From Medicine to Mysticism: The Radicalization of Florida's Top Doc

[douglas9]

In early September, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo took the podium at a Tampa news conference to make an unprecedented announcement: He planned to eliminate “all vaccine mandates” in the state, he told the crowd. “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”

“Who am I, as a man standing here now,” he asked, hand on his chest, “to tell you what you should put in your body?” He punctuated each “you” with a finger pointed at the audience. The crowd clapped, and he continued riding the wave of their enthusiasm. “Your body,” he added, “your body is a gift from God!” The audience roared its approval.

A few days later, he appeared on the CNN program State of the Union, and host Jake Tapper asked him if state health officials had undertaken any analysis to determine how many new cases of hepatitis A, whooping cough, and chickenpox would arise after the ending of vaccine mandates. Ladapo seemed amused by the question. “Absolutely not,” he said, adding later, “There’s this conflation of the science and sort of, what is the right and wrong thing to do?”

Ladapo’s supreme self-confidence and impeccable credentials—which include an MD and PhD from Harvard Medical School—have not muted the pushback that his announcement to end vaccine mandates has attracted. Both the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics issued statements condemning the move, and Ladapo’s predecessor, Scott Rivkees, said in a TV interview following the announcement, “This is a very, very confusing and really, potentially very, very dangerous decision from a public health lens.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/ladapo-florida-anti-vaccine-mysticism-brianna/