How concerned should we be about RFK Jr as Health Minister? Ask Florida

Donald Trump’s Promise to Upend Public Health Policy Across the US by Robert F Kennedy Jr. as health secretary is resonating in Florida, where experts say the country can learn from its own experience with a vaccine-denying state surgeon with unorthodox scientific views.

Like Kennedy’s relationship with the incoming president, Dr. Joseph Ladapo was championed by and closely associated with a powerful right-wing political leader: Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida.

Since Ladapo’s swearing-in in February 2022, he has been at the center of several controversies. Some have included counseling parents sending unvaccinated children to school during a measles outbreak, in person manipulate a study to try to show that Covid-19 vaccines pose a greater health risk than they do, and urge municipalities to do so remove fluoride from drinking water despite proven dental health benefits.

His fringe opinions and public advisories, often in direct conflict with those of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), parallel those of Kennedy, an equally polarizing figure who has peddled numerous conspiracy theories, including the discredited between vaccines and vaccines. autism, promoted raw milk and denigrated the pharmaceutical industry.

Florida’s experience could soon become that of the broader US, experts fearif Kennedy is confirmed by the Senate and is allowed to translate some of his more extreme beliefs into federal public health policy.

“During the pandemic, this wave of anti-expert, anti-public health sentiment blossomed, with the flames fanned by politics, and the pandemic response became highly politicized in a way that no pandemic response has ever seen before. That certainly struck a chord with a lot of people in this country,” said Dr. Scott Rivkees, Ladapo’s predecessor as surgeon general in Florida. sidelined and then replaced by DeSantis for his pro-mask and pro-vaccine stance that conflicted with the governor’s.

“In terms of the views expressed by my successor Dr. Ladapo and RFK Jr. put forward, there is a sentiment in the US that believes what they say, and believes that there should be more personal freedom and that there should be less of a role for government in telling people what to do to protect themselves and to protect others.

“This has made things challenging in the healthcare sector and in public health, as many of the guardrails that keep individuals safe and healthy and communities safe are now threatened and challenged.”

The day after the November election, DeSantis, whose failed presidential campaign blueprint was essentially “Make America Florida,” was Promote Ladapo for the role of Minister of Health. The president-elect ultimately chose Kennedy, but Washington Post reporting That Ladapo was shortlisted suggests that Trump had watched and admired his idiosyncratic tenure as Florida’s surgeon general, and that he wants to repeat it nationally.

Rivkees said the approach was concerning, but he remained optimistic.

“Some of the new messages – anti-vaccination, anti-healthcare and education, things like that – will eventually take their toll in terms of public protection, but there is a lot of momentum behind what has already been done for public health. ensure that we can weather the current storm,” he said.

“We have hundreds of thousands of practitioners in the US who are still promoting vaccination and healthy lifestyles, meeting with families every day and talking about what they need to do to protect themselves.

“They may not be as overt when it comes to public health vaccination campaigns, for example, but they will continue to ensure that individuals are vaccinated in a quieter way that will not necessarily lead to political problems.”

However, statistics from Florida show it could be an uphill battle if Ladapo’s anti-vaccine message is amplified nationally, which certainly appears to be the case. Another Florida doctor who questions vaccine safety, David Weldon, has been nominated by Trump to lead the CDC.

Weldon shares many of the views of Ladapo, who a study changed to make the Covid vaccine look more harmful to young men and has regularly made false claims about vaccinations in general, including that mRNA Covid boosters alter human DNA and could potentially cause cancer.

Vaccination rates for preschoolers in Florida have been declining since 2016 dropped abruptly according to Ladapo’s 2021 nomination, from 93.3% to 88.1% last year, according to the CDC. Vaccination rates at a Broward County elementary school where a measles outbreak occurred in February 2024 amounted to 89.31%officials said.

“We’re going to see local outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases, and public health is going to have to change to address these outbreaks that we haven’t seen before,” Rivkees said.

Not all experts see a worst-case scenario in a federal health department with similar values ​​and attitudes as Ladapo’s state agency. Jay Wolfson, a professor of public health, medicine and pharmacy at the University of South Florida’s Morsani College of Medicine, said the U.S. constitutional system leaves most health care policy decisions to the states anyway, and that some of Kennedy’s “challenging” positions would carry little weight. .

“Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said: ‘It is one of the fortunate incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State can, if its citizens so desire, serve as a laboratory; and try new social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country,” Wolfson said.

“Things that Florida has done may or may not be of value to other states and the rest of the country, and we can learn a lot from that. And while some of Mr. Kennedy’s ideas on fluoridation and vaccination are certainly challenging, he has some very interesting, positive public health issues in mind, about food additives, chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and obesity , and the need to treat those as epidemics.

Wolfson emphasized that DeSantis “relied extensively on Dr. Ladapo, and some of us have raised concerns about some of his science.”

“But at the national level, Kennedy will not be the only force,” he said.

“Trump will hear what Mr. Kennedy has to say, but I think he will weigh it against the people who will bring good science, good medicine and good policy to (the National Institutes of Health), and smooth out the rough edges a little bit will iron. of Kennedy’s policy views.”