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Federal health officials and other experts have repeatedly sought to counter erroneous comments about the vaccines by Dr. Joseph Ladapo, Florida’s surgeon general.
Florida’s surgeon general on Wednesday called for a halt to the use of Covid vaccines, citing widely debunked concerns that contaminants in the vaccine can permanently integrate into human DNA.
“These vaccines are not appropriate for use in human beings,” Dr. Joseph Ladapo, the state’s surgeon general and highest-ranking health official, said in a statement released by the Florida Department of Health.
Federal health officials and other experts have repeatedly sought to counter Dr. Ladapo’s erroneous comments about the vaccines, noting that careful review of the scientific evidence has found no basis for his declarations.
The Food and Drug Administration said on Wednesday that it had not identified any “safety concerns related to the sequence of, or amount of, residual DNA.”
The Covid vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna use so-called messenger RNA, or mRNA, a type of genetic material, to direct the body to make immune molecules against the coronavirus.
Dr. Ladapo’s latest statement amplifies Florida’s escalating anti-vaccine stance. He was appointed surgeon general in 2021 by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, and has since increasingly aligned himself with anti-vaccine claims that the shots cause serious harm.