{"id":202893,"date":"2025-10-10T14:53:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T14:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/202893\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T14:53:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T14:53:08","slug":"the-radicalization-of-floridas-top-doc-mother-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/202893\/","title":{"rendered":"The Radicalization of Florida\u2019s Top Doc \u2013 Mother Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tGet your news from a source that\u2019s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.<\/a><\/p>\n

In early September, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo took the podium at a Tampa news conference to make an unprecedented announcement<\/a>: He planned to eliminate \u201call vaccine mandates\u201d in the state, he told the crowd. \u201cEvery last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWho am I, as a man standing here now,\u201d he asked, hand on his chest, \u201cto tell you what you should put in your body?\u201d He punctuated each \u201cyou\u201d with a finger pointed at the audience. The crowd clapped, and he continued riding the wave of their enthusiasm. \u201cYour body,\u201d he added, \u201cyour body is a gift from God!\u201d The audience roared its approval.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Today, my remarkable husband announced that Florida will be ending ALL vaccine mandates. This is a truly righteous act, as no one\u2014 no human, no organization, and no government\u2014has the right to determine what you as a sovereign soul put into your body or your children\u2019s bodies.\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/8GGrwVxs81<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Brianna Ladapo, ND, CHC, DAIS (@BriannaLadapo) September 3, 2025<\/a> <\/p>\n

A few days later, he appeared on the CNN program State of the Union, and host Jake Tapper asked him if state health officials had undertaken any analysis to determine how many new cases of hepatitis A, whooping cough, and chickenpox would arise after the ending of vaccine mandates. Ladapo seemed amused<\/a> by the question. \u201cAbsolutely not,\u201d he said, adding later, \u201cThere\u2019s this conflation of the science and sort of, what is the right and wrong thing to do?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ladapo\u2019s supreme self-confidence and impeccable credentials\u2014which include an MD and PhD from Harvard Medical School\u2014have not muted the pushback that his announcement to end vaccine mandates has attracted. Both the American Medical Association<\/a> and the American Academy of Pediatrics<\/a> issued statements condemning the move, and Ladapo\u2019s predecessor, Scott Rivkees<\/a>, said in a TV interview following the announcement, \u201cThis is a very, very confusing and really, potentially very, very dangerous decision from a public health lens.\u201d<\/p>\n

“Absolutely not.” @FLSurgeonGen<\/a> admits he didn’t study impact before calling to lift vaccine mandate pic.twitter.com\/bJCo0aNvk0<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) September 7, 2025<\/a> <\/p>\n

The vaccine announcement from Florida\u2019s top doctor may have been his most controversial, but it wasn\u2019t the first time he had flouted public health guidelines. Since Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) appointed him in 2021 during the height of the Covid pandemic, Ladapo has drawn increasing criticism from the medical community for rolling back the state\u2019s pandemic protections, questioning the safety of Covid vaccines, and publicly challenging CDC measles quarantine guidelines amid an outbreak.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For those reasons and more, he now has a reputation as something of a rogue public health official, even given his impressive r\u00e9sum\u00e9. From his research and clinical positions at NYU and UCLA medical schools, he has an extensive publication record on the cost effectiveness of public health interventions, and that includes work on topics as varied as the risks firearms<\/a> pose for people with mental illness, opioid prescription patterns<\/a>, and improvements<\/a> of communication on sexual health between parents and teens. The handful of his former colleagues with whom we spoke remember him as once having been a capable, detail-oriented, and highly collaborative scientist. All of them were perplexed by the path he seems to have taken since the pandemic. One former research co-collaborator from Boston Children\u2019s Hospital told us that he and Ladapo\u2019s other former colleagues had, in recent weeks, found themselves asking, \u201c\u2018How did this happen? Where did this come from?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The answers to those questions may be found by taking a closer look at his journey of personal transformation that has paralleled some of his most controversial public health decisions. Burdened by a traumatic past, Ladapo has been deeply influenced by two charismatic people who seem to lack any training in Western medicine. The first is his wife, Brianna, an \u201cEnergetic Healer, Certified Naturopath, Movement Therapist, and Integrative Health and Wellness Coach,\u201d according to her Instagram bio<\/a> as of publication time. Brianna claims that despite her childhood trauma, she has been blessed with supernatural gifts, including the abilities to speak to angels and historical figures and read people\u2019s auras. She also believes that people who have been sexually abused give off energy from their wounds that invites more abuse, and that people\u2014even children\u2014choose what happens to them, including their own suffering.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His other major influence is a charismatic guru and former Navy SEAL named Christopher Maher, whom the couple credits with facilitating their individual and marital healing. During a recent appearance on the podcast<\/a> hosted by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s former running mate, Nicole Shanahan, Joseph Ladapo referred to Maher as \u201ca mechanic for the human spirit.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Most people wait until it\u2019s too late to deal with what\u2019s weighing them down. Stress, trauma, emotional baggage \u2014 it all adds up. And if you don\u2019t clear it, it will catch up with you. #HolisticHealth<\/a> #InnerHealing<\/a> #SpiritualWellness<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/72lc8Xqr1m<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Christopher Lee Maher (@ChrisLeeMaher) June 18, 2025<\/a> <\/p>\n

A record of how this all came about can be found in Ladapo\u2019s 2022 memoir, Transcend Fear: A Blueprint for Mindful Leadership in Public Health. He recounts the story of how, through a series of mystical experiences with Brianna and Maher, he realized that fear was corrosive, and the driving force for too many public health decisions. Last year, while testifying at a congressional hearing on Covid-era decision-making, he recalled how during the pandemic, he was impressed when he saw how DeSantis \u201crefused to let the fear that gripped our nation shape the State of Florida.\u201d When he became that state\u2019s surgeon general, in his remarks thanking DeSantis for the opportunity, he pledged<\/a> to \u201cmake health policy decisions rooted in data and not in fear.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

To understand the intellectual and spiritual underpinnings of Joseph Ladapo\u2019s crusade<\/a> against<\/a> fear and evidence-based public health practices, you need to understand Brianna and Maher. After all, without them, as he said on Shanahan\u2019s podcast, \u201cI\u2019d still be version 1.0.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joseph and Brianna Ladapo, and spokespeople for both DeSantis and the Florida Department of Public Health, did not respond to detailed sets of questions for this story. Maher directed questions to the Ladapos.<\/p>\n

\"AFlorida Surgeon Gen. Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo speaks before a bill signing by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2021.Chris O\u2019Meara\/AP<\/p>\n

Joseph Ladapo moved from Nigeria to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with his parents in the early 1980s, when he was around 5 years old, he writes in Transcend Fear. (The book was published<\/a> by Skyhorse, the conservative publishing house that also published<\/a> First Lady Melania Trump\u2019s memoir.) RFK Jr. wrote the foreword, praising the physician\u2019s \u201ctremendous courage in the face of extraordinary resistance on the part of the Big Pharma, corrupt government regulators, and his own colleagues\u201d during the pandemic. Gavin de Becker, private investigator<\/a> and so-called \u201csecurity expert\u201d for both RFK and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos<\/a>, and author of a book called The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence, wrote the afterword.<\/p>\n

Ladapo\u2019s parents studied at Louisiana State University, where his father earned a doctorate in microbiology and his mother earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in business. They later moved to Athens, Georgia, where they enrolled their son in a Catholic elementary school, and then to North Carolina, where he finished high school.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Transcend Fear, Ladapo describes himself as being \u201cemotionally deadened\u201d as a child, due mainly to his experiences of sexual abuse by a babysitter back in Nigeria that left him \u201cnumb\u201d and emotionally disconnected from others. Ladapo earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in chemistry from Wake Forest University in 2000, and then continued to Harvard, where he earned MD and PhD degrees in 2008.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He met Brianna after his first year at Harvard, when he was heading back to Boston from a vacation on the island of St. Croix. She was going home to San Diego from a trip with friends to St. Thomas and they talked throughout the flight. He later tracked her down in the airport to get her phone number. A long-distance relationship began, with phone calls that lasted up to eight hours, only ending as Ladapo watched the sun rise from his Boston apartment. But the experience of falling in love also set him on what he describes as \u201ca spiritual and emotional roller coaster.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs love opened up my heart,\u201d he writes, \u201cit also opened doors to the rooms that hid my emotional and spiritual injuries.\u201d These were the metaphoric rooms into which Maher would eventually enter.<\/p>\n

Brianna immediately felt a strong connection to Ladapo, yet she also perceived that a \u201cdark entity\u201d seemed to be attached to his aura. <\/p>\n

Brianna also wrote a memoir, Emerging From Darkness, in 2023. In it, she recalls being a \u201cjoyful, sensitive\u201d child who was the black sheep in a rigid, fundamentalist Christian family. She always felt a strong connection to the supernatural, hearing the voices of angels, seeing auras that told her about \u201cthe energy of other humans,\u201d and noticing how certain patterns of numbers repeatedly popped up in unexpected places. As a young adult, she visited Egypt, where she had visions of herself as an ancient queen being embraced by the goddess Isis. During their first meeting, she immediately felt a strong connection to Ladapo, yet she also perceived that a \u201cdark entity\u201d seemed to be attached to his aura. Nevertheless, they married and had three children. While Ladapo was working on completing his education and securing his first jobs, Brianna was also embarking on her career. Like her husband, she started on a conventional path. After earning a master\u2019s degree in English from Harvard, she went into academic communications, serving as the assistant director of annual giving at Harvard Medical School and the director of communications in New York University School of Medicine\u2019s Department of Population Health, according to her LinkedIn<\/a> profile.<\/p>\n

After completing his residency in internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Ladapo went to the NYU School of Medicine to begin working as an assistant professor of population health and medicine and a hospitalist physician at NYU Langone Medical Center. Brianna moved with him to New York City. When he wasn\u2019t treating patients, he focused on research, securing grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study the diagnosis and management of cardiovascular disease and smoking cessation strategies. In Transcend Fear, he describes securing his first NIH grant<\/a> in 2013 as \u201can important threshold to cross.\u201d (Given that the NIH has canceled<\/a> billions of dollars in research funding under his friend RFK Jr.\u2019s leadership, his past remarks contain some unintended irony.)<\/p>\n

Brianna had long suffered from chronic migraines that worsened after she stopped taking medication to treat them when pregnant with the couple\u2019s first child. The pain did not abate until the couple and their young son went to Orlando for an American Heart Association conference. There, under the Florida sun, Brianna became what Joseph describes as \u201ca different person: no debilitating migraines, no severe pain, and tremendously more energy.\u201d (Some medical research<\/a> has linked extreme weather<\/a> to migraines, though without establishing a definite causality.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ladapo resolved to leave the Northeast and began to apply for jobs in places where the climate was more temperate. He received an offer to be an associate professor at UCLA\u2019s medical school, where, he writes, his \u201ccareer accelerated.\u201d He soon won four large NIH grants, to investigate weight loss strategies<\/a> for low-income, obese adults; study how to reduce the risk<\/a> of cardiovascular disease in adults with HIV; research strategies to end smoking<\/a> by high-risk, hospitalized patients; and attempt to reduce racial disparities<\/a> in hypertension among low-income residents of Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

While her husband progressed in academic medicine and cared for her and their three children, Brianna set out on a very different path. Frustrated by her doctors\u2019 failure to take her migraines seriously, she turned to naturopathic medicine, a diet of organic foods, and meditation. She gradually improved, but her husband became more distant and their marriage struggled. A friend recommended that she send Ladapo for a consultation with, as she wrote, \u201can extraordinarily gifted healer,\u201d the former Navy SEAL Christopher Maher.<\/p>\n

Maher is the author of the 2019 book Free for Life: A Navy SEAL\u2019s Path to Inner Freedom and Outer Peace, which recounts his transformation through his discovery of alternative medicine. Maher also offers a $297 audio course that promises<\/a> to \u201chelp you leave struggle, strife and suffering behind\u201d and teach \u201chow to upgrade into the life that you were meant for and reach effortless manifestation.\u201d His online bio says he has training in traditional Chinese medicine, but the treatments he offers appear to be something else entirely. He describes one of them, \u201cBody of Light,\u201d as \u201ca verbal, energetic, transmutation process that allows the body, brain, and nervous system to locate, transmute, and discharge negative generational stress, tension, and distortion-inducing patterns.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Episode 9 of the True Body Intelligence Podcast, Christopher shares the concept of Body of Light within True Body Intelligence.#spiritualwellness<\/a> #holistichealing<\/a> #personaldevelopment<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/VrVxERqxB8<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Christopher Lee Maher (@ChrisLeeMaher) January 14, 2025<\/a> <\/p>\n

Another, which he calls \u201cSha-King\u201d medicine, \u201cdirectly addresses complex stress patterns by improving subtle energetic health by shaking (\u2018sha-king\u2019) the entire body in random, non-specific movements that are out of syncopation.\u201d Maher\u2019s website notes, \u201cYou won\u2019t find much online about Christopher, as his clients built his practice through word of mouth. With his help, his clients have succeeded at the highest levels in sports, entertainment, business, medicine, and international politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his book, Maher attributes much of his philosophy to his own mentor and guru, a healer whom he refers to only as \u201cRoberto.\u201d He recalls an intense few days of sessions where Roberto removed his tension and stress, causing him to laugh \u201clike a hyena for 20 minutes, rolling around on the ground.\u201d After working with Roberto, along with stints learning about Chinese medicine and Native American sweat lodges, Maher developed a belief system that is what appears to be a literal interpretation of the concept of generational trauma. He describes a hypothetical example of two children switched at birth, a prince and a peasant, where the poor child \u201cwill still be treated like a prince because that\u2019s what his epigenetic markers dictate,\u201d he writes. In contrast, the prince \u201cmay be handed the keys to the kingdom, but he will lose it because he has all the limiting beliefs that get expressed in survival-based thinking, feeling, and emoting.\u201d <\/p>\n

But this genetic determinism, Maher claims, can be broken through his healing techniques that can help free his clients from the sins of their ancestors. Maher also believes that when people mask their true emotions, the body \u201cbegins to fight back\u201d with disease and physical suffering. Consider a breast cancer survivor who smiled through an intensely painful session of his bodywork. \u201cMy guess was this is what she had done through her entire life,\u201d he writes, \u201cand the reason why she was dealing with breast cancer.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ladapo doubted that Maher possessed the key to solving his marital troubles and was put off by how much it would cost when Brianna asked him to go see the healer in 2019, a time when their relationship was at its \u201clowest point,\u201d he writes. But she insisted, telling him, \u201cHe helps people with the type of trauma you went through as a child.\u201d After reading Maher\u2019s book, he agreed to try it out. \u201cThank the Lord I listened,\u201d he writes, \u201cbecause after working with him, I finally became truly free.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In mid-December 2019, Ladapo went to LA\u2019s ritzy waterfront Marina del Rey neighborhood, where he was introduced to Maher. When that first day concluded, Ladapo felt nothing but \u201cannoyance that I had probably wasted my money.\u201d But that evening, Brianna noted that the \u201cdark entity\u201d she had long noticed in her husband\u2019s aura was fading.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ladapo, too, felt a shift. In the middle of the night after that first day, he writes, he awoke and felt transformed, \u201cas if something had been lifted out of my chest, leaving a lightness in its place, a felicity, an ease.\u201d The next day, he had \u201ca jolly morning\u201d getting his three young kids ready for school, with no trace of his usual stress. Soon after, he hopped in an Uber to head to Maher\u2019s. While talking with the driver, he had what he describes as \u201cthe very first conversation in my adult life in which I genuinely connected emotionally with a stranger. I genuinely and authentically cared about him, about his well-being, and about his relationship with his loved ones,\u201d he writes of the Uber driver. \u201cI had never experienced anything like this in my life.\u201d The experience left him, as he wrote in capital letters, \u201cSTUNNED.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe discomfort I experienced as he stomped on me was intense, and I went from feeling acute pain to feeling a sense of enjoyment, and\u2014as incredible as it must sound\u2014at one point, I even felt like a tiger,\u201d recalled Ladapo.<\/p>\n

Day two of his work with Maher consisted of more of the same, plus \u201ca technique called Ma Xing,\u201d which featured Maher walking up and down the backs of Joseph\u2019s thighs. (On his website, Maher writes<\/a> that \u201cMa Xing means horse stomping.\u201d) In Transcend Fear, Ladapo recounts the experience in detail:<\/p>\n

The discomfort I experienced as he stomped on me was intense, and I went from feeling acute pain to feeling a sense of enjoyment, and\u2014as incredible as it must sound\u2014at one point, I even felt like a tiger. Christopher explained that this was my spirit animal. As I learned from him, Ma Xing engages the urinary bladder channel, which is the master channel in Chinese meridian theory. Further, he explained that this channel has access to every aspect of a human being\u2019s behavior and thoughts, including their mind, brain, physical being, spiritual energy, and emotional intelligence.<\/p>\n

What, exactly, the rest of his week working with Maher consisted of is left to the reader\u2019s imagination, but they are assured that it was \u201cthe closest thing to a \u2018miracle\u2019 I have ever experienced in my life.\u201d When it was over, Ladapo writes, he \u201cfelt euphoria, as if I had been granted a new state of being.\u201d And Brianna no longer saw the \u201cdark entity\u201d lurking, replaced by a lightness and lack of stress.<\/p>\n

Encouraged by her husband\u2019s success, Briana scheduled her own week of sessions with Maher. During her first session, Brianna described a traumatic childhood incident in which she was sexually assaulted by another child. Maher informed Brianna that her history of sexual assault was causing her body to act \u201clike a lighthouse, energetically blasting\u201d her \u201csexual trauma far and wide for others to pick up on\u201d and causing her to attract \u201cunwanted sexual attention.\u201d Brianna then had a vision of her many female ancestors, she writes, sensing that all of them had been sexually assaulted.<\/p>\n

After the session, Brianna was astounded when, instead of catcalling her, a construction worker she passed on the street politely told her she was beautiful, and a group of drunk young guys respectfully moved aside instead of harassing her. That night, she became violently ill and \u201cpurged all of the dark sexual energy from not only my body, but from my entire ancestral line.\u201d That experience was key, she writes, to shaping her new belief that people inherit from their ancestors \u201cemotional deficiencies, like a tendency toward violent behavior or susceptibility to sexual abuse.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even children, Brianna writes, choose the harm that they experience. In fact, some children opt for \u201clives of sacrifice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBy repeatedly attracting the experience of sexual assault,\u201d she learned that \u201cwe are electromagnetic beings who attract the same frequencies we emit.\u201d<\/p>\n

During one session, Maher performed his \u201cMa Xing\u201d treatment, walking on the backs of her thighs, just as he had done with her husband. It was excruciatingly painful and, eventually, she claims, caused her to levitate while he stood on her. Over the course of many sessions, she recalls developing a new ability to communicate with \u201cdivine presences,\u201d including \u201cArchangel Michael, Mary Magdalene, and many other beings of light.\u201d She became convinced that the numeric sequences she had noticed since childhood were \u201cangelic messages.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cmost profoundly important\u201d lesson she learned from Maher, though, was the revelation that people choose all the things that happen to them, both positive and negative, to fulfill the divine purpose of their soul. \u201cI chose to incarnate into an unhappy family,\u201d she writes, because \u201cthat situation best supported the lessons my soul was seeking this time around.\u201d Her family, she realized, \u201cvolunteered to play their respective roles in my life for the purpose of triggering my reawakening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everything in my life\u2014and yours\u2014is a co-creation. Contrary to what we are taught, things do not \u201cjust happen\u201d to us, and we are not hapless victims of circumstance. Rather, our souls incarnate with specific lessons and goals (also chosen by us), and our energy collaborates with\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/yG9SG9jety<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Brianna Ladapo, ND, CHC, DAIS (@BriannaLadapo) June 23, 2025<\/a> <\/p>\n

Even children, she writes, choose the harm that they experience. In fact, some children opt for \u201clives of sacrifice,\u201d an insight that emerged from a vision she had of herself as a young mother with three children, each of whom she was forced to watch get burned alive at the stake. She and her daughters had chosen for that to happen to them \u201cin that specific way, in order to highlight the atrocity of that practice [of burning people at the stake] and encourage its retirement.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Just weeks after the couple had finished their individual sessions with Maher, the pandemic began and marked a dramatic turning point in Ladapo\u2019s career. From the start, Brianna felt \u201cdark energy and nefarious intention behind the emerging narrative\u201d from the government. Later in the memoir, she returns to this theme, which has echoes of the QAnon conspiracy theory that was popularized<\/a> during the pandemic (although there is no evidence that she is an adherent of QAnon). Humans, she writes, \u201chave been controlled for ages by an elite, concealed group of dark actors who have a keen interest in keeping humanity\u2019s collective vibration low.\u201d The media is not to be trusted because it is \u201cmerely a propaganda vehicle at this point.\u201d Ladapo writes that working with Maher prepared him to respond to the pandemic, by \u201cremoving the emotional and spiritual clutter that filled my life and clouded my judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n

During those early pandemic days, every Tuesday over a picnic lunch date, the couple discussed what they saw as disproportionately harsh public health measures, and vented their frustration with the reluctance of dissenters to speak out. Eventually, Ladapo wrote (and Brianna edited) a series of op-eds for the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. In them, he argued that fear of the spread and severity of the virus was wrongfully driving the pandemic response. Mask mandates were oppressive<\/a>, school closures were unnecessarily prolonged<\/a>, and doctors were being too cautious<\/a> by not recommending the since-discredited therapies of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The backlash was swift and harsh. Old friends and colleagues reacted as if the couple were now \u201cinsane and evil,\u201d Brianna writes. Still, Ladapo was undeterred. He joined a group of anti-vax physicians to form a group called America\u2019s Frontline Doctors. Ladapo describes America\u2019s Frontline Doctors as a group of \u201cfree-thinking physicians who valued good health and freedom.\u201d The group was founded by Simone Gold<\/a>, an emergency room physician and Stanford-educated lawyer who stormed the Capitol<\/a> on January 6, 2021, and was sentenced<\/a> to two months in prison and a year of supervised release. Gold was imprisoned when Transcend Fear was published, but it does not mention her role at the Capitol or her conviction. His seventh chapter, \u201cMy friend Simone Gold,\u201d praises \u201cher courage and willingness to be vocal and stand for the ideas in which she believed.\u201d (When we asked America\u2019s Frontline Doctors to clarify its position on hydroxychloroquine as a Covid treatment, a spokesperson directed us to a website where the group collected studies of varying quality that showed favorable outcomes.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AJoseph Ladapo speaks to anti-vaccine protesters in April in Sarasota, Florida. The rally was organized as counterprogramming to a speech given that day by Dr. Anthony Fauci at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall.Dave Decker\/Zuma<\/p>\n

In July 2020, America\u2019s Frontline Doctors staged a so-called White Coat Summit on the steps of the Supreme Court, where they rallied against lockdowns and mask mandates and falsely claimed the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine was an effective treatment for Covid. In a section of his book in which he alleges that physicians\u2019 aversion to Trump drove their refusal to support hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment, Ladapo writes, \u201cwho knows, maybe I would have been one of those \u2018the end justifies the means\u2019 doctors had I not worked with Christopher Maher and rid myself of the fear that was compromising my judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n

A month after that press conference, Ladapo was invited by Dr. Scott Atlas, a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, to join a small Oval Office meeting with Trump, during which they discussed \u201chow health officials and the media were misinterpreting\u2014and sometimes misrepresenting\u2014what we had learned about the epidemiology of the coronavirus,\u201d Ladapo writes. The meeting, he adds, \u201cended up running much longer than planned\u201d and \u201cwas a \u2018hit\u2019 both because of the meaningful subjects we covered and because all five of us had a genuinely nice time together.\u201d (The task force\u2019s coordinator, global health specialist Dr. Deborah Birx, protested<\/a> the meeting before it occurred, writing in an email that the attendees \u201care a fringe group without grounding in epidemics, public health or on the ground common sense experience.\u201d)\u00a0<\/p>\n

A year after the White House meeting, Ladapo was contacted by the office of DeSantis, who had been an outlier in leading his state\u2019s response to Covid. He had read his op-eds and wanted Ladapo to become his new surgeon general, replacing Dr. Scott Rivkees. Brianna recalls experiencing a tingling sensation that told her it was a good idea. Premonitions aside, given their increasing alienation from their Los Angeles community, the Ladapos\u2019 decision to leave their life in California and start over in Florida might have been an easy one.<\/p>\n

Brianna\u2019s memoir doesn\u2019t go into detail about her husband\u2019s tenure as Florida surgeon general, but it does provide some insight into how their beliefs have harmonized with Kennedy\u2019s so-called Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, which rails against<\/a> chemicals, food additives, and medications. \u201cChemical pesticides, herbicides, hormone disruptors, and antibiotics,\u201d she writes, can \u201clower your vibration,\u201d as can caffeine, alcohol, pharmaceutical and recreational drugs, and \u201ceverything you watch, read, and listen to.\u201d She recommends that \u201cinstead of listening to angry death metal, consider listening to enchanting, ethereal music.\u201d<\/p>\n

My amazing husband @FLSurgeonGen<\/a> and I were honoured to speak at the recent Back to Basics conference in Boston. Though we come from very different backgrounds and perspectives\u2014his scientific and allopathic, mine energetic and naturopathic\u2014we are a divine team, and are grateful\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/gr6i4Fhz99<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Brianna Ladapo, ND, CHC, DAIS (@BriannaLadapo) December 21, 2024<\/a> <\/p>\n

State surgeons general don\u2019t often make national news\u2014in fact, only six states even have such a position. But it didn\u2019t take long for Ladapo to grab headlines. He was confirmed despite a negative review<\/a> from his former supervisor at UCLA, who told Florida law enforcement during his background check that \u201cthe people of Florida would be better served by a Surgeon General who grounds his policy decisions and recommendations in the best scientific evidence rather than opinions,\u201d according to records related to his confirmation. (In a 2022 Politico interview<\/a> about his former supervisor\u2019s comments, Ladapo said, \u201cIt\u2019s OK to disagree, and I\u2019ve had no problem with disagreement, but what has been really disappointing is how disagreement has become a ticket or a passport to activate personal attacks.\u201d) On his first day in office in September 2021, he formalized<\/a> a rule that gave parents sole discretion over whether to follow school mask guidelines, despite soaring Covid cases; it was a pivotal moment in the parental rights movement<\/a> that would take off over the next few years. That same year, he issued a report<\/a> recommending against Covid vaccines for healthy children under age 16, which <\/a>flouted CDC guidelines and led to accusations<\/a> that he had\u00a0cherry-picked the data. The state adopted his recommendations anyway.<\/p>\n

The following fall, Ladapo claimed that Covid shots caused a heart condition called myocarditis in young men, a conclusion that scientists later determined was based on faulty data. In 2023, he asked the FDA<\/a> to stop all Covid vaccines, components of which he claimed could \u201ctransform a healthy cell into a cancerous cell.\u201d The FDA responded<\/a> by calling Ladapo\u2019s statements \u201cmisleading<\/a>.\u201d In 2024, amid a measles outbreak in the state, he again flouted CDC guidelines. Instead of enforcing the agency\u2019s rule advising that children suffering from measles be quarantined<\/a> for 21 days, he issued a statement<\/a> announcing that the state would be \u201cdeferring to parents or guardians to make decisions about school attendance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ladapo\u2019s approach to health care for trans people was as draconian as his approach to infectious disease was lax. In 2022, he issued guidelines against<\/a> gender-affirming care for minors; in 2023, under his guidance, Florida enacted a law<\/a> that forbade Medicaid to cover gender-affirming care, joining<\/a> several other states with similar laws on the books. A handful of other states have since passed similar laws<\/a>. This year, when Ladapo announced his intention to ban school vaccine requirements, he had evidence that his crusade against vaccines was already working. Florida\u2019s rates of routine childhood vaccination had declined<\/a> since he took office, with only 88 percent of the state\u2019s kindergartners fully vaccinated last year. That\u2019s the lowest rate<\/a> in a decade<\/a>, and below the 95 percent<\/a> threshold required to prevent the spread of measles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brianna\u2019s memoir offers a possible explanation for the kind of thinking that led to Ladapo\u2019s recent decision to end school immunization requirements in Florida. If you believe that people\u2014including children\u2014choose their own suffering for obscure reasons connected to reincarnation and energetic vibrations, you might not be so concerned with the potential harms of ushering in a new age of infectious disease. Ladapo\u2019s book also helps explain his thinking. If vaccines and masks are not considered prudent treatment and prevention efforts but, instead, manifestations of fear, it\u2019s much easier to disparage them.<\/p>\n

Laurel Bristow, a science communicator and host of the radio show \u201cHealth Wanted,\u201d based at Emory\u2019s Rollins School of Public Health, said she sees an internal contradiction in Ladapo\u2019s critiques, \u201cgiven that he has spread messages about the dangers of mRNA vaccines that are definitely coming from a fear.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bristow recalls most pandemic-era public health messaging, including her own<\/a>, was focused on \u201ccommunity support\u201d and information-sharing rather than sowing panic. \u201cI would say that fear is not a good motivator for public health policies,\u201d she said, \u201cand I also don\u2019t feel like fear was the guiding message.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not yet clear whether Ladapo will make good on his vaccine elimination\u2014he will need the support<\/a> of the state health department, which he oversees, and the legislature. But should that happen, scientists and physicians worry that the move could undo decades of public health work to stamp out the diseases that once injured and killed so many children.<\/p>\n

Even if his vision does not become the official policy of Florida, it appears that the messaging he champions is already making a difference. Jennifer Takagishi<\/a>, a practicing pediatrician and the division chief of the department of pediatrics at the University of South Florida\u2019s medical school, says that among the families she treats, \u201cwe are starting to see more and more who are refusing vaccines or only allowing the ones that are absolutely mandated for school.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Without school vaccine requirements, she says, more families likely will skip the shots entirely, and she worries that once-eradicated diseases will again take hold. That could be a particularly dangerous development for her immunocompromised and newborn patients, but also for everyone else. Even otherwise healthy people can get sick enough to be hospitalized or die from vaccine-preventable illnesses like measles and polio. \u201cWhat we\u2019re all concerned about is that we\u2019ve become a victim of our own success,\u201d she says. \u201cJust because we aren\u2019t seeing these diseases anymore or very little, doesn\u2019t mean that they\u2019re gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the weeks since Ladapo\u2019s announcement, some Florida parents have echoed those concerns, emphasizing their fears of raising children in a new era of infectious disease. As the mother of a 4-year-old with kidney disease in Palmetto, Florida, put it in an interview<\/a> with the BBC, \u201cIt\u2019s just scary.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But apparently not for Dr. and Mrs. Ladapo, who have, as he wrote in his memoir, cast off the chains of fear. \u201cPublic health leaders who are as free as possible from fear and have undertaken the journey to achieve freedom from their own inner challenges are those in whom we can place the most trust,\u201d he writes. \u201cThose individuals will make the best public health decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

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