Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced earlier this month that he will work with Gov. Ron DeSantis to remove all vaccine requirements for school-age children and adults.
“Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” Ladapo said. “Who am I as a government — or anyone else — to tell you what you should put in your body?”
Ladapo said Sept. 3 he is instructing the state’s department of health to eliminate all vaccine mandates, many of which apply to Florida schoolchildren, the Wall Street Journal reported. Despite Ladapo’s and DeSantis’ good intentions, lifting all school vaccine mandates goes too far.
Vaccination is necessary in many circumstances to protect others’ natural rights and promote the general welfare. This has been the common position of many Americans until recent years, when vaccine skepticism gained more attention after the release of the COVID-19 shot.
Many anti-vaccination claims are not grounded in scientific evidence. For instance, the idea that vaccines cause autism emerged with British doctor Andrew Wakefield. A journalist in 2004 discovered that when Wakefield co-authored a study trying to link vaccination to a personality disorder, Wakefield was secretly receiving £400,000 from lawyers running a lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers. Additionally, the U.K. government discovered Wakefield was poised to make £28 million from his personal vaccine kits.
Later, a U.K. court found Wakefield guilty of misrepresenting evidence, skewing data with a small sample size, and subjecting child test subjects to invasive and harmful medical procedures. Studies this year have shown no demonstrable link between vaccines and conditions such as autism, asthma, autoimmune diseases, or other conditions. Yet people such as Wakefield have duped some onlookers into believing it is healthier to refrain from vaccination, period.
Proponents of DeSantis and Ladapo claim the Founding Fathers would oppose mandatory vaccinations. On the contrary, it was Benjamin Franklin who became one of the earliest advocates for vaccination after losing his 4-year-old son to smallpox.
“I long regretted bitterly and still regret that I had not given it to him by Inoculation,” Franklin wrote in his autobiography. “This I mention for the Sake of Parents who omit that Operation on the Supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a Child died under it.”
One of George Washington’s first orders as general was to curb a smallpox epidemic plaguing the American army by mandating soldiers get vaccinated. In a 1777 letter, Washington mandated that all soldiers who had not previously contracted smallpox be inoculated, even if they did not agree to vaccination when they enlisted. By immunizing American soldiers against smallpox, Washington kept them in fighting shape. According to history professor Elizabeth Fenn in her book “Pox Americana,” Washington’s vaccination was one of the core factors in America’s victory in the Revolutionary War.
Bioethical arguments against vaccination are more understandable. During COVID, gene-editing CRISPR technology was used along with compulsory untested vaccines. This is morally reprehensible, and even those in favor of vaccinations should advocate for more rigorous and long-term vaccine testing. However, many vaccinations Florida proposes to stop requiring, such as the polio and Measles-Mumps-Rubella shots, have been proven effective for more than 50 years, having been created and mandated since the 1960s and ’70s.
There are also philosophical problems with Ladapo’s and Florida’s stance on bodily autonomy. Many people who argue for “my body, my choice” on vaccinations would agree that the same logic does not apply to abortion, suicide, or substance abuse. It is not moral for us to abuse our freedom so we pose a danger to our own or other’s lives.
Lifting these mandates will bring about more disease and potentially cost lives and money. For example, Romania and the U.K. have lifted measles vaccination requirements due to anti-vaccination controversy. In turn, confirmed measles cases skyrocketed in both countries from 2023 to 2024, twelvefold in the U.K. and sevenfold in Romania. These resulted in countless preventable hospitalizations and 25 deaths between the two countries.
To put Europe’s recent measles spike into perspective, all European cases in 2016 were the American equivalent of an average-size neighborhood. In just nine years, this has swelled to double the population of Santa Barbara, California. Florida has a population of 23.4 million. If the government lifts all these vaccinations in the middle of flu season, many children will miss school, suffer, or even die from preventable diseases.
Though DeSantis and Ladapo have reasonable concerns with some vaccinations, a state-wide, all-encompassing vaccine mandate lift is a mistake. With the findings we now have about vaccine safety and outbreak risk, it is all the more clear that Florida has a moral obligation to maintain its vaccine requirements. The planned Florida mandate has gone too far.
Blake Schaper is a freshman studying the liberal arts.
