Florida to put an end to the mandates of the vaccine for children, because the general surgeon of the State compares them to “slavery” | Florida

Florida children will no longer be required to receive vaccines against preventable diseases, in particular measles, mumps, chickenpox, polio and hepatitis, said that Joseph Ladapo, the state general surgeon on Wednesday in a speech during which he compared the vaccine mandates to “slavery”.

Ladapo, hand-selected for the role of Ron Desantis, Florida Republican Governor, is a long-standing skeptical of the advantage of vaccines, and has already been accused of pedaling “scientific nonsense” by defenders of public health.

In his announcement on Wednesday, at a press conference in Tampa organized by Desantis, he declared that each requirement of the state vaccine would be repealed and that he expected that this decision would receive the blessing “of God”.

“Each last is wrong and flows with disdain and slavery,” said Ladapo, who modified the data in a study in 2022 on COVVI-19 vaccines to try to exaggerate the risk for young men who received one.

“People have the right to make their own decisions. Who am I, as a government or someone else, to tell you what you should put in your body? Our body is a gift from God. What you put in your body is because of your relationship with your body and your God. ”

Ladapo condemned locking and vaccination requirements during the coronavirus pandemic as a moment “when crazy things happened”, and said that the growing skepticism of vaccines was “the reflections of God’s light against the darkness of tyranny and oppression”.

Formerly affiliated to the group of front-line doctors in controversial America, Ladapo has long made its journey against COVVI-19 vaccines. In 2023, he urged Florida residents to ignore public health councils and reject the mRNA boost which, according to him, had not been tested on man.

Several of his other positions on public health issues, such as promoting the elimination of drinking water fluoride and urging parents to reject vaccines against measles for their children, have been called “dangerous” and “poor service to Florida residents”.

His commentary as “slavery”, made with Desantis by his side, was notable. The governor attracted allegations of racism in 2023 when the State introduced a new study program teaching that the “full truth” in the history of America with slavery is that it was beneficial for slaves.

The Florida Ministry of Health currently has strict requirements for vaccinations that must be given during childhood, which are published on its website. No child can be enrolled in a public school in Florida unless he has received a series of fire against a certain number of diseases.

Childhood routine vaccinations will have prevented around 508 million cases of illness, 32 million hospitalizations and 1.13 million deaths in children born in the United States between 1994 and 2023, according to an American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published last year.

He estimated that the vaccine program has led to direct savings of $ 540 billion and societal economies of 2.7 TN.

Ladapo did not give any details or calendar for the proposed repeal, but said that his department would work with the legislators and the administration of DESANTIS to get there.

“I love our legislators. They will have to make decisions … People will have to make a decision, “he said. “People will have to choose one side. And I tell you now that the moral side is so simple. ”

Ladapo also said that “it will be wonderful for Florida to be the first state to do so”.

The Florida plan praised Robert W Malone, a preservative and an eminent anti-vacuum appointed by the Secretary in the United States of Health, Robert F Kennedy Jr, to his new advisory committee on the immunization practices that replaced the independent panel he dismissed.

“Go Joe!” Malone said in an X post, shortly after another tweet in which he said he spoke to Ladapo on Tuesday and called him “a measured scientist – who is on fire to change the system for the best”.

Others were not so convinced. Anna Eskamani, a democratic representative of the Florida State, described the decision “a public health disaster in the making”.

“The end of vaccine mandates is reckless and dangerous. It will lower vaccination rates and open the door to avoidable disease epidemics, endangering children, the elderly and vulnerable Floridians,” she said in a statement.

David Jolly, a former member of the Republican Congress for Florida, who presents himself as a Democrat to succeed Desantis as governor when he is qualified for 2027, told X that he thought that Ladapo’s mandate could be limited.

“The next governor manages to draw this type. I know that I would do it. I hope that Byron Donalds or Paul Renner would do the same,” he wrote, referring to two high-level Republicans of Florida who announced their applications.

“Since the 1980s, all states have had mandates of school vaccines. If Florida is abolished [its mandate]It would be the first of all in recent times to do so, “said Dorit Reiss, a law professor at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, specializing in the law and vaccine policy.

But she pointed out that there does not yet seem to be a law presented, which is a big Si. She noted that Idaho tried to end the school mandates in April, but ended up shaking exceptions for existing mandates – effectively making this part of the Oot law – after the lawyers of the defenders.

“I would also add that one of the reasons why all the states have adopted them is that the evidence has shown that school mandates reduce and prevent epidemics. If Florida does, this creates an unhappy natural experience with its children as a guinea pig,” said Reiss. “Children deserve better.”

The Florida Ministry of Health did not immediately respond to a request for comments.

Melody Schreiber contributed the reports