Medical associations warn of risks and deaths due to Florida’s intention to be the first US state to eliminate vaccine mandates, which adds to the “chaos” at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under the leadership of the Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The largest American medical groups condemned the rule change in Florida, where the state surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, announced on Wednesday that the state’s governor, Republican Ron DeSantis, “will work to end all vaccination mandates established by Florida law” and compared them to slavery.
The measure, which must still be approved by the Florida Congress, “would place children and communities at greater risk for diseases such as measles, mumps, polio, and chickenpox,” said Sandra Adamson Fryhofer, advisor to the American Medical Association (AMA), in a statement.
This “would result in serious illness, disability and even death,” the doctor warned.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) also expressed “concern” about the announcement in Florida, where already 5.1% of preschool students have an exemption to vaccine mandates, above the 3.6% nationally, according to CDC data.
The association detailed that this occurs while the measles outbreak is expanding in the country, with 1,431 cases nationwide this year, the highest number since 1992, including three deaths, two of them children.
“The announcement will put Florida public school children at greater risk of getting sick, and will have a ripple effect throughout their community,” the AAP said.
The agency cited a CDC study that in 2024 found that vaccines prevented 508 million lifetime illnesses, 32 million hospitalizations and 1.1 million deaths among children born in 1994-2023.
For now, the Executive in Florida can eliminate mandates to apply the vaccine against chickenpox, pneumococcal conjugate, hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), which causes diseases such as meningitis and pneumonia.
But the local Congress must reform the law to end the rest of the immunization mandates against diseases such as diphtheria, tetanus, polio, measles, rubella, among others.
The tumult in public health
The Florida controversy intensifies the controversy of Secretary Kennedy Jr., who this Thursday appeared in the Senate, where a protester accused him of “killing millions of people” and more and more Democrats are demanding his resignation, to explain the chaos at the CDC, where last week he fired its director Susan Monarez.
“Change has its enemies, which is why we need new blood at the CDC, and why it is imperative that we remove officials with conflicts of interest and catastrophically poor judgment,” said the official, who has questioned vaccines throughout his career.
Monarez wrote Thursday in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that in a meeting with the secretary on Aug. 25 he “pressured” her, which is “one of the most public aspects of a deliberate effort to weaken the U.S. public health system and vaccine protections.”
This follows a public letter from more than 1,000 current and former Department of Health employees who this week demanded Kennedy Jr.’s resignation “for compromising the health of the nation.”
Against this backdrop, California, Oregon and Washington, governed by Democrats, announced on Wednesday a health alliance that will coordinate vaccination recommendations for the three West Coast states, in response to the changes that the White House is promoting in the CDC, responsible for vaccination guidelines.
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