Florida is set to push for an end to all state vaccine mandates, state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced at a news conference Wednesday.
For decades, the state has required numerous vaccines for kids attending school, a list that today includes shots that protect against measles-mumps-rubella, polio, chickenpox and hepatitis B.
But Ladapo on Wednesday compared these mandates to “slavery,” and promised that they all will soon end.
“All of them. Every last one of them,” Ladapo said to raucous cheers from the crowd assembled at the Grace Christian School in Valrico. “Who am I as a man standing here now to tell you what you should put in your body?”
Dr. Nancy Silva, a Wesley Chapel pediatrician, said ending the vaccine mandates for schoolchildren will endanger their health and bring back diseases with life-threatening health complications that most parents of school-age children have never faced.
She questioned why the DeSantis administration would make vaccines an issue when school mandates have proven effective at eradicating and minimizing the spread of childhood diseases.
“I hope parents understand the great wonder of vaccines and how they have saved millions of lives over the decades.”
Immunizations have saved at least 154 million lives in the last 50 years, according to the World Health Organization. The vast majority of the lives saved were infants.
All 50 states and Washington, D.C., have laws requiring certain vaccines for students to attend school. Florida is the first state to publicly call for doing away with such requirements.
Hellbound and Down 