Children have received vaccines for many years. But in 1991, for the first time, newborns began receiving a vaccine. Has this caused an increase in SIDS or in vaccine-related deaths? Since 1991 over 86 million doses of the Hepatitis B vaccine have been given in the United States. An article in the December 1999 Archives of Pediatrics looked at the stories of the 18 children who had unexplained deaths within a month of having received the vaccine. The conclusion? There is no clear evidence that the vaccine has caused an increase in deaths. On the contrary, since the introduction of the Hepatitis B vaccine, the newborn death rate dropped from 7.0 to 4.8 deaths per 1000 and the number of reported unexplained deaths dropped by 50 percent.