When ProPublica ran the headline blaming vitamin K shot refusals for a rise in infant bleeding deaths, the HighWire team went straight to the federal data rather than take the framing at face value. The CDC tracks newborn intracranial hemorrhaging nationally, and the numbers from 2017 to 2023 tell a story that does not match the headline. Cases dropped from approximately 319 to approximately 271 over that period, a downward trend across the exact years ProPublica cited as evidence of a crisis driven by parental refusal.

To test that claim further, the team pulled a 2025 peer-reviewed study on vitamin K administration trends among infants, which does show refusal rates climbing gradually over the same window. Then they plotted both datasets on the same graph: refusals in orange trending upward, CDC intracranial hemorrhaging deaths in blue trending downward, side by side across the same years.

If the ProPublica thesis were correct, those lines would move together. They move in opposite directions. The show is not claiming that vitamin K refusal reduces bleeding risk.

What the data does not support is the claim that refusal is driving deaths upward, because the deaths are not going upward. The CDC numbers say so.

A 2025 study on refusal trends makes the contradiction visible. And a national news outlet built a alarming headline on top of data that, when graphed, says the opposite of what the headline claims.

@delbigtree