Vitamin K injections? with a short note about the inadequacy of the Canadian voting system

All babies born in hospitals (and many born at home) are given a vitamin K injection at birth to prevent hemorrhagic disease of the newborn (HDN). This is one that i'm kind of stuck on.

HDN - Newborns are born with low levels of vitamin K (it doesn't cross the placenta well, and their gut flora is not well developed, which is where much of our vitamin K comes from), a necessary factor in clotting. It developes more often in breastfed babies, since formula contains higher levels of vitamin K than breastmilk does. From what I can find, it affects anwhere from 2-10 babies per 100,000, but it can be deadly since bleeding can happed in the brain. With the injection, rates can go as low as 0.25 babies per 100,000.

There might be some problems with the injection. Two studies done in the 90's (and several since then) linked vitamin K injection at birth to higher rate of childhood leukemia later on, but other studies have not found this connection. Vitamin K causes high rates of cell division in the fetus and newborn. The amount in the injection is about 20,000 times the amount naturally found in the baby. This high rate of cell division so close after birth is though to be what increases the risk of cancer. The risk of cancer is increased somewhere between 10-80%. It has been given to babies since the 60's in western countries. Apparantly, it can also cause newborn jaundice (although i couldn't find any studies to back that up).

The main reason that I wouldn't do it, is it just doesn't seem natural to me. I don't understand how evolution could have gotten it wrong. There is one alternative to the injection (oral administration) which has not been studied to show that it actually decreases HDN or to see if it still causes cancer (at least not that I can find). Lots of natural health websites seem to prefer the oral route, but without any evidence either way, I would kind of prefer the evil I know to the evil I don't.

Any opinions on the matter are greatly appreciated.

By the way, the midwife told me at our last appointment that the baby has dropped (kind of). If you imagine your pelvis divided into 5th's, 1/5 being baby kind of floating just inside the pelvis and 5/5 being the baby right at the cervix, this baby is now at 3/5. It is my prediction that this baby is not going to wait until Oct 27. Maybe it will be Oct 14. Maddy was born just days before a federal election too, and I COULDN'T VOTE!! If I left the hospital to vote, they would not let me back, and since Maddy wasn't being released yet, and I was breastfeeding, that wasn't really an option. I think its stupid that people in hospitals can't vote (unless they vote early, or by mail, but I could do neither). Anyway, that's a different topic alltogether.