‘The RFK Jr. Spillover Effect’: Babies are bleeding to death at record rates in the U.S., and a Congresswoman is pointing fingers at RFK Jr.

Newborns in the United States are dying from a condition that has been almost entirely preventable since 1961. Babies are born with very low levels of vitamin K, a nutrient the body needs for blood to clot. Without a simple shot given right after birth, they are at serious risk of internal bleeding, including in the brain. The shot has worked so well for decades that most people forgot it even existed. Now, more and more parents are refusing it, and doctors are watching babies die.

At a House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee hearing, Congresswoman Kim Schrier, a pediatrician from Washington state, pressed HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to simply tell parents the vitamin K shot is safe. 

He would not. Kennedy said, “I’ve never said, literally never said, anything about it.” Schrier fired back: “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.” She called this the “RFK Jr. Spillover Effect” and demanded his resignation.

Kennedy never talked about vitamin K, and that might be the whole problem

A major study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in December 2025 looked at more than five million births across 403 hospitals. It found that more than 5% of babies in the U.S. did not receive the vitamin K shot in 2024. That is up 77% from 2017. At Idaho’s St. Luke’s Health System, refusal rates jumped from 3.8% in 2020 to 9.8% in 2025. 

At one hospital in the system, 20% of babies did not get the shot. At least two babies at St. Luke’s died in the last year from complications linked to not receiving it. Doctors say the real death toll is likely much higher, because deaths are usually recorded by the immediate cause, like a brain bleed, rather than the root cause.

The vitamin K shot is not a vaccine. It is a plant-derived supplement. But parents are treating it like one. Experts say years of public figures casting doubt on vaccines, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies have created a general distrust of anything involving a needle or a hospital recommendation. 

Kennedy has a long history of pushing anti-science health advice that experts say has fed directly into this kind of public distrust. That distrust does not need to specifically name vitamin K to affect parental decisions about it. Candace Owens added fuel to that fire in a 2023 podcast episode where she suggested that giving babies the shot implied God had designed the human body incorrectly.

ProPublica, which published a major investigation into this crisis, spoke with families who lost babies to vitamin K deficiency bleeding. In almost every case, the parents had declined the shot after reading about it on social media. One father, whose son died, said he believed delaying umbilical cord clamping would have supplied enough vitamin K naturally. Research shows it does not.

Doctors at Vanderbilt, Yale, Cedars-Sinai, and hospitals across the country say they are deeply worried. Dr. Ivan Hand, director of neonatology at Kings County Hospital Center in New York, summed it up plainly: “We’re a victim of our own success. Since we’ve been treating babies with vitamin K, we haven’t seen much deficiency bleeding, so people think it doesn’t exist.”

An HHS spokesperson, rather than having Kennedy address the issue directly, blamed the Biden administration for the rise in refusals. The spokesperson added that vitamin K at birth “remains the standard of care.” 

Kennedy himself has still not publicly urged parents to give their newborns the shot. This is not the first time Kennedy has faced pressure to take a clearer public health stance, either. He has previously reversed his position on vaccines amid growing measles outbreaks, leaving many wondering where he actually stands.