For more than a decade, Dr. Joseph Mercola has been warning parents about potentially life-saving vitamin K injections for newborns, warning that “vitamin K injections are completely unnecessary for newborns.”
But now Mercola has put aside his past warnings and says he no longer believes in such things.
ProPublica recently contacted Mercola as it was preparing a story about infants who died after their parents refused vitamin K injections. Mr. Mercola’s new view is as clear as his old one. “The data is clear: Vitamin K saves lives,” Mercola wrote in an April article on his website two days after being contacted by ProPublica. He added: “Based on the published evidence, I support vitamin K prophylaxis for all newborns.”
He also instructed parents to consult their child’s pediatrician.
“Bleeding due to vitamin K deficiency is rare, but when it occurs, the consequences can be devastating and irreversible,” Mercola wrote. “It can be prevented with just one injection at birth. Ask your doctor.”
Mr. Mercola is a leading vaccine skeptic and an ardent supporter of Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He is a popular figure online, with a Facebook page with around 1.7 million followers. He publishes a daily newsletter and sells alternative treatments for various diseases.
His turnaround comes at a critical moment. Hospitals and research studies have documented an alarming spike in babies not receiving vitamin K injections, which the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended since 1961 to help newborns’ blood clot. Research shows that without vitamin K deficiency, babies are at 81 times the risk of delayed vitamin K deficiency bleeding, which can be fatal.
As with measles and other vaccines, vitamin K vaccination has been the target of a flood of misinformation online. This has led some parents to view it as an unnecessary pharmaceutical intervention amid deep-seated distrust of the health care system in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Some pointed to Mercola’s 2010 post, “The Dark Side of Regular Neonatal Vitamin K Shots.” A doctor in Tennessee, like a doctor in Oregon, recalled a family reluctant to be cited for this article.
For the next several years, Mercola supported the opposition. He reiterated his position in 2014 after an incident in Nashville, Tennessee, in which four infants suffered from vitamin K deficiency hemorrhage. And it took similar action in 2019 after hospital staff contacted Illinois Child Protective Services to temporarily take custody of a newborn whose parents refused to give the baby a shot.
Instead of injections, Mercola recommends vitamin K drops taken orally and is promoted as a popular alternative online. However, this IV drug is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration and is used in some European countries, although studies have shown it is not as effective as injections.
In an April article, he addressed the misinformation circulating online about vitamin K injections and acknowledged that his writing may have played a role in spreading it. “The internet contains a significant amount of misinformation about vitamin K,” Mercola wrote. “Some of it may be a reference to my own paper from 2010, which reflects the state of the scientific debate that has since been resolved. Science has moved forward, and so have I.”
Dr. Joseph Mercola posted an article on his website saying he has changed his mind about vitamin K. He said vitamin K injections are now a “wise option” and advised parents to consult their pediatrician. Mercola.com, ProPublica highlights
In fact, the science behind vitamin K injections has been established for decades. The discovery of vitamin K and its role in blood clotting won the Nobel Prize in 1943. The new study confirms and expands on many of the findings from 2010, but does not represent a scientific change from previous studies. Several recent studies cited by Mercola in his April article documenting an increase in unvaccinated infants and subsequent catastrophic bleeding in the brain, all support the same science that has promoted vaccination for more than 60 years.
In previous posts, Mercola wrote about the possible risks of the injections, starting with “inappropriate” and “unnecessary” pain for the baby. He falsely claimed that the amount of vitamin K injected into newborns far exceeded the required dose. Additionally, he said the shot may contain preservatives that could be “toxic” to the baby’s immune system.
Benzyl alcohol is often used as a preservative in vitamin K injections, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other organizations stress that it is safe. In the 1980s, doctors noticed that some extremely premature babies were suffering from benzyl alcohol poisoning, which the CDC says was caused by taking too many drugs containing benzyl alcohol. Additionally, many hospitals now offer preservative-free options.
Some families have expressed concerns about the “black box warnings” that appear on drug labels to alert donors to serious risks. The shot contains a boxed warning like more than 400 other drugs, but it primarily pertains to adults and vitamin K given through an IV drip rather than as an injection into the thigh muscle, which is the usual way doctors administer vitamin K to babies. Of the dozens of doctors ProPublica interviewed, not one said they had never seen side effects in infants who received vitamin K injections.
But even in 2010, Mercola dispelled the common misconception that vitamin K injections increase cancer risk. This belief stems from two older studies that have been disproven. In 2010, he wrote, “That conclusion was wrong.” In April, he reinforced that message.
The alternative treatments promoted by Mercola are attracting federal scrutiny. He and his company had to pay millions of dollars to resolve allegations that he made false claims about the safety of his products.
For example, during the pandemic, the FDA sent a warning letter to Mercola for offering unapproved, misbranded products containing vitamin C on its website as a preventative or treatment for COVID-19.
In 2017, the Federal Trade Commission announced it would mail $2.59 million to people who purchased Mercola indoor tanning systems. The agency argued that Mercola and his companies maintain that their tanning systems are safe and that studies have shown that indoor tanning does not increase the risk of melanoma, a type of skin cancer.
Mr. Mercola denied wrongdoing. His online posts include a disclaimer that they are not intended as medical advice, but as a way to share knowledge and information. He also said that the 2010 paper on vitamin K was based on interviews with Dutch researchers who studied vitamin K.
Mercola, a doctor of osteopathic medicine, declined to be interviewed for this article, but said his current stance is accurately reflected in the April article. “While I do not agree with all of the features and conclusions in the summary, I have nothing further to add at this time,” he wrote in response to questions from ProPublica.
Although Mercola has reversed his position on vitamin K, many on social media still cling to the debunked and distorted claims. Unsubstantiated claims often go unchecked on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.
One theme that has emerged on social media is the idea that God created babies perfectly, and there must be a reason why babies are born without enough vitamin K. In one TikTok video, a woman who identified herself as a nurse asks, “Was God really wrong?”
In response to another, one wrote: “Please know that our creator makes no mistakes. All babies are born this way for a reason.”
Some people lump vitamin K injections, which are not vaccines, with vaccines. A comment on a video about vitamin K injections declared, “My baby is not vaccinated.” It received over 600 likes.
Mercola is not the only doctor named by opponents of vitamin K injections. Commenters on Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit directed people to Dr. Suzanne Humphries, who has been speaking out about vaccines and vitamin K shots for years.
“My opinion is that the more I read about vitamin K, the less I believe that vitamin K is injected into newborns,” she said in a video posted in 2014.
Last month, she appeared in a lengthy interview posted on the website of Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine nonprofit founded by President Kennedy. She cited two studies from more than 30 years ago that found a link between vaccination and cancer, both of which were called into question shortly after their publication. As even Mercola noted in 2010, some additional studies found no increased risk of cancer after vaccination.
“As humans who believe in a divine creator, we believe that perhaps it is by design, or actually by design, and there is a reason for it,” she said.
Humphries did not respond to a request for comment.
In 2020, while President Kennedy was at Children’s Health Defense, the group published a post claiming that aluminum adjuvants in vaccines (additional ingredients that boost the body’s immune response) were a “significant source of early exposure” to aluminum. Some vitamin K shots contain small amounts of aluminum, but studies have found no evidence of serious or long-term harm. Adjuvants have been used “safely in vaccines for decades,” according to the CDC.
Brian Hooker, chief scientific officer at Children’s Health Defense, said concerns about aluminum remain, as do cancer fears, even though multiple studies have found no basis for it. He said he would like to see more research done on vitamin K injections, as well as other neonatal interventions such as the hepatitis B vaccine.
“I want to look at the individual components of these shots in conjunction with everything else that infants are getting, and to me that body of literature is really incomplete,” he said.
Hooker said he has worked with Kennedy for many years and, although he no longer has direct contact with him, he has full confidence in the federal health official who represents the country. But President Kennedy’s silence has deepened skepticism among experts.
“Now we’re starting to see something we’ve never seen before: cerebral hemorrhage and intestinal hemorrhage in infants,” said Rep. Kim Schrier, a Washington Democrat who worked as a pediatrician for more than 15 years before running for Congress. “And it’s so scary and heartbreaking.”
At a House subcommittee hearing in April, Mr. Schrier pressed Mr. Kennedy about vitamin K, saying that Mr. Kennedy had made parents mistrust doctors and injections, leading some parents to refuse vitamin K injections and other standard treatments.
“Secretary Kennedy, in light of what I just told you about vitamin K, could you just say to the pregnant women who are there for the record, ‘Yes, your baby should get a vitamin K injection,'” Shrier asked Kennedy.
Kennedy had no obligations to her. He said he didn’t say anything about vitamin K injections.
An HHS spokesperson did not respond to ProPublica’s questions, but said the CDC recommends parents give newborns the vitamin K vaccine within six hours of birth to prevent bleeding caused by vitamin K deficiency. She acknowledged that access to the shot has declined in recent years “as public trust in health care institutions has declined, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic and amid heavy-handed orders and inconsistent messaging under the Biden administration.”
“Rebuilding trust requires honesty, informed consent and respect for individual choice,” a spokesperson wrote in an email.
Shrier said she empathizes with parents who are inundated with conflicting messages. She said she was recently outside the Capitol and overheard a woman say (albeit inaccurately) that all pediatric vaccines contain glyphosate, which is an ingredient in the herbicide Roundup.
“You can see how this is going to spiral now. It’s going to get out into the public eye, and then it’s going to spread out on social media,” Schrier said. “No parent wants to do anything wrong.”
