Governor Ron DeSantis and state Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo have announced that Florida will work to phase out all childhood vaccine mandates in the state, making it the first in the nation to do so. Vaccines protecting against once-common and sometimes deadly childhood diseases like polio and measles have long been required for children at schools across the U.S.

DeSantis also announced on Wednesday the creation of a state-level "Make America Healthy Again" commission modeled after similar initiatives pushed at the federal level by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The vaccine announcement, which Ladapo said would allow people to make their own decisions, drew criticism from physician groups and other health leaders who stress that the vaccines are safe and the most effective way to stop the spread of communicable diseases, especially among schoolchildren.

"When everyone in a school is vaccinated, it is harder for diseases to spread and easier for everyone to continue learning and having fun," Dr. Rana Alissa, chair of the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said in an email. "When children are sick and miss school, caregivers also miss work, which not only impacts those families but also the local economy."

Dr. Philip Huang, director of the Dallas County Health and Human Services Department in Texas, described the idea of dropping school vaccine requirements as "insane and stupid."

"People forget the successes that we've seen with these vaccines. Before we had the polio vaccine, there were almost 60,000 cases in the U.S. each year, and almost 14,000 cases of paralytic polio," Huang told CBS News. "Parents waited fearfully every summer to see if it would strike." 

He noted it was similar for measles, which caused 48,000 hospitalizations and 450 to 500 deaths each year before the vaccine was introduced in the 1960s. Earlier this year, lower vaccination rates in some communities enabled the spread of the biggest measles outbreak in decades.

"it's so important to get those vaccination levels up so it protects everyone," Huang said. 

Ladapo likened vaccine mandates to "slavery"  

Ladapo, who has frequently clashed with the medical establishment, cast current vaccine requirements in schools and elsewhere as an "immoral" intrusion on people's rights bordering on "slavery," and said they hamper parents' ability to make health decisions for their children.

"People have a right to make their own decisions, informed decisions," Ladapo said at a news conference in Valrico, Florida, in the Tampa area. "They don't have the right to tell you what to put in your body. Take it away from them."

The state Health Department, Ladapo said, can scrap its own rules for some vaccine mandates, but others would require action by the Florida Legislature. He did not specify any particular vaccines but repeated several times the effort would end "all of them. Every last one of them."

Florida would be the first state to eliminate so many vaccine mandates, Ladapo added.

Ladapo said his department will work with lawmakers to make it happen. But the idea received immediate pushback from some officials.

Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani, who is running for Orlando mayor, said in a social media post that scrapping vaccines "is reckless and dangerous" and could cause outbreaks of preventable disease.

"This is a public health disaster in the making for the Sunshine State," she said on the social platform X.

Florida has required vaccines for kids attending school for decades

In Florida, vaccine mandates for child day care facilities and public schools include shots for measles, chickenpox, hepatitis B, Diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis (DTaP), polio and other diseases, according to the state Health Department's website.

Under DeSantis, Florida resisted imposing COVID vaccines on schoolchildren, requiring "passports" for places that draw crowds, school closures and mandates that workers get the shots to keep their jobs.

"I don't think there's another state that's done as much as Florida. We want to stay ahead of the curve," the governor said.

The state "MAHA" commission would look into such things as allowing informed consent in medical matters, promoting safe and nutritious food, boosting parental rights regarding medical decisions about their children, and eliminating "medical orthodoxy that is not supported by the data," DeSantis said. The commission will be chaired by Lt. Gov. Jay Collins and Florida first lady Casey DeSantis.

"We're getting government out of the way, getting government out of your lives," Collins said.

The commission's work will help inform a large "medical freedom package" to be introduced in the Legislature next session, which would address the vaccine mandates required by state law and make permanent the recent state COVID decisions relaxing restrictions, DeSantis said.

"There will be a broad package," the governor said.

Other states coordinating on vaccine planning

Meanwhile, the Democratic governors of Washington, Oregon and California announced Wednesday that they've created an alliance to coordinate on health and vaccination guidelines,  to counter what they call the Trump administration's politicizing of public health decisions.

The partnership plans to align immunization plans based on recommendations from respected national medical organizations, according to a joint statement from Gov. Bob Ferguson of Washington, Gov. Tina Kotek of Oregon and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.