Vitamin K shots

Molly Butler / Media Matters

Research/Study Research/Study

New reporting links skepticism of the vitamin K shot to newborn deaths. Influencers and media figures have been fearmongering about the shot for years.

Experts recommend the shot to prevent spontaneous brain bleeds associated with infant mortality, but some commentators have long criticized it

Written by Noah VanDowe & Alyssa Tirrell

Research contributions from Alex Kaplan

Published

Amid a rise in broader anti-vaccine sentiment, some influencers and media figures have cast doubt on the routine vitamin K shot given to newborn infants – and new reporting from ProPublica suggests such rhetoric may have had deadly consequences. 

Though the shot is not a vaccine, it has “been swept up in the same post-pandemic tide that has led to a drop in key childhood vaccines” and other medical interventions, with ProPublica writing that “more than 5% of newborns in the U.S. did not receive vitamin K shots in 2024” — a 77% increase since 2017. The publication further warns that “hundreds of children die each year from spontaneous bleeding in the brain, a common result of vitamin K deficiency.” 

For years, some influencers and media figures have described the warnings of potential health consequences of not getting a vitamin K shot as “emotional blackmail” and claimed those that refuse the shot are “more responsible” parents.

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  • Though recommended for decades, the vitamin K shot may have been “swept up” in vaccine skepticism

    • The vitamin K shot has been recommended for newborns for over 60 years. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Since 1961, the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended a single shot of vitamin K be given at birth. The shot protects against bleeding related to low levels of this essential vitamin.” Infants who are not given the shot at birth are “81 times more likely to develop severe bleeding than those who do get the shot.” [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1/17/25]
    • A recent study found that the number of newborns receiving the shot at birth declined from 2017 to 2024, a trend which the lead researcher described as “akin to gambling with a child’s health.” Analyzing “more than 5 million births nationwide,”  a National Institutes of Health-supported study “identified an ongoing drop in newborns receiving a vitamin shot that helps to prevent dangerous bleeding.” Dr. Kristan Scott of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who led the study, argued, “Unfortunately, opting out of vitamin K for a newborn is akin to gambling with a child’s health, forgoing a straightforward and safe measure that effectively prevents severe complications.” [National Institutes of Health, 1/13/26]
    • New reporting from ProPublica says the vitamin K shot has been “swept up” in vaccine skepticism, potentially contributing to the “hundreds” of children who “die each year from spontaneous bleeding in the brain.” ProPublica reported, “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. … The success of the shot has been so remarkable that it nearly eliminated vitamin K deficiency bleeding altogether. The science was settled decades ago.” [ProPublica, 5/6/26]
    • ProPublica: While government data collection on vitamin K injection refusal is limited, “some hospitals have seen refusal rates more than double,” and experts say a “meaningful portion” of the 700 newborn deaths in 2024 from spontaneous brain bleeding “likely were caused by vitamin K deficiency.” Pediatric hospitalist Dr. Jaspreet Loyal told ProPublica, “The lack of data is almost acting like a reassurance for families that this risk is worth taking.” [ProPublica, 5/6/26]
    • At a recent congressional hearing, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declined to answer whether the vitamin K shot is safe. Questioned by Rep. Kim Schrier (D-WA), Kennedy responded, “I’ve never said, literally never said, anything about it.” Schrier responded, “That’s exactly the point. 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.” [ProPublica, 5/6/26]
    • There has been a rise in vaccine skepticism in recent years, with more parents refusing certain injections for their children. A study of 12.4 million newborns found a 10 percentage point decline in uptake of the hepatitis B vaccine from 2023 to 2025, equivalent to “400,000 or more babies a year” not getting the shot. In conversation with The New York Times, multiple pediatric clinicians have reported “contending with a sharp rise in vaccine hesitancy,” and one reported that “emergency room physicians have had to devise new guidelines for treating the increasing number of unvaccinated children who come in with fevers of unknown cause.” [Vox, 3/9/26; The New York Times, 3/11/26]

  • Over the years, influencers and media figures have spread uncertainty and fear about the vitamin K shot, calling it “totally unnecessary” and accusing those encouraging it of “emotional blackmail”

    • Alex Jones of the now-defunct site Infowars: “They try to give them a vitamin K shot at birth to thicken the blood quicker. That's got a lot of issues with it.” He added of vaccines generally, “It really messes little babies up to be given these shots.” [Infowars, Alex Jones Show, 10/30/23]
    • Podcaster Candace Owens said she was giving “zero” vaccines to her children, arguing, “If all babies are being born without a certain amount of vitamin K in them, maybe they don't need it on that first day. That's, like, the common sense thing.” Owens told her audience, “Awaken to the Big Pharma industry. Awaken to the pharmaceutical complex, the industrial complex. Awaken to the fact that they are making you sick and then selling you the cure.” [YouTube, Candace, 8/27/24]
    • Owens produced a mini-documentary titled “A Shot in the Dark” in which she described warnings about vitamin K deficiency bleeding as “emotional blackmail.” Owens said, “Now, I have a child, I'm pregnant now, and so I know the vitamin K routine. The doctor says to you, it's just a vitamin, it's just a vitamin, but it could save their life. … One of the means that Big Pharma uses to scare parents is that everything is life-threatening. Everything is life or death. And this is just emotional blackmail, right? A baby's going to die.” [Facebook, 3/13/24; Rumble, 10/15/24]
    • On The Rubin Report, senior HHS adviser Calley Means said, “The vitamin K, all this. Why are we going and giving all these interventions, right, when a beautiful child's born? It's actually very dark.” Means also said, “The vaccine schedule is unquestionably a result of corruption.” [The New York Times, 4/24/26; YouTube, The Rubin Report, 11/2/24]
    • Then-Infowars host Harrison Smith said the vitamin K shot is “totally unnecessary,” calling it part of a “betrayal of this sacred activity of healthcare.” [Infowars, War Room, 12/9/25]
    • Podcaster Russell Brand: “I've gotten so suspicious about giving babies any kind of … vaccination or anything, even vitamin K.” [Rumble, Stay Free, 12/5/25]
    • On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, Kennedy ally and anti-vaccine commentator Sherri Tenpenny encouraged parents to “learn about all these vaccines that they want to assault your baby with,” including “a vitamin K shot, which you really do need to research, and now a new RSV vaccine.” Tenpenny also said, “Just don't blindly lay your child on a table just as a sacrifice to the pharma gods. … I would say that parents who choose to not vaccinate isn't because they're irresponsible. They're more responsible.” Tenpenny claimed in 2023 that the COVID-19 vaccine is a “bioweapon” and that “every fully vaccinated person over the age of 30” could develop “vaccine-induced immune suppressed AIDS.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 11/26/25; Media Matters, 7/19/23; Business Insider, 8/10/21]
    • Podcaster Alex Clark interviewed Tenpenny and introduced her by asking, “What if the most routine decisions parents make — the vitamin K shot, the hepatitis B vaccine, even circumcision — were never about health at all, but about conditioning an entire population?” Tenpenny told Clark, “The theory is that when a baby's born, you've got something this big going through a hole this big, that you can cause rips and tears in the dura mater of the brain. And if you don't give them something to clot their blood, they will end up with these brain bleeds. The studies that showed that came out of like, the 1950s, and it was a very small set of children that had this problem. The downside is is that it's a synthetic vitamin K” and that it slows “and in some cases probably stop[s]” healing of microscopic tears that naturally occur through birth. [Apple Podcasts, Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, 12/1/25, 12/1/25]
    • On the Patriot Streetfighter podcast, Christiane Northrup claimed the vitamin K shot “leads to hypercoagulable blood.” Elsewhere in the episode, Northrup said she was “working with people who are working in” Kennedy’s team. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Northrup called the CDC a “covid death cult.” [Media Matters, 2/4/25; Rumble, Patriot Streetfighter, 1/28/25, 1/28/25]
    • On the Back to the People podcast, Northrup again suggested the shot causes “hypercoagulable blood.” Northrup continued, “There's something happening that's so interesting to me, and that is this free birth thing. … Couples just go, I am not interested in what they're going to do in the hospital. You know, the vitamin K, the hepatitis B that gives you all that aluminum, and then the vitamin K is hypercoagulable blood and, you know, like, you're having to fight with the staff of the hospital when you are in the most tender, vulnerable time of your life, and they're acting like they own your baby.” [Rumble, Back to the People, 1/22/25] 
    • Judy Mikovits said on the Patriot Streetfighter podcast: “Why did they have to get a vitamin K shot in you? Because it's 200 micrograms of deadly aluminum.” Mikovits played a major role in the COVID-19 conspiracy video Plandemic. [Rumble, Patriot Streetfighter, 4/3/26; The Washington Post, 5/8/20]