Florida just made history — and sparked a national debate.
It’s now the first state to take steps toward eliminating all childhood vaccine mandates, including those required for attending school.
On Wednesday, Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo announced the move to repeal every vaccine requirement on the books. He didn’t mince words, calling the mandates “oppressive,” “immoral,” and even likening them to “slavery.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis backed the decision, making it clear some mandates can be repealed through the health department, while others will need action from the legislature.
Right now, Florida law requires schoolchildren to be vaccinated for diseases like measles, mumps, polio, chickenpox, hepatitis B, and more.
The shift is part of a broader push by DeSantis and state officials to restore what they call “medical freedom.”
This isn’t new territory for the governor. He’s already banned mRNA COVID-19 vaccine mandates in Florida and rolled out legal protections for patients and parents who choose to opt out of vaccination.
The state has also launched the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) commission — a direct response to “unscientific medical orthodoxy.” The commission promotes informed consent and parental rights, placing those principles above one-size-fits-all public health rules. (RELATED: States Form New Alliance To Stop Washington)
Critics are already sounding alarms.
Dr. Paul Offit, a U.S. pediatrician and vaccine expert, warned that without mandates, diseases like measles will “come roaring back.”
Dorit Reiss, a vaccine law professor, argued that removing mandates turns Florida into a “natural experiment” — with children as the test subjects. “It’s creating an unfortunate natural experiment with its children as guinea pigs,” she said.
Supporters of mandates point to decades of data. Public health estimates show that childhood vaccines in the U.S. prevented more than 500 million cases of illness and saved over a million lives between 1994 and 2023 — one of the clearest and strongest pieces of evidence of the profound efficacy and cost-effectiveness of routine childhood immunizations.
They also show that vaccinations have saved $540 billion in direct health costs and generated $2.7 trillion in broader societal benefits.
For decades, public schools have promoted vaccination as a way to keep children safe from infectious diseases.
By the fall of 1980, immunization levels for children entering school for the first time were:
- 96% for measles, rubella, and diphtheria–tetanus–pertussis (DTP),
- 95% for poliomyelitis (polio),
- 92% for mumps
But for Florida’s leadership, the bottom line is simple: parents, not the government, should decide what goes into their children’s bodies.
How voters respond remains to be seen.
This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.
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The experiment has been on foisting shots on every child… one-size-fits-all with NO true saline placebo trials. If you want to know how unvaccinated children fair, take a look at the Amish. The Big Pharma gravy train is coming to a screeching halt as more and more doctors share the truth, and more parents ask questions instead of blindly accepting what the white coat/ stethoscope people squawk from their Parma-indoctrinated brains.
Victory Hooray