In a decision that has terrified medical professionals, Florida's surgeon general announced Wednesday that he would seek to end all childhood vaccine requirements in the state, which he compared to "slavery."
Currently, Florida requires children to be immunized against deadly diseases like measles, mumps, chickenpox, polio, and hepatitis to attend public school.
At a press conference alongside the state's anti-vaccine Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida's surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, said that he believed the decision to make these vaccinations optional would receive the blessing of "God."
"Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery," Ladapo said of the mandates. "People have a right to make their own decisions. Who am I, as a government or anyone else, to tell you what you should put in your body? Our body is a gift from God. What you put into your body is because of your relationship with your body and your God."
Many Republican-led states have rolled back requirements for residents to receive the COVID-19 vaccination and, in some cases, restricted access to it. But Ladapo, who has in the past been caught personally altering data to exaggerate the risks of the COVID-19 vaccine, is treading new ground with his pledge to eliminate "every last one" of the state's childhood vaccine mandates, something no state, red or blue, has done.
While Ladapo's decision is unprecedented, it is in step with the position of the current Republican Party, which is making health policy under the stewardship of longtime anti-vaccine influencer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, who is the secretary of Health and Human Services under President Donald Trump.
Kennedy has limited who is eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and is reportedly considering pulling it from the market altogether. And alongside a handpicked panel of anti-vaccine activists, he has also launched an effort to revise the entire childhood vaccine schedule.
In April, as a measles epidemic swept through pockets of Texas with low vaccination rates and killed two unvaccinated children, Kennedy downplayed the disease's severity and hyped long-disproven claims about the dangers of the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine, which virtually eradicated the disease in the U.S. for over 20 years.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of parents declining to vaccinate their children has soared across the US. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, during the 2019-20 school year, just three U.S. states had rates of MMR vaccination lower than 90%. In 2025, that number had increased to 16.
As of July, 1,280 measles cases had been reported in the U.S.—the most cases since 1992, before the MMR vaccine became part of the standard childhood vaccine schedule. In 92% of cases involving children and teenagers, the people who became infected were either unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination statuses.
Following news of Florida's decision to end childhood vaccine requirements, Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, told the Washington Post: "We can expect that measles will come roaring back. Other infectious diseases will follow. This is an unprecedented move that will only put our children at unnecessary risk."
Measles is not the only vaccine-preventable illness experiencing a resurgence. After the rate of whooping cough vaccinations dropped below the 95% threshold required for herd immunity during the 2023-24 school year, the number of cases of the disease doubled, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
"Florida will repeat what happened in West Texas, where immunization rates are low," said Dr. Peter Jay Hotez, a pediatrician who serves as Dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. "All for health freedom propaganda, and lousy Fox News sound bites."
According to CDC data, Florida has one of the lowest rates of childhood vaccination in the country, with just over 88% of kindergarteners receiving the required shots in the 2023-24 school year. But just as they did in Texas, the effects may harm people across the country.
"Florida's decision to erase school vaccine requirements will cause preventable illness and death. Not just for kids in Florida, for whole communities, of all ages, across the country," said Dr. Andrea Love, an immunologist and microbiologist, who writes a newsletter responding to medical misinformation. "Pathogens don't follow state lines."
Dr. Robert Steinbrook, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, called the plan "a recipe for disaster and exactly the wrong approach to protecting state residents from infectious diseases."
"High immunization rates against dangerous infectious diseases such as measles and polio protect individuals as well as their communities," Steinbrook said. "If this plan moves forward, Florida will terminate one of the most effective means of limiting the spread of infectious diseases and embolden [Kennedy] to wreak even more havoc on vaccinations nationally. The Florida Legislature and state residents must vociferously reject these plans."