How Worried Should We Be About RFK Jr As Health Secretary? Ask Florida

'How worried should we be about RFK Jr as health secretary? Ask Florida,' The Guardian, Jan. 9, 2025. - Florida’s surgeon general Joseph Ladapo has given free rein to his own unorthodox views on vaccines and public health. - More than 15,000 doctors urge Senate to reject RFK Jr as health secretary
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Donald Trump's promise to upend public health policy across the US by installing Robert F Kennedy Jr as health secretary is resonating in Florida, where experts say the nation can learn from its own experience of a vaccine-denying state surgeon with unorthodox scientific views. Like Kennedy’s relationship with the incoming president, Dr Joseph Ladapo was championed by, and is closely aligned to, a powerful rightwing political leader – Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor.

Since Ladapo’s February 2022 swearing-in, he has been at the heart of several controversies. Some have included advising parents to send unvaccinated children to school during a measles outbreak, personally manipulating a study to try to show Covid-19 vaccines pose a greater health risk than they do and urging municipalities to remove fluoride from drinking water despite proven dental health benefits.

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

Florida’s experience could soon become that of the wider US, experts fear, if Kennedy is confirmed by the Senate and allowed to convert 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 fueled by politics and the pandemic response became very politicized in a way that no pandemic response has ever happened before. That certainly hit a resonant chord with many people in this country,” said Dr Scott Rivkees, Ladapo’s predecessor as FL’s surgeon general who was sidelined then replaced by DeSantis for his pro-mask, pro-vaccine stance that clashed with the governor’s...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/09/rfk-jr-health-secretary-joseph-ladapo-florida