Just when we thought anti-vaxxers had reached the deepest possible depths of stupid.....

[moonshaz]

.....they go and prove us wrong!

TN newborns get rare bleeding disorder after parents refused vitamin K shots
4 babies diagnosed with preventable bleeding disorder

A bleeding disorder in babies so rare that it typically affects fewer than one in 100,000 is becoming more common in Tennessee because parents are refusing vitamin K injections at

Comments

[beoweasel]

“They don’t want their baby to have the pain of injection."

If you're so worried about your child having to feel the brief sting of a syringe, it might be in your best interest to seal your child a giant foam bubble and never let them out.

[homasse]

They probably took one look at their healthy-LOOKING babies and decided pssh, their baby didn't need that ~unnatural~ shot.

Yeah, bet they're all regretting that call now, like that megachurch in Texas that preached against vaccinations that out of ~nowhere~ had the measles outbreak so bad they 180'd and told people to get vaccinations.

I think the big problem is that we've collectively forgotten WHY these vitamin shots and vaccinations are important, because they've done their jobs so well people've lost sight of the risks.

[yelena_r0ssini]

I don't understand the line about people declining Vitamin K because of the "goal of having natural childbirths". I know many people, myself included, who asked to wait a few hours or a day or something after birth to give the injection, so that we could get the initial bonding and first breastfeeding out of the way, but I've never encountered anyone who refused the shot outright, and certainly not for that reason.

[romp]

Yeah, these people make the slow and thoughtful parents look back. :/

[nextdrinksonme]

There are a lot of folks out there, it seems, who feel that a ~natural~ birth means no hospital or medical intervention whatsoever, not even after the birth, and sometimes not even a midwife or someone of that nature to help with the delivery. So it could be something like that. If anyone other than the parents are involved (and sometimes not even the father), it isn't ~natural~.

[yelena_r0ssini]

Actually, no. A natural birth is a birth free of medical intervention, and an unassisted birth is different from a natural birth. All unassisted births are natural, but far from all natural births are unassisted.

Now, if the doctor was trying to say that lots of people who want natural births also decline vaccination and vitamin K shots, I feel like he worded it really weird. That's a connection worth looking into, though.

[the_physicist]

While agree with the facepalming in this post, I think this is a problem that will only get worse - that people don't trust their doctors 100% and think they know better (because let's face it, there are precedents to not trust doctors always). Now we have the internet and all the world's knowledge at our fingertips... except we don't. Journal papers that are reputable (well, and the disreputable ones too) are hidden behind pay wall barriers. A few float around the internet freely, but those tend to be the alarmist ones... the thousands of so-so studies that confirm a treatment is safe and works are not interesting enough to pirate or quote

[perthro]

This. The summaries of these reputable studies are available for free more often than not... but most people don't have the reading skills required to analyze them. They're written in technical terms, not language the average person understands. People don't have a background in chemistry, so they hear parts of things they recognize as bad and don't know that in their current formulation, it's neutral or even good (like petroleum jelly vs. petroleum you put in a car). So even for the stuff that IS free, it might as well be behind a paywall for as useful as it is.

We need a better education system, with critical thinking as a mandatory course.

[i_llbedammned]

Those poor babies. Why would you let your ignorance hurt your child?