According to new research published today in JAMA, the rate of vitamin K shot refusals has risen nearly 80 percent in the U.S. between 2017 and 2024. The study, which examined medical records from more than five million births during that time period, found that the proportion of newborns who did not receive the injection climbed from 2.92 percent to 5.18 percent.
Influenced by the tenets of TCM and a book he read on the unethical practices of rabies vaccine pioneer Louis Pasteur, Grant became skeptical that the collection of symptoms identified by veterinarians as rabies was an actual, distinct disease that could be targeted by an injectable drug. Though he distrusts pharmaceutical products, potential adverse effects aren't his major objection to the shots. "It's more about not being convinced at all that there's really anything to vaccinate against," he said.
The COVID-19 pandemic was not where the anti-vaccine movement began, but the tumult of those years and the often-heated public debates over vaccines and vaccine mandates seem to have shifted something dramatically in the United States. In this case, that's cause for alarm; as NPR reported last month, the current number of measles cases in the United States this year is the highest it's been in decades.
The already tumultuous landscape of U.S. vaccine policy faces more turmoil in what's anticipated to be a politically charged two-day meeting of a recently overhauled advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is an independent panel of experts that has traditionally met three times a year to make science-based recommendations about who should receive certain vaccines.
"Since the ruling, we are really encouraged. But we haven't heard anything from the NIH about our grants being reinstated, and we don't have a window into what that process looks like."
