On September 3, 2025, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced in a press conference that every vaccine requirement in Florida schools would be repealed. The legislation includes mandates on vaccinations against diseases, including measles, polio, hepatitis B, and chickenpox–vaccines that have been required to attend public school for decades.
During the conference, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo argued that “every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery. Who am I, as a government or anyone else, who am I as a man standing here now, to tell you what you should put in your body?” Then, he defended his decision by claiming the move would be a victory for “parental choice” and “bodily autonomy.”
Since the conference, the decision has been met with statewide backlash. Democratic state Representative Anna Eskamani, who is running for Orlando mayor, was one of its opponents, denouncing the choice as “reckless and dangerous.” She warned that overturning vaccine requirements could quickly lead to outbreaks of preventable diseases, calling it a “public health disaster in the making.” House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell joined her, slamming the bill as “stunningly reckless” and insisting that “DeSantis wants to trade the health of our kids for media headlines. If that happened, Florida would be welcoming back child-killers like polio and measles with open arms.”
This isn’t the first time that Ladapo’s views have been publicly condemned, as he’s also known for his controversial views on ending mRNA COVID vaccines and allowing parents of children with measles to decide if their unvaccinated child can stay home during measles outbreaks. Many of his views stray from widely accepted public health recommendations, and Wednesday’s announcement drew more criticism from the public health community.
The decision also comes soon after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s anti-vaccine measures, which included the removal of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, the funding cuts towards research, and the firing of thousands of healthcare workers. After doing so, on September 5, Kennedy even hinted that he wasn’t finished with his plans to shake up the organization, and stated that the CDC was the “most corrupt” agency in the government. These words sparked nationwide backlash from doctors and scientists, who shared growing concerns that America’s public health systems are becoming dangerously compromised. The CDC not only affects US health policy, but it has also been instrumental in global health, leading crisis responses for famines, HIV, and Ebola since its founding in 1946. The CDC operates in more than 200 specialized laboratories to track emerging infectious diseases like COVID-19, and it is also tasked with researching long-term and chronic diseases, including heart disease and cancer.
However, Kennedy sees it differently, and he ran the Children’s Health Defense activist group for eight years, which has focused on questioning the safety and efficacy of the CDC and vaccination. He has described the Covid jab as the “most deadly in history,” even claiming that vaccines have caused rising rates of autism, an idea that has been debunked by large scientific studies over the years. Now, the CDC has lost its new director in late August, who was fired by Kennedy, its chief medical officer, its chief medical officer, and nearly 2,000 workers.
Due to growing controversy over Kennedy’s policies amid questions about vaccine requirements, more than 1,000 current and former U.S. Department of Health and Human Services workers have called for his resignation. In a letter that builds from a previous call from August 20, HHS claimed that Kennedy continues to endanger the public’s health by facilitating the firing of the CDC’s appointed director and prompting the resignations of three top CDC scientists.
The group added onto their claims by pointing out that Kennedy is also disregarding the Trump Administration’s “gold standard” scientific policy and has rolled back COVID vaccine availability without providing proper reasoning to back the policy changes. The HHS wrote that, “should he decline to resign, we call upon the President and U.S. Congress to appoint a new Secretary of Health and Human services, one whose qualifications and experience ensure that health policy is informed by independent and unbiased peer-reviewed science. We expect those in leadership to act when the health of Americans is at stake.”
When reflecting on growing restrictions and controversy on vaccines, former CDC director Susan Monarez warned, “I lost my job, America’s children could lose far more.”
Written by Claire Liu
