Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo said Sunday that state health officials did not need to analyze or project the public health effects of scaling back school vaccine mandates, defending the move as a matter of parental rights rather than epidemiology.

Ladapo, appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” was pressed on whether his department studied how removing requirements could affect outbreaks of preventable illnesses.

“Absolutely not,” he told anchor Jake Tapper. “Do I need to analyze whether it’s appropriate for parents to be able to decide what goes into their children’s bodies? I don’t need to do an analysis on that.”

Read more at Newsmax© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.