Florida working to end vaccine mandates

Florida’s governor said he’ll be asking the state Legislature to repeal a statute that requires children to receive vaccines for polio, diphtheria, measles and mumps before entering school. If it passes, Florida will be the first in the nation to eliminate all vaccine mandates for children and adults.

Other vaccines, including those for chickenpox, hepatitis B and strep infections, are mandated by the state health department, as opposed to Florida’s Legislature. The state’s Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said his department will soon issue rules repealing those requirements too.

“People have a right to make their own decisions,” said Ladapo, who joined Gov. Ron DeSantis for the announcement on Wednesday. “If you don’t want to put whatever vaccines in your body, God bless you. And I hope you make an informed decision. And that’s how it should be.”

Ladapo has long been a leading critic of vaccines, especially mRNA vaccines developed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. In announcing the plan to end all vaccine requirements in Florida, he said: “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”

Public health and child health professionals condemned the move. Dr. Aileen Marty, an infectious disease expert at Florida International University, said, “This will cause havoc.”

“It will cause problems for funding free vaccines for the impoverished and issues with vaccines to the rest of us due to insurance-related issues,” Marty said. “It is clearly against empirical evidence of what is safest for individual children.”

The president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr. Susan Kressly, said, “We are concerned that today’s announcement by Gov. DeSantis will put children in Florida public schools at higher risk for getting sick, and have ripple effects across their community.”

DeSantis also announced Wednesday he’s forming a new state “Make America Healthy Again” commission. It’s modeled after the one at the federal level created by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The Florida commission will be chaired by the governor’s wife, Casey DeSantis.