\n<\/p>\n
Children in Florida will no longer be required to receive vaccines against preventable diseases including measles, mumps, chickenpox, polio and hepatitis, said Joseph Ladapo, the state\u2019s surgeon general, on Wednesday in a speech during which he likened vaccine mandates to \u201cslavery\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ladapo, hand-picked for the role by Ron DeSantis, Florida\u2019s Republican governor, is a longtime skeptic of the benefit of vaccines, and has previously been accused of peddling \u201cscientific nonsense\u201d by public health advocates.<\/p>\n
In his announcement at a press conference in Tampa hosted by DeSantis, Ladapo said every state vaccine requirement would be repealed, and that he expected the move would receive the blessing \u201cof God\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,\u201d said Ladapo, who altered data in a 2022 study about Covid vaccines in an attempt to exaggerate the risk to young men who received one.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople have a right to make their own decisions. Who am I, as a government or anyone else, to tell you what you should put in your body? Our body is a gift from God. What you put into your body is because of your relationship with your body and your God.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ladapo condemned lockdowns and vaccination requirements during the coronavirus pandemic as a time \u201cwhen crazy things did happen\u201d, and said that growing skepticism of vaccines were \u201creflections of God\u2019s light against the darkness of tyranny and oppression\u201d.<\/p>\n
Formerly affiliated with the controversial ultra-conservative America\u2019s Frontline Doctors group, Ladapo has long railed against Covid vaccines. In 2023, he urged Florida residents to ignore public health advice and reject mRNA booster shots that he falsely claimed had not been tested on humans.<\/p>\n
Several of his other positions on public health issues, such as promoting the removal of fluoride from drinking water and urging parents to reject measles vaccines for their children, have been called \u201cdangerous\u201d and a \u201cdisservice to Florida residents\u201d.<\/p>\n
His \u201cslavery\u201d comment, made with DeSantis at his side, was notable. The governor drew allegations of racism in 2023 when the state introduced a new education curriculum teaching that the \u201cfull truth\u201d of America\u2019s history with slavery is that it was beneficial to those enslaved.<\/p>\n
Florida\u2019s department of health currently has strict requirements for immunizations that must be given during childhood, which are posted to its website. With few exceptions, no child can be enrolled in a Florida public school unless they have received a series of shots against a number of diseases.<\/p>\n
Routine childhood vaccinations will have prevented about 508m cases of illness, 32m hospitalizations, and 1.13m deaths among children born in the US between 1994 and 2023, according to a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report published last year.<\/p>\n
It estimated that the vaccine program nationally resulted in direct savings of $540bn and societal savings of $2.7tn.<\/p>\n
Ladapo gave no details or timeline for the proposed repeal, but said his department would work with lawmakers and the DeSantis administration to make it happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love our lawmakers. They\u2019re going to have to make decisions \u2026 People are going to have to make a decision,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople are going to have to choose a side. And I am telling you right now that the moral side is so simple.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ladapo also said that \u201cit\u2019ll be wonderful for Florida to be the first state to do it\u201d.<\/p>\n
Florida\u2019s plan drew praise from Robert W Malone, a conservative physician and prominent anti-vaxxer appointed by the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, to his new advisory committee on immunization practices that replaced the independent panel he fired.<\/p>\n
\u201cGo Joe!\u201d Malone said in a post to X, shortly after another tweet in which he said he spoke to Ladapo on Tuesday and called him \u201ca measured scientist \u2013 who is on fire to change the system for the better\u201d.<\/p>\n
Others were not so convinced. Anna Eskamani, a Democratic Florida state representative, called the move \u201ca public health disaster in the making\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Sign up to This Week in Trumpland<\/span><\/p>\n A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cEnding vaccine mandates is reckless and dangerous. It will drive down immunization rates and open the door to outbreaks of preventable diseases, putting children, seniors and vulnerable Floridians at risk,\u201d she said in a statement.<\/p>\n David Jolly, a former Republican congressman for Florida who is running as a Democrat to succeed DeSantis as governor when he is termed out in 2027, posted to X that he believed Ladapo\u2019s tenure could be limited.<\/p>\n \u201cThe next Governor gets to fire this guy. I know I would. Hopefully Byron Donalds or Paul Renner would do the same,\u201d he wrote, referring to two high-profile Florida Republicans who have announced their candidacies.<\/p>\n Some experts, however, were not so convinced.<\/p>\n \u201cFlorida\u2019s undertakers will now need to plan for the future by increasing their stocks of small coffins,\u201d said John Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York.<\/p>\n Moore said all the vaccine preventable infections would increase within the school setting as a result of the move, and that some diseases \u2013 measles, diphtheria, whooping cough and polio \u2013 can be fatal. Rubella transmitted from infected children to pregnant women was another area of concern.<\/p>\n \u201cSince the 1980s, all states had school vaccines mandates. If Florida abolishes [its mandate], it would be the first in recent times to do so,\u201d said Dorit Reiss, professor of law at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, who specializes in vaccines law and policy.<\/p>\n But she pointed out that there doesn\u2019t seem to be a law introduced yet, which is a big if. She noted that Idaho attempted to end school mandates in April, but ended up carving out exceptions for existing mandates \u2013 effectively rendering that part of the law moot \u2013 after pushback from advocates.<\/p>\n \u201cI would also add that one reason all states adopted them is that evidence showed school mandates reduce and prevent outbreaks. If Florida does this, it\u2019s creating an unfortunate natural experiment with its children as guinea pigs,\u201d Reiss said. \u201cChildren deserve better.\u201d<\/p>\n The Florida department of health did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n Melody Schreiber contributed reporting<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Children in Florida will no longer be required to receive vaccines against preventable diseases including measles, mumps, chickenpox, polio and hepatitis, said Joseph Ladapo, the state\u2019s surgeon general, on Wednesday in a speech during which he likened vaccine mandates to \u201cslavery\u201d. Ladapo, hand-picked for the role by Ron DeSantis, Florida\u2019s Republican governor, is a longtime<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18957,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[166,3649,4692,11593,6150,777,1561,9857,2133],"class_list":{"0":"post-18956","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-children","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-general","11":"tag-likens","12":"tag-mandates","13":"tag-slavery","14":"tag-states","15":"tag-surgeon","16":"tag-vaccine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}