Name: Dr. Joseph Ladapo Breaks Down Decision to Remove All Vaccine Mandates in Florida
Uploaded: 2025-11-04T17:31:27.000Z
Description: In early September, during a joint press conference with Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo publicly announced the decision to eliminate all state vaccine mandates—including those required for schools.

Jan Jekielek is a senior editor with The Epoch Times, host of the show “American Thought Leaders” and co-host of “FALLOUT” with Dr. Robert Malone and “Kash’s Corner” with Kash Patel. Jan’s career has spanned academia, international human rights work, and now for almost two decades, media. He has interviewed nearly a thousand thought leaders on camera, and specializes in long-form discussions challenging the grand narratives of our time. He’s also an award-winning documentary filmmaker, producing “The Unseen Crisis: Vaccine Stories You Were Never Told,” “DeSantis: Florida vs. Lockdowns,” and “Finding Manny.”

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[RUSH TRANSCRIPT BELOW] In early September, during a joint press conference with Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo publicly announced the decision to eliminate all state vaccine mandates—including those required for schools.

In this episode, Dr. Ladapo explains the decision, how it will take shape, and his response to critics of the announcement who say there will be increased outbreaks of infectious disease.

“It’s just not appropriate for someone else to be able to dictate or force you to put something into your body.… If you own anything, you do own your body, just as you own your free will,” he says.

Florida’s Department of Health is removing all its current mandates, but a complete removal of all vaccine requirements from state law will require legislative action. Dr. Ladapo says he’s confident it will be passed.

We also dive into his concern that many pediatricians can refuse to treat children on the basis of the child’s vaccination status: “To be kicked out of pediatrician practices for that reason, it’s just wrong,” he says.

He’s working with Governor DeSantis on a Patient’s Bill of Rights.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of NTD.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek:

Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, so good to have you back on American Thought Leaders.

Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure to speak to you, Jan.

You and Governor DeSantis recently announced the intention of removing all vaccine mandates across the state of Florida. Just explain to me how you came to this decision, because I’m sure you didn’t come to it lightly.

Yes, it’s interesting because we didn’t come to it lightly, but it has the simplicity of something that would almost be something you’d come to lightly. And it was kind of an interesting thing. So we were scheduled to have a press conference about a number of different issues in the health freedom area. It occurred to me that this was an intention to end this really immoral practice of forcing people to put things into their bodies.It’s just not the role of some other person or some other entity to dictate what someone puts in their body in a general circumstance.

Obviously, there are special circumstances, like when people join the military. And I think you can think about that because that’s a very special situation. But just in general, everyday life, it’s just not appropriate for someone else to be able to, you know, kind of dictate or force you to put something into your body. It’s just completely inappropriate.

If you own anything, you do own your body just as you own your free will. And even knowing that, I’ve always been clear on that, but even knowing that, it just didn’t seem like something that was possible or something we should even consider pursuing. And it occurred to me the day before the event that, in fact, we should pursue it. And I actually called Governor DeSantis, and I was able to speak with him. Fortunately, he was of a similar mind, and we made that announcement.

So you say that this is immoral to force people to put things in their bodies in the general sense. But there are, you know, I think a lot of people who are arguing against what you’re doing, saying it’s immoral to not make vaccines a kind of requirement or at least a mandate. So how do you square that?

Yes, it’s so interesting. It’s a very simple thing. First of all, I think that that argument, and I’ve heard something similar to that, is a bit of a confused argument. People, I think, are conflating their desire to see other people vaccinated with how that happens. And so those are very different things. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to see very high levels of vaccination. There’s nothing wrong with that.

But in terms of morality, I think as a first principle, the way I describe it sometimes is the fact that people have different faiths. I believe that God sends us to this planet literally with two things: we come to this planet with our souls and our bodies. And those are the two things that we should have as much control over as possible.

We have free will. Our bodies are something that we decide what we do with. We decide whether we, you know, whether we exercise, whether we eat well, whether we smoke, whether we sleep a lot, whether we sleep a little. Those are things that are really fundamental decisions that speak to our freedom as human beings, both our free will and our free body, and specifically in terms of our body, what we put into our bodies.

You know, I’m going to touch on this just a little bit more because I think that the concept that people would promote here is just simply the idea of a greater good, right? The idea that if you have a high level of vaccination against a particular disease or a particular series of diseases, then there’s a kind of herd immunity that develops, and then the whole society is protected from that disease. I mean, that’s the general argument that I hear. And of course, that’s at odds with this bodily sovereignty that you’re describing. And so is there a way to reconcile these things?

Reconciliation, I don’t think, is the goal. But the point is a very good point. So in terms of the idea, of course, and the empirical fact that for some conditions, not for all conditions, pertussis is an example where mandates really have no relevance because there’s already very good evidence that the vaccine against pertussis is ineffective at preventing transmission. In fact, there’s even evidence that in some ways it can promote transmission because people who contract pertussis and have a history of pertussis vaccination are more likely to not have symptoms and are therefore essentially still as contagious as people who were not vaccinated.

In fact, in some cases, they can be more contagious if the person has recovered naturally from pertussis and builds natural immunity. So there are some vaccines for which it’s really a moot point. There are others where the argument that there’s an interest in herd immunity, if you will, is a good one.

We know that, for example, with the measles vaccine, it’s very effective at preventing transmission and reducing the likelihood that someone who’s exposed will spread the virus to someone else. There’s pretty strong consensus around that. There are some gray areas, but in general and in broad strokes, I would say that is a true statement.

However, it’s also possible to have that with the absence of mandates. So something we’ve cited to help people understand that the sky will not fall if mandates are removed includes example countries like Sweden, like Norway, like Denmark, like the United Kingdom, and like most provinces in Canada, where there are no mandates for vaccines, and yet the rates of vaccine uptake are very high and, in general, probably comparable to what we have here. So I think that you can have both.

I think you can have a moral environment for providing vaccinations, and you can have high uptake of vaccines that are effective at preventing transmission to other people. I believe that parents provided with good information can make good decisions for the health and benefit of their children. So I think that’s a much better place to be. This concern that we’re just going to have this resurgence of all these diseases, I don’t think so. I mean, I don’t think that that’s what most parents want.

Some parents may not feel the same about some vaccines, and if they don’t feel that way, they have a right to not feel that way. I think that they should have a discussion with their pediatricians and be sure that they’re making an informed decision. I think that we’re a better society by putting as much power and as much decision-making and personal responsibility in the hands of parents.

So it’s been, I think it’s about a month maybe since you announced this. And this is not, from what I understand, a very simple process. There are a whole bunch of statutes you have to look at. There’s rulemaking that has to be changed. Can you give me a picture of what it will take to actually accomplish this and also in the context of what you’ve actually managed to do thus far?

Yes, that’s a great question. In the Department of Health, which I lead here in Florida, we actually do have some vaccines that are mandated, and they are mandated through the department, so those are going to be gone. You know, so we control those fully, and it’s again, it’s not sort of a scientific debate. We’re not saying that they’re all bad vaccines or anything like that, but they shouldn’t be mandated. I mean, people should be able to make a decision about a vaccine in an ethical environment with informed consent. Those include Haemophilus, pneumococcus, varicella zoster, or chickenpox, and the hepatitis B vaccine.

Outside of the Department of Health, other vaccines are mandated in Florida law, so that’s going to require legislative help. We are currently working on bill language and drafting a law. We’ll be speaking with lawmakers about that and why this is an important issue, why this is an important moral issue, and why it’s important to do the right thing and not let fear prevent you from really taking the right action.

I think the Florida legislature meets in January of 2026, so it’s actually quite a ways out. So you have, I guess, a bit of time to work with the legislators on kind of, you know, preparing updates to the law and so forth. Do you think this is going to pass fairly easily, or is this going to be contentious?

That’s a great question. We have wonderful lawmakers here in Florida. I’ve had the opportunity to meet with many of them. And I mean, I’m a dreamer, that’s the truth. I think that it’s going to pass. Florida, especially with Governor DeSantis’s leadership, has just been immeasurably invaluable during the pandemic, particularly. The things that he was able to do and oftentimes to both protect in terms of people’s individual rights and to prevent in terms of medical hegemony with vaccine passports and kids being kept out of school indefinitely and all the crazy stuff that we all remember very well during the pandemic.

I think it’s doable. I think it would be wonderful for Florida to make an ethical stand, to take an ethical stand, because it really is. I mean, even though it’s common, you know, I think pretty much every state has them. It’s bad policy to mandate that people put things in their bodies. I mean, it’s bad policy.

It’s an immoral policy, and in my own opinion, for the preservation of those values that have helped both create this country in terms of its greatness, in terms of its deference for freedom as much as possible, and for the maintenance of those values, for our ability to sustain those values. It’s important that we have ethical policies. You know, I’m actually in the debt of Governor DeSantis because it was really through my working on this documentary with him called, DeSantis, Florida vs. Lockdowns, that I was introduced to the reality of the COVID pandemic in the first place.

It was seeing his good leadership that seemed to be working, but that was against the grain, that prompted me to come to Florida and do this documentary. I was then introduced to Dr. Scott Atlas and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. They were incredibly helpful in guiding me to realize that all sorts of things that seemed a little crazy actually were a little crazy and that there were other ways to look at how to approach the pandemic. So to your point, he has a very, very good track record in making decisions.

And this is actually something I wanted to ask you earlier. So you’re saying the day before your press conference you said, hey, I’m thinking about making this massive announcement. What do you think, Governor? Is that how it went down?

Yes, that’s exactly how it worked out. So I’m a big fan of Governor DeSantis. I just, I really like the man. And it just turns out that he’s just a very good decision maker. And you can tell by the fact that he’s been so successful as a governor. You know, obviously, he’s probably best known for all of the really bold and incredibly valuable and vanguard decisions that he made during the pandemic. But people who live here in Florida also see his leadership in many other really important ways that impact their lives.

You could walk around Florida and just talk to random people who live on the coast, the East Coast or the West Coast, and I don’t think they would ever pick anyone else to be governor during an emergency like the hurricanes. He’s just so great at taking on the problems that government has a role to address, but often fails to address. We see government failures all over the place. And that just doesn’t happen with him. The problems that regular people face, getting electricity back on, getting back in their homes, dealing with local problems with building permitting.

These sound like mundane issues, but they make a big difference in the quality of people’s lives. He’s just really, really, really good and talented at decision-making, even with complex issues.  And fortunately, he has a very strong natural orientation toward freedom. It’s important to allow people to have as much freedom as possible. So starting from a place like that, the conversation did not need to be lengthy. It clearly is the right thing to do, and it’s a worthy goal to pursue.

And so in this vein, I understand that you’re also looking at eliminating other types of health mandates. Maybe you can kind of lay that out for me a little further.

One other area that I’m very interested in, and I know a lot of moms in Florida are very interested in, and I also know the governor is very interested in, is this denial of medical care because of people’s vaccination choices. Stepping back for a moment, I mean, it’s a really repulsive policy stance. It’s very common here in Florida, unfortunately, in pediatrician offices, as it is in probably most parts of the country.

Families, parents, and their children are being told that in order to receive care, you must comply with these medical therapies in the way and at the time that I that I dictate that already is completely against literally everything we learned about ethics in medical school because it is inherently coercive and you cannot provide you cannot provide ethical appropriate proper medical care in the setting of coercion it’s impossible.

My youngest kid is six-years-old and he can explain this to you after a brief discussion. He would be able to explain why it is very clearly coercive to punish families by kicking them out of their practice if they do not agree to taking a medication. That medication happens to be the vaccines that we’re talking about but it doesn’t matter what the medication is. It is a coercive policy. It’s as bad as a policy can be.

On a practical level, what happens sometimes is that moms or dads may just want to, for example, spread some vaccines out, or they may not want to take particular vaccines because they have some concerns about their child’s sensitivity or their need for a particular vaccine. And for parents to be kicked out of pediatrician practices for that reason, it’s just wrong. It’s plain, W-R-O-N-G, wrong. And so we’re going to be working on some bill language for that. We actually attempted to pass a bill, like a patient’s bill of rights, that sort of bill in the last session. And unfortunately, we weren’t successful, but we’re gonna be doing that again.

President Trump recently suggested separating out the MMR vaccines into something, well, basically just separating them out. And your thoughts on that?

Frankly, it was beautiful to see President Trump be so impassioned and share his feelings about some of these health issues and whether people agree or not. I really appreciate, I mean, honestly, I’m just very appreciative when people are sincere. When folks are concerned about the combination vaccines, I think that’s a legitimate concern that needs to be respected.

What is awful is when a parent is concerned about the number of vaccines the child might receive in one at one time, for example, and that concern is dismissed. Oh, the CDC says it’s fine. You need five different vaccines, or you need eight different vaccines today to get little Johnny caught up, and many parents will be uncomfortable with that. And to dismiss those concerns is just outrageous.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe that currently that’s an option in this country. I just don’t think there’s a licensed product that would allow you to separate those out. But the safety of vaccine combinations from the literature I’ve reviewed is not nearly as solid or as clear in certainty as many people present it as, which is not to say that there are issues, but rather to say that we know less than I think physicians and health officials often present. And I think it’s a reasonable concern if parents don’t feel comfortable with these combination vaccines.

And this would presumably apply what you’re saying to multiple individual vaccines being given in one session, as you were just mentioning that, and it occurred to me.

Yes, that’s totally the case. This is part of the science culture, unfortunately, and I think Dr. Robert Malone sometimes refers to it as scientism, which I think is perfect. Part of the science culture of scientism is that numbers and data, however limited those data may be, are all that matter. And things like parental intuition, things like maternal concerns, things like experience—those things don’t matter. And that road doesn’t lead anywhere good.

There is tremendous, infinite value in parental intuition and if parents are concerned they absolutely in my opinion you need to listen to that to that voice like our intuition is one of the gifts that God gives us that is a gift from God you know that our intuition is part of our relationship with the universe and all that there is so to to just dismiss that is, not only is it unwise, but it literally is an affront or an insult to our existence as reflections of God, of God’s love.

Dr. Ladapo, one of the things that is often discussed in this context is this idea of misinformation or disinformation. Because the idea, of course, is something like this, that there are some kind of special interest actors, sometimes bad actors, sometimes good actors, whatever, that are pushing certain narratives very hard, and they could misinform parents, for example, or doctors. And this flies in all directions, if you will. And this is the reason that it’s often given for either actually complying with ideas that a doctor might have or not complying with the ideas that a doctor might have or that an agency might have about what should or should not be done.

And so it’s just kind of an information mess, information chaos. I think Secretary Bobby Kennedy described it as that, at least in terms of data. But I think of it, this is just a very difficult thing to deal with. And how do we actually cut through that so we can get at what’s actually known as reality, or the best we’ve got?

That’s a great question, Jan. What I would say is that Secretary Kennedy is doing a wonderful job. I know him personally. He’s a good man. And what he’s doing, he’s not doing it for his benefit. He’s doing it because he cares about the health of Americans. He cares about the health of our children. He cares about our future. He cares about our freedom.

Literally, in direct opposition to him, you have what we have constructed in the United States as major parts of our healthcare system. Specifically, it’s a combination of scientism and tremendous dishonesty in some areas. Jan, you asked how do we get there?

Well, you must deconstruct all of the dishonesty, the propaganda, the suppression of debate and discussion that are pervasive with vaccines, more so than any other medication. Put it in context, statin drugs are another drug that it’s nothing near the amount of propaganda that surrounds vaccines. By the way, I say that, and I don’t want anyone to think, although people are welcome to think what they want, that I think that statins are bad or that vaccines are bad or something like that. That’s not what I’m saying.

In fact, there’s very good evidence for statins for a reduction of cardiovascular illness, particularly for people who have a history of prior cardiovascular disease like strokes or myocardial infarction. There’s more debate for primary prevention, much more debate for primary prevention. But with vaccines, there is so much dishonesty.

Here you have Secretary Kennedy working to dismantle that dishonesty. Here you have members of ACIP [Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices], this organization that advises the CDC about immunization practices with terrific people like Dr. Retsef Levi, Dr. Robert Malone, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, and other people who are working to dismantle this dishonesty, brick by brick. It wasn’t built in a day and it won’t be demolished in a day.

It’s got to come down every last brick before you can get to a place where the concern about misinformation doesn’t rule the day because there’s not this sense that is quite pervasive among many, many people that they are making decisions in the dark and that it’s dark because the lights have intentionally been dim. And that’s the situation that characterizes vaccinology currently in the United States.

People are not able to make fully informed decisions because there’s just a tremendous amount of dishonesty in the field. When we can talk about vaccines the same way we talk about blood pressure medication, where doctors can talk freely about different medications, using them in different ways, and the fact that some people choose not to take them. When we can talk freely about vaccines in the same way we talk in a very mundane way about other medications that don’t have the same investment and propaganda, then we will be in a place where people will be able to feel like they can make the decisions that they believe are best for them and their family. And until we get there, we’re going to be in the mess that we currently are in.

Let’s jump into this MAHA Commission, which is being led by the Florida First Lady, Casey DeSantis. And I understand that there’s some very interesting work around cancer, which is, of course, something she’s very familiar with as a survivor that’s being done. Can you tell me a bit more about that?

First, I’ll say that Casey DeSantis has been really wonderful in this area. She is very passionate about these principles that are MAHA principles. We’ve seen it. Secretary Kennedy has talked about this, and so has Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Marty Makary. We’ve gotten to a place in our society where poisoning our children, poisoning ourselves with all of these additives that are not food and not good for us, not good for our health, not good for our immune systems, not good for our metabolism, not good for our mental health, not good for our longevity, and not good for our cardiovascular health. These things are pervasive in our food supply, and people ingest them knowingly or unknowingly to the harm of all of us.

I didn’t know, for example, that this very popular sports drink literally has a petroleum-derived chemical to make it appear a certain color. That’s sick that we consider that to be normal, and not only is it a sick concept, it’s making people sick by putting these things in their bodies. And it’s also really important to recognize that people are all different in terms of their sensitivity to these substances.

There are kids whose behavior changes when they eat certain foods that have different dyes in them, and there are some kids who don’t have a behavior change from that same type of exposure. So there’s a lot of variability out there. There are a lot of people out there that are very sensitive to different chemicals, and none of us, you know, whether we’re really sensitive or not, are benefiting from these, and none of us really should be ingesting them, because it’s not food. They are chemicals.

First Lady Casey DeSantis has been really passionate in this area. And we have a working group, and it’s many-faceted, but one of the areas is in cancer treatment. And specifically, the fact is, in this country, currently, innovation is driven primarily by the private sector. Now, a lot of the research, the foundational research, happens in the public sector in terms of being funded by NIH [National Institutes of Health] or being performed at public universities.

But ultimately, many of these technologies are siphoned into the private sector. And what that means is that the objective tends to be profit; it doesn’t tend to be human health. So, you know, health is almost a bystander, if you will, or sort of a side product of this production mechanism we have in this country for medical innovation.

One of the things that First Lady Casey DeSantis announced last week is that we’re going to be funding research through the Florida Cancer Innovation Fund that specifically will be targeting generic drugs, drugs for which there may not be a financial incentive for the private sector to make investments in. And one of those that we’ve heard a lot about in terms of what people are saying in public, really a lot of laypeople, some cancer physicians also, is ivermectin and other anti-parasitic drugs too. I mean, it’s interesting.

I actually had a conversation with Dr. Makis from Canada over the weekend, and he shared with me his experiences treating thousands of patients. And it’s definitely an area that should be investigated further in terms of patients that may benefit from adding, not replacing, but adding something like ivermectin to their chemotherapeutic regimen. Based on, certainly from my conversation here, learning about his experience, it absolutely is something that should be studied further, and we’re hoping to be able to study some of that, to fund some of that work through the Florida Cancer Innovation Fund, which is a MAHA initiative.

I’m very excited to learn of the outcomes of this because something I’ve come to learn through now, you know, four or five years of looking at our health system and understanding it is that there’s a huge disincentive to studying the efficacy of things that are not proprietary, that don’t have a patent, and so forth. So I’m very excited to find out what will come of these studies which you’re going to be running.

What about the reaction of various professional organizations to this MAHA initiative and also to the elimination of vaccine mandates and health mandates initiative? For example, the AMA is one that seems to have come out very, very strongly. How do you respond to these professional organizations which are really challenging what you’re trying to do?

It’s been a puzzle for me, actually. It’s a really great question, Jan, because I struggle. I struggle because when you look at these organizations, and I’m not maligning the organizations, I’m not maligning the people in them. I have no doubt there are lots of smart people who care about other people and things like that. I’ll just be honest here, where I struggle is that many of these organizations have supported terrible policies, policies that in my mind should be the end of their credibility in the absence of some sort of mea culpa. What kind of policies am I talking about here?

So I’ll give you an example: the promotion of hormonal therapies for children to change sex, you know, or to have the experience or the belief of changing sex, the promotion of surgical procedures for removal of a child’s sex organs for the purpose of assuming some other sexual identity. These are disqualifying positions. I mean, they are so deranged and so, so unmoored from sensibility and from morality, from where we ever want to end, where we ever want to move as a society, as a human race, that they are disqualifying, disqualifying positions. Until there’s some contrition, I just, I can’t take anything they say seriously.

The American Academy of Pediatrics was an organization that, before the COVID-19 pandemic, discouraged screen time for children, a highly sensible policy. I’m a father of three small children, although my oldest is 12-years-old, and he is six feet tall now. So he’s not so small anymore. But I’m the father of three children. Most parents know that nothing good comes from sticking a kid in front of a screen. And at least, most parents who are my age remember those days of being outside, playing kickball, riding our bikes, and doing all that stuff. That’s how you have a healthy childhood.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recognized this before the pandemic. They literally flipped their position at the beginning of the pandemic and basically said it was fine for children to sit in front of screens instead of being in a school where they might contract a virus that, by and large, posed very little harm to them. They did this. They completely flipped their position. And they haven’t addressed these completely wrong, immoral positions that they’ve taken—not a little, but a lot—like very strong positions they’ve taken in the past. So I just can’t take anything they say seriously.

Dr. Ladapo, as we finish up, I want to just ask you a little bit about timelines. So given what you know at this point, how long do you think it will take to get to that level of all vaccine mandates having been removed in the state? And how quickly do you think we’ll see some of the fruits of some of this research in the area of cancer?

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