It’s hard to believe it was possible, but anti-vaccination fanaticism has taken a darker turn, as Chris Mooney reports for : Now, it’s not just vaccines that parents are foolishly rejecting for their children, but also a simple injection of vitamin K that has been a standard part of newborn care since the 1960s.

Some parents now find themselves rushing to the emergency room with babies sick with (VKDB). “This rare disorder occurs because human infants do not have enough vitamin K, a blood coagulant, in their systems,” Mooney writes. “Infants who develop VKDB can bleed in various parts of their bodies, including bleeding into the brain.” Bleeding in the brain can cause brain damage and, in some cases, death.

The problem started to attract attention this spring, when Tom Wilemon, , reported that seven babies had been admitted to the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt in a mere eight months with vitamin K deficiency bleeding, which doctors believe may be on the rise because of parents refusing the vitamin K shot at birth.

That certainly seems to be the case with Mark and Melissa Knotowicz, who refused the vitamin K shot when Melissa gave birth to twins because they’d heard that the shot causes leukaemia. As Wilemon writes: “An old study did draw a correlation between the preservative and leukaemia, but follow-up studies disproved that theory, according to Vanderbilt doctors.”

When one of the twins got sick, doctors first assumed it was some kind of blood poisoning, but quickly learned about the vitamin K shot refusal. Both babies were diagnosed with vitamin K deficiency and given the shot, but for the baby who had bleeding, damage had already been done.

The tests showed the baby had suffered multiple brain bleeds. He spent a week in the hospital and is now undergoing physical therapy for neuromuscular development issues. Doctors do not know yet whether he will suffer problems with intellectual development.

Mooney profiled paediatrician , who is working to raise awareness of the dangers of refusing the vitamin K shot. Jones points out that the shot is even more necessary for women who want to breastfeed exclusively, which is darkly ironic, considering how breastfeeding has been elevated to a near-religious status in the same circles that tend to be hostile to vaccinations and now the vitamin K shot.

Mooney writes: VKDB comes in two versions, an “early” form (occurring in the first week of life) and the much more dangerous “late” form, which tends to strike infants between 2 and 12 weeks old who have not received vitamin K, and who are “” by their mothers. The problem, Jones, is that “levels of vitamin K in breast milk are low, much lower than in infant formula”.

the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, infants who do not receive a vitamin K injection have an 81 times greater chance of coming down with late stage VKDB. Even then the risk remains small: Between 4.4 and 7.2 infants out of every 100,000. But a vitamin K injection is “virtually 100 per cent protective”, Jones explains.

Mooney also chronicles the various crunchy websites trying to scare parents into opting out of the vitamin K shot, with the usual gobbledygook accusing the shots of having all sorts of scary ingredients – or else arguing that a little needle prick is some kind of great trauma for babies. The anti-vaccination movement has morphed into an anti-shot movement, and it is children who are paying the price.

This article first appeared in

is a Brooklyn-based writer and contributor to Slate‘s Double X column

Americans have always struggled over the distinction between disapproving of a behaviour because it’s bad for people and disapproving of a behaviour because it makes people feel good.

Unsurprisingly, then, the advent of e-cigarettes – without taking the lung cancer risks of actually inhaling tobacco tar – has inspired a new moral panic that looks a lot like the public health campaign against real cigarettes, but might not be anything more than old-fashioned priggishness.

On Tuesday, the to regulate the indoor smoking of e-cigarettes, or vapourisers, in basically the same way they regulate regular cigarettes. On Wednesday, ran a piece about fears over the e-cigarette with that perennial phrase of any respectable moral panic, “lure young”, right there in the headline.

Cultural revulsion

in 2009:

“Let’s be blunt about what’s going on here. We tolerated smoking until science proved it was harmful to nonsmokers. As momentum grew, the war on smoking became cultural, with disapproval and ostracism of anyone who lit up. Electronic cigarettes have removed the war’s scientific basis, but our cultural revulsion persists. Therefore, so does our prohibition and condemnation.”

Both The New York Times article and the situation in Los Angeles appear to back up his concern that the social taboos around real cigarettes are being transmuted to e-cigarettes for emotional, not scientific reasons. , himself addicted to actual cigarettes, got emotional during the debate. “When you’re 15, you want to be cool,” he said. “And I will not support anything – anything – that might attract one new smoker.”

Justifying hostility towards e-cigarettes on the grounds that they might convince young people to use real cigarettes pops up in The New York Times article as well. “Health officials worry that such views will lead to increased nicotine use and, possibly, prompt some people to graduate to cigarettes.”

The idea here is that, because nicotine is addictive, people might get addicted to it with vapourisers and then, for reasons utterly unexplained, just switch to the stinkier, more expensive, more socially taboo nicotine delivery systems known as cigarettes. Because of… reasons. Hey, it’s Our Youth! Be afraid.

Circular arguments

But The New York Times does not produce any evidence that e-cigarettes are a health hazard. Yes, many of the products you smoke in vapourisers have nicotine in them, and, yes, nicotine is addictive. But the traditional reason that nicotine addiction is bad for you is because it induces you to expose yourself to other, genuinely dangerous chemicals that are found in products that also contain nicotine.

Of course, I’m taking about cigarettes. But nicotine on its own, while addictive, does not appear to be bad for you, that don’t have the tar and other chemicals that you find in real cigarettes. The panic over nicotine addiction in and of itself seems circular: Nicotine addiction is bad because addiction is bad. Addiction is bad because don’t you know that addiction is bad? I’ll explain it to you just as soon as I finish this cup of coffee.

Appropriate action

It could be that further research will reveal that e-cigarettes are actually dangerous, but until then, it seems wise to slow our roll, especially since there is some, though anecdotal, evidence that e-cigarettes are helping real smokers get the monkey off their backs.

Certainly, it’s appropriate for the US Food and Drug Administration to get into the business of regulating e-cigarettes to make sure they don’t have a bunch of toxic and unnecessary chemicals in them, just as it currently regulates other nicotine replacement products like gum and patches.

But right now the panic over e-cigarettes seems to stem strictly from the fact that vapourisers, unlike patches or gum, are a way to get a nicotine fix that’s actually fun. And fun, especially when experienced by Our Youth, is always something that makes the moral scolds shoot first and research later.