Florida is seeking to become the first U.S. state to eliminate all vaccine mandates, including long-standing requirements for children to receive inoculations against diseases such as measles, mumps, and polio before attending public school.
At a Wednesday news conference, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo called the mandates “wrong” and “immoral,” comparing them to slavery. “All of them. All of them,” he said. “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”
Ladapo argued that vaccination decisions should rest solely with individuals and parents. “Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body? I don’t have that right. Your body is a gift from God,” he said, adding that while the state is not banning vaccines, it intends to remove all mandates.
Currently, Florida law requires children to be vaccinated against illnesses including chickenpox, hepatitis B, measles, mumps, rubella, and polio before entering public school. State officials did not provide a timeline for ending the mandates. Some may require legislative action, while others could be repealed by the health department.
The move has drawn criticism from health experts who note that vaccines have saved at least 154 million lives globally over the past 50 years, according to the World Health Organization.
The American Medical Association says it “opposes Florida’s plan to end all vaccine mandates, including those required for school attendance. This unprecedented rollback would undermine decades of public health progress and place children and communities at increased risk for diseases such as measles, mumps, polio, and chickenpox resulting in serious illness, disability, and even death.”
Florida’s large Caribbean-born population is among the communities watching the development closely, as many Caribbean families have long relied on vaccines in both their home countries and in the United States to protect against infectious diseases. In several Caribbean islands—including Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, and the Bahamas—children are required to be fully vaccinated before starting school.
