TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida’s surgeon general bucked the majority of the nation’s health experts Wednesday, calling for a halt to the use of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.
Dr. Joseph Ladapo said there wasn’t enough evidence for the shots despite their backing from the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Ladapo’s latest salvo, in what seems to be an ongoing war against mRNA COVID vaccines, came in the form of a news release. The state’s top doc recommended against the use of the, regardless of age and condition. Ladapo said there wasn’t enough data on "DNA fragments" in the doses — alleging a possible cancer risk, impact on pregnancy or effects on vital organs.
In statements, he said federal regulators at the FDA and CDC were reckless with safety standards and that without more data "these vaccines are not appropriate for use in human beings."
"The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have always played it fast and loose with COVID-19 vaccine safety," Ladapo said, "but their failure to test for DNA integration with the human genome — as their own guidelines dictate — when the vaccines are known to be contaminated with foreign DNA is intolerable."
Since getting tapped by Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for the state surgeon general job in 2021, Ladapo has steadily increased his recommendations against the shots. First, it was for those 17 and under. Then males 39 and younger. In September of last year, those under 65 were told not to get mRNA boosters.
From the 2024 campaign trail, DeSantis voiced support for Ladapo’s latest guidance, highlighting it during an event in Iowa and calling the research on the vaccines “very, very flimsy.”
"There’s huge issues with this — they haven’t been honest with the public on it," DeSantis said. "Before COVID I just assumed that this was very, very rigorous— but the reality is the FDA is basically a rubber stamp for the pharmaceutical industry."
Many of the nation’s health experts disagree with the shot criticism, including the CDC, which continues to recommend them as safe and effective. The FDA also addressed Ladapo’s disapproval in this December letter, telling the physician in part "with over a billion doses of the mRNA vaccines administered, no safety concerns related to residual DNA have been identified."
"Here we have the safest, most effective vaccines in history— awarded the Nobel Prize," Dr. Frederick Southwick, M.D., an infectious disease specialist in Gainesville, said. "And now our Surgeon General is calling to end the use of these vaccines."
Southwick is a member of Florida’s chapter of the Committee to Protect Health Care — a group of medical professionals who through the pandemic advocated for shots, masking and other COVID-19 mitigation. The physician had real concerns that Ladapo was doing more harm than good with his recommendations. Southwick said the surgeon general was undermining people’s trust in the nation’s health institutions.
"I am concerned that they are promoting what we would call disinformation for their own political gain," Southwick said. "And that is very disappointing."
Despite the Florida surgeon general’s guidance against the shots, they are still widely available from your healthcare provider and still recommended by the CDC, especially for the elderly and those with comorbidities.
