>>The problem is that the only infants who get hemorrhagic disease of the
newborn (brain hemorrhage, usually) are breastfed infants.  The Vit K content
in the milk is dependent on Mom's diet, so full vegans are at the highest
risk.  The IM injection at birth prevents the problem.  If parents refuse IM
Vit K, the baby should get 2 mg po at birth and q 1 month X 2-3.
Almost no Vit K is transmitted via the placenta. No-one understands why
nature would allow this to happen to a fully breastfed infant. Any ideas
Kathy?

A number of thoughts:
(1) Nature (natural selection) doesn't allow or disallow things.  Evolution
is not directional.  Every generation, those who have the variation that is
best for that particular environment are more successful in leaving
offspring, and therefore more copies of the genetic variation that is
successful.  If hemorrhagic disease of the newborn is extremely rare, then
it isn't a very potent force for natural selection, and if the baby dies
soon after birth, it is probably replaced by another baby right away with no
net impace on the reproductive success of the mother.
(2) If vegans are at highest risk, then hemorrhagic disease of the newborn
was probably much rarer during the past 1 million years than it is today,
and is probably rarer in most other places than it is in industrialized
countries.  In hunter and gatherers populations, people eat a wide variety
of foods, as many as 100 different food sources every day, including a
variety of animal protein -- not big "slabs o'beef" necessarily, but
insects, eggs, grubs, worms, snakes, small lizards, birds, fish, mollusks,
small mammals such as mice, plus the occasional feast when someone kills a
larger animal, and milk and blood of domestic animals.  While many
horticulturalists around the world eat a mostly carbohydrate diet (staples
of rice, sorghum, corn/beans, millet, yams, etc.), they eat animal protein
whenever they can.
(3) One wonders if other factors of industrial life affect this issue -- for
example, do you see as much hemorrhagic disease of the newborn in babies who
are not drugged at birth, not separated from mom, who nurse in the more
natural pattern of several times an hour for several minutes at a time,
instead of big "feasts" of 20 minutes of nursing, followed by "fasts" of
2-3-4 hours?  I have no idea -- perhaps this doesn't matter at all.  But I
suspect that this may be iatrogenic, a result of our culture's way of
birthing and infant care, as much as an intrinsic "defect" in the system
designed by evolution/God.

Kathy Dettwyler

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