This week, Florida’s surgeon general announced that the state will drop all vaccine requirements, a catastrophic decision that could help usher in epidemics of diseases, like polio, that have been virtually eradicated by vaccines.
Currently, all states, including Florida, require children who attend public school to receive vaccines against measles, rubella, polio, whooping cough, and other diseases.
“People have a right to make their own decisions,” Joseph Ladapo, the state’s surgeon general, said on Wednesday. Ladapo is a virulent opponent of reproductive rights. Earlier this year, he threatened to file criminal charges against television stations if they ran an ad about abortion rights.
“Who am I, as a government or anyone else, to tell you what you should put in your body?” he continued. “Our body is a gift from God. What you put into your body is because of your relationship with your body and your God.”
Ladapo did not say when the requirement will be repealed.
“I love our lawmakers. They’re going to have to make decisions,” he said. “People are going to have to choose a side. And I am telling you right now that the moral side is so simple.”
Critics charge that Ladapo’s position is anything but moral. Dropping vaccine requirements may cause deadly outbreaks of diseases that are entirely preventable, like measles and polio. According to a 2024 study published in The Lancet, vaccines have saved an estimated 154 million lives since 1974, 95 percent of whom were children younger than 5. Researchers found that in 2024, a child younger than 10 is 40 percent more likely to survive to their next birthday relative to a hypothetical scenario of no vaccination.
Florida Democratic lawmakers condemned the plan.
“Removing the mandate wholesale is dangerous, anti-science, and anti-child,” Senate Democratic Leader Lori Berman said in a statement. “Nobody wants to go back to the days of iron lungs.”
Public health experts also warned of the plan’s potentially deadly consequences.
“The AMA [American Medical Association] strongly opposes Florida’s plan to end all vaccine mandates, including those required for school attendance… and urge[s] Florida to reconsider,” the group said in a statement. “This unprecedented rollback would undermine decades of public health progress and place children and communities at increased risk.”
John Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, told The Guardian, “Florida’s undertakers will now need to plan for the future by increasing their stocks of small coffins.”
Anti-vaccine activists have long been a loud and destructive minority, but under Trump, their lies have reached an unprecedented level of influence on public policy. Trump nominated, and Congress confirmed, prominent anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Prior to Kennedy’s confirmation, the Union of Concerned Scientists urged Congress to reject him, calling him a “dangerous and irresponsible pick for the federal agency charged with protecting the health of the American people,” and noting that he was “an environmental lawyer with no training in medicine or public health.”
Just a few months into his tenure, Kennedy has already sabotaged the availability and development of vaccines, and undermined the public’s confidence in them. In June, he removed all members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) vaccine advisory panel. He chose eight replacements, several of whom have spread misinformation about vaccines.
Today, Kennedy is testifying before the Senate Finance Committee on the recent firing of CDC director, Susan Monarez, which prompted three agency officials to resign in protest. Monarez wrote in an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal, that she was told to “preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed anti-vaccine rhetoric.”
In his opening remarks, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) urged Kennedy to resign, saying that Trump should fire him if he refuses.
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