In the world of science and medicine, vaccines have been one of the greatest achievements in history. Many diseases that afflicted humanity have been eradicated, thanks to vaccines.
When I was a child, my family worried about measles, mumps, chickenpox, and worst of all, polio. Now it’s rare to hear of anyone getting those diseases, although measles is making a comeback among unvaccinated children.
Only a crackpot would oppose vaccines whose safety and effectiveness have been demonstrated for decades.
We have at least two crackpots trying to discourage vaccinations. One is the nation’s top public health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has a long record as a vaccine opponent.
Now there is the Surgeon General of Florida, Dr. Joseph A. Lapado. He has decided to eliminate all vaccine requirements for school children.
Make no mistake. This is dangerous. This encourages the spread of deadly diseases among children.
Florida plans to become the first state to end all vaccine mandates, including for schoolchildren, rejecting a practice that public health experts have credited for decades with limiting the spread of infectious diseases.
Patricia Mazzini of The New York Times reported:
Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general, made the announcement on Wednesday alongside Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican. Mr. DeSantis rose to national prominence during the coronavirus pandemic, and over time he has espoused increasingly anti-vaccine views.
“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body?” Dr. Ladapo, a vocal denigrator of vaccines, said to applause during an event on Wednesday in Valrico, Fla., near Tampa. “Your body is a gift from God.”
He added that the administration would be “working to end” all vaccine mandates. “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” Dr. Ladapo said.
Dr. Ladapo has faced repeated criticism from others in his field for his stances on public health. He allowed parents to choose whether to send unvaccinated children to school during a measles outbreak in Weston, Fla., in 2024, rejecting longstanding, evidence-based public health guidelines. The misinformation he spread about Covid vaccines prompted a public rebuke from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2023.
It is unclear what the process of undoing the state’s longstanding vaccine mandates might look like. Dr. Ladapo said the Florida Department of Health, the agency he oversees, would do away with rules promulgating vaccine mandates. State lawmakers “are going to have to make decisions” as well, Dr. Ladapo said. “That’s how this becomes possible.”
All 50 states have at least some vaccination requirements for children entering school, though all allow for medical exemptions, and most allow exemptions for religious or personal reasons. The number of students receiving exemptions has been increasing in recent years, and immunization rates have been falling, according to KFF, a health policy research group.
Mr. DeSantis, who appointed Dr. Ladapo as surgeon general in 2021, also announced the creation of a commission to align Florida with goals laid out by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services and a vocal vaccine skeptic. The commission will be headed by Casey DeSantis, the governor’s wife.
If Florida follows through on this nutty policy, the law should ban access to vaccines to the children of state officials who endorse this policy. No hypocrisy!
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