Скачать или смотреть Florida plans to become first state to eliminate all childhood vaccine mandates

Florida plans to become the first state to eliminate vaccine mandates, a longtime cornerstone of public health policy for keeping schoolchildren and adults safe from infectious diseases.

State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who announced the decision Wednesday, cast current requirements in schools and elsewhere as “immoral” intrusions on people's rights that hamper parents' ability to make health decisions for their children.

“People have a right to make their own decisions, informed decisions,” Ladapo, who has frequently clashed with the medical establishment, said at a news conference in Valrico. “They don’t have the right to tell you what to put in your body.”

Florida's move, a significant departure from decades of public policy and research that has shown vaccines to be safe and the most effective way to stop the spread of communicable diseases, especially among schoolchildren, is a notable embrace of the Trump administration's public health agenda led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist.

Under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida resisted imposing COVID vaccines on schoolchildren during the pandemic, requiring “passports” for places that draw crowds, school closures and mandates that workers get the shots to keep their jobs.

DeSantis also announced the creation of a state “Make America Healthy Again” commission Wednesday modeled after similar initiatives that Kennedy established at the federal level.

The commission would look into such things as allowing informed consent in medical matters, promoting safe and nutritious food, boosting parental rights in medical decisions about their children and eliminating “medical orthodoxy that is not supported by the data,” DeSantis said.