Dr. Joseph Ladapo, Florida’s surgeon general, whose past health claims have drawn criticism, was recently accused of endangering unvaccinated children at school by failing to tell parents to keep them home after a measles outbreak among students .
And this is not the first time that the top doctor has come under fire.
In the past, his controversial comments have clashed with official guidance from health and government officials — from telling men not to get the Covid vaccine to pushing back against mask and lockdown mandates.
In October 2022, Dr Ladapo advised men aged 18 to 39 not to get a Covid vaccine, citing a state-driven analysis that had not been peer-reviewed and which suggested the vaccines could reduce the risk of heart-related deaths by 84 percent increase.
The analysis has since been rejected by scientists who say it has major statistical flaws.
Dr. Joseph Ladapo has repeatedly clashed with science on the pandemic, especially vaccines
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis confirmed Dr. Ladapo for a second term, saying, “His evidence-based principles serve to counter the increasingly political positions of the entrenched medical establishment, especially on schools, masks and mRNA injections.”
A major drawback experts pointed out was that it did not exclude people who tested positive for Covid – which itself can cause heart infections and other problems.
Dr. Ladapo said at the time that it was “important” that the risks of vaccines were communicated to Floridians.
“Much less attention has been paid to safety and many people’s concerns have been addressed,” he added.
The sixth case of measles at Manatee Bay Elementary School in Weston, Florida was reported Tuesday.
Doctors were notified on Friday, February 16, of the first case of measles – a third-grader with no travel history.
According to the CDC, Florida’s MMR vaccination rate is approximately 91 percent, which is lower than the national rate of 93 percent.
In March 2023, Dr. Ladapo was publicly called out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration for spreading vaccine misinformation in response to a letter he wrote to agencies that misused Vaccine data Adverse Event Reporting System.
He claimed that vaccines had directly caused adverse cardiovascular events.
He also opposed lockdowns and mask mandates during the pandemic.
Dr. Ladapo’s extreme views have been praised by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who appointed him surgeon general in September 2021.
The governor subsequently confirmed Dr. Ladapo for a second term in 2022, saying at the time, “His evidence-based principles serve to counter the increasingly political positions of the entrenched medical establishment, especially on schools, masks and mRNA injections.”
Dr Ladapo’s first step after his appointment was to withdraw quarantine rules for schoolchildren exposed to Covid, allowing asymptomatic children who had been in contact with Covid-positive individuals to return to school without being tested.
The following month, he refused to wear a mask when he met with State Senator Tina Polsky, who was scheduled to receive radiation therapy for breast cancer, saying he could not communicate clearly with it.
Dr. Ladapo also spearheaded the ban on transgender care in Florida.
He has stated that gender-affirming care should not be accessible to minors, including medications such as puberty blockers and hormones, as well as social transition measures such as changed pronouns and names.
In June 2022, the DeSantis administration called on the state board to ban transition-related care for transgender minors.
Dr. Ladapo with his wife and three children
Dr. Born in Nigeria, Ladapo immigrated to the US with his family at the age of five.
He received a BA in chemistry from Wake Forest University in 2000, followed by a medical degree from Harvard Medical School and a doctorate in health policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
He completed his clinical training in internal medicine at a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
After Harvard, he worked at New York University School of Medicine, Bellevue Hospital and Tisch Hospital in New York.
He was given a permanent position at the University of California David Geffen Medical School, where he saw patients one day a week.
When the Covid pandemic broke out, Dr. Ladapo began writing op-eds for The Wall Street Journal questioning the safety of Covid vaccines and the need for face masks.
He became known for his controversial views, despite having no background in infectious diseases.
State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo speaks during a press conference at Neo City Academy in Kissimmee, Florida
In a 2020 op-ed, he cited “My experience caring for patients with suspected or diagnosed Covid-19 infections at UCLA,” and in another article for USA Today in March 2020, he said, “I spent the past week caring for patients cared for with Covid-19 at UCLA’s flagship hospital.”
Several previous colleagues have spoken out about his claim, saying Dr Ladapo had not treated Covid patients and accusing him of misleading the public.
Before Dr. Ladapo’s former UCLA supervisor was confirmed by the Senate in February 2022, he declined to recommend him due to his reliance on “opinion” rather than “scientific evidence.”
Dr. Ladapo also signed the Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter advocating solving Covid through herd immunity – which is when a large part of a community becomes immune to a disease, either through vaccination or through immunity developed by previous infections.
Dr. Ladapo previously claimed he disagreed with all the principles of the letter.
His controversial writings caught the attention of Governor DeSantis, who had expressed many of the same views during the pandemic.
During his tenure, Dr. Ladapo was also quickly promoted to a position as associate professor of medicine at University of Florida Health.
It later emerged that the University of Florida administration softened his extreme views when they presented him as a candidate for the job.
When Dr. Ladapo was appointed to Florida’s top health care job, he said there was “nothing special” about Covid vaccines.
“Vaccines are up to the individual,” he said. “There’s nothing special about it compared to any other preventative measure.”
‘It’s treated almost like a religion. It’s just pointless.’
Covid vaccines – developed in record time – are widely believed to have ended the pandemic.
They allowed people to build protection against infections, helping the most at-risk people avoid serious illness and deaths from Covid.
In 2021 alone, analysis shows they were responsible for saving more than 300,000 lives.
Dr. Ladapo had also raised concerns about the safety of the vaccines.
He said in October 2021 that more information was needed about how safe the shots were.
‘You hear stories about… pregnant women being forced to put something into their bodies that we don’t know everything about yet.
“It doesn’t matter what people on TV tell you, it’s not true. We will learn more about the safety of these vaccines.”
All vaccines undergo rigorous testing before being approved for use in humans to ensure they are safe. America’s top health authorities, including the CDC, have repeatedly said they are safe to use.
During his first term, Dr. Ladapo recommended that healthy children did not need to be vaccinated against Covid, making Florida the first state to oppose CDC guidelines.
The state declined to follow the CDC in recommending it for people under seven in March 2022, nor did it pre-order shots for the age group.
When asked why they did not follow the recommendations at the time, Dr. Ladapo said it was due to a lack of good data to support this move.
Experts he referenced in his recommendation disagreed with him and said he had cherry-picked their findings.
“We are scraping the bottom of the barrel, especially when it comes to healthy children,” Dr. Ladapo said. “I don’t think it’s particularly radical (not to recommend vaccines for the age group), I think it’s very sensible.”