接插入其颅骨以减轻脑部压力。但这一切都无济于事。
At the morgue, the babies were brought in with their diapers and blankets and with their hospital ID bracelets still wrapped around their tiny ankles. The pathologists’ findings were like those you would typically see in ailing adults, not newborns—the kind of bleeding seen during strokes or brain tissue loss similar to what happens when radiation is administered to treat cancer. 在停尸房，这些婴儿被送来时，身上还裹着尿布和毯子，小小的脚踝上依然戴着医院的身份识别手环。病理学家的检查结果通常只见于患病的成年人，而非新生儿——那是中风时才会出现的出血，或是类似于癌症放射治疗后导致的脑组织损伤。
Their autopsies, which took place over the last several years, all came to the same conclusion: The deaths were caused, in whole or in part, by a rare but potentially fatal condition known as vitamin K deficiency bleeding. In almost every case, the babies’ deaths could have been prevented with a long-standard vitamin K shot. 过去几年进行的尸检结果都指向同一个结论：这些死亡全部或部分是由一种罕见但可能致命的疾病引起的，即维生素K缺乏性出血。在几乎所有案例中，如果注射了早已成为常规的维生素K针剂，这些婴儿的死亡本是可以避免的。
But across the country, families—first in smatterings, now in droves—are declining the single, inexpensive injection given at birth to newborns to help their blood clot. Many of them are doing so out of a well-meaning but ill-informed abundance of caution. In the hopes of safeguarding their newborns from what they see as unnecessary medical intervention, they have shunned fundamental and scientifically sound pharmaceutical intervention. 然而在全国范围内，越来越多的家庭开始拒绝为新生儿注射这种廉价且能帮助凝血的针剂，起初只是零星出现，现在却已成风潮。许多父母这样做是出于一种好心但缺乏科学依据的过度谨慎。他们希望保护新生儿免受所谓的“不必要医疗干预”，却因此排斥了基础且科学有效的药物干预。
The trend is also fueled by a contradictory pairing: families’ fierce desire to protect their babies and a cascade of false information infused into their social media algorithms. Although it is not a vaccine, the vitamin K shot has been swept up in the same post-pandemic tide that has led to a drop in key childhood vaccines, including for measles and whooping-cough. 这种趋势还受到一种矛盾因素的推动：父母保护婴儿的强烈愿望，与社交媒体算法中充斥的虚假信息。尽管维生素K针剂并非疫苗，但它也被卷入了疫情后的浪潮中，这股浪潮导致了包括麻疹和百日咳在内的关键儿童疫苗接种率下降。
The vitamin K shot is one of the three main interventions, along with the hepatitis B vaccine and an antibiotic ointment in the eyes, that newborns typically receive before leaving the hospital. Leading American institutions and the World Health Organization recommend that newborns get the shot. 维生素K注射是新生儿出院前通常接受的三大干预措施之一，另外两项是乙肝疫苗和眼部抗生素药膏。美国权威机构和世界卫生组织均建议新生儿接种该针剂。
In December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped recommending that all newborns get the hepatitis B vaccine, which has been highly effective at fighting a virus that can lead to lifelong infections and liver cancer. A federal judge in March temporarily blocked the revised childhood vaccination schedule that included that recommendation. Some families are also rejecting the eye ointment. 去年12月，美国疾病控制与预防中心（CDC）停止建议所有新生儿接种乙肝疫苗，而该疫苗在对抗可能导致终身感染和肝癌的病毒方面非常有效。今年3月，一名联邦法官暂时阻止了包含该建议的修订版儿童疫苗接种计划。一些家庭也开始拒绝使用眼部药膏。
Two weeks ago, at a House subcommittee hearing, Rep. Kim Schrier, D-Wash., pressed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to reassure parents that the vitamin K shot is safe. He refused and pushed back. “I’ve never said, literally never said, anything about it,” Kennedy said. “That’s exactly the point,” responded Schrier, who is a doctor. “You don’t say anything about it, but the doubt you’ve created about all of medicine and science is causing parents to make dangerous decisions.” 两周前，在众议院的一个小组委员会听证会上，华盛顿州民主党众议员金·施里尔（Kim Schrier）敦促卫生与公众服务部部长小罗伯特·F·肯尼迪（Robert F. Kennedy Jr.）向家长保证维生素K注射是安全的。他拒绝并进行了反驳。“我从来没有，真的从来没有说过关于它的任何事情，”肯尼迪说。“这正是问题的关键，”身为医生的施里尔回应道，“你什么都不说，但你对整个医学和科学所制造的怀疑，正在导致家长们做出危险的决定。”
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.” 卫生与公众服务部的一位发言人没有回应提问，但在电子邮件中将家长拒绝注射维生素K的现象归咎于前总统乔·拜登的政府。“出生时注射维生素K，”该发言人补充道，“仍然是标准的护理程序。”
Meanwhile, families continue to be inundated with advice from self-proclaimed experts using medical terms incorrectly and misunderstanding science to convince parents that getting the shot could put their newborns at risk of grave harm. Nearly a century’s worth of research and medical advancements shows the opposite to be true. 与此同时，家庭继续被所谓的“专家”建议所淹没，这些人错误地使用医学术语并曲解科学，试图说服家长注射该针剂会让新生儿面临严重伤害的风险。然而，近一个世纪的研究和医学进步证明事实恰恰相反。
Babies who don’t get the vitamin K shot, research shows, are 81 times more likely than those who do to develop late vitamin K deficiency bleeding, where in many cases oxygen can’t reach their brains and blood pools around their skulls. Perhaps most alarming is that, according to the CDC, 1 in every 5 babies with vitamin K deficiency bleeding will die. 研究表明，未注射维生素K的婴儿患晚发性维生素K缺乏性出血的几率是已注射婴儿的81倍，在这种情况下，氧气往往无法到达大脑，血液会在颅骨周围积聚。最令人担忧的是，据CDC统计，每5名患有维生素K缺乏性出血的婴儿中，就有1人会死亡。
Determining precisely how many babies have died or suffered severe brain damage because of a lack of vitamin K is difficult. State and federal agencies don’t track data around vitamin K injection refusal or subsequent bleeding, which impedes their ability to quantify and track outcomes, including death. 要准确确定有多少婴儿因缺乏维生素K而死亡或遭受严重脑损伤是困难的。州和联邦机构并不追踪关于拒绝注射维生素K或随后出血的数据，这阻碍了他们量化和追踪包括死亡在内的后果的能力。
The number of deaths directly attributed to vitamin K deficiency bleeding appears to be small—fewer than a dozen annually—but has started to climb in recent years, according to death certificate data from federal and state agencies. But those numbers capture only a fraction of deaths, which often are classified only by other, more immediate causes, such as bleeding in the brain. 根据联邦和州机构的死亡证明数据，直接归因于维生素K缺乏性出血的死亡人数似乎很少——每年不到十几例——但近年来已开始攀升。然而，这些数字仅涵盖了死亡案例的一小部分，因为死亡原因往往被归类为其他更直接的诱因，例如脑出血。
In 2024, for example, more than 700 newborns died from spontaneous bleeding in their brains, which could have been complicated by liver disease or prematurity. Still, six medical specialists and one official at the CDC said a meaningful portion of those deaths likely were caused by vitamin K deficiency. Many more babies survive the bleeding but suffer massive brain bleeds and lasting injuries. 例如，2024年有超过700名新生儿死于自发性脑出血，这可能与肝脏疾病或早产有关。尽管如此，六位医学专家和一位CDC官员表示，其中相当一部分死亡很可能是由维生素K缺乏引起的。还有更多的婴儿在出血后幸存下来，但遭受了严重的脑出血和永久性损伤。
“A lot of the providers don’t have this on their radar,” said Dr. Jaspreet Loyal, a pediatric hospitalist at Yale Medicine. “The lack of data is almost acting like a reassurance for families that this risk is [not real].” “许多医疗服务提供者并没有意识到这一点，”耶鲁医学中心的儿科住院医师贾斯普里特·洛亚尔（Dr. Jaspreet Loyal）博士说，“数据的缺失几乎成了家庭的一种心理安慰，让他们觉得这种风险（并不存在）。”