DeSantis’ Surgeon General Doctored Covid Vaccine Study
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Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo altered the findings of a 2022 Covid-19 vaccine study to present the risk of adverse cardiac events in vaccinated males as being higher than it actually was, according to documents obtained by Politico.
In a draft of the study, Ladapo, a vocal vaccine skeptic associated with the anti-vaccine group America’s Frontline Doctors, personally edited the language of the study to indicate that it “suggests mRNA vaccination may be driving the increased risk in males, especially among males aged 18-39,” and that “the risk associated with mRNA vaccination should be weighed against the risk associated with COVID-19 infection.”
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A previous version of the draft indicated that the mRNA vaccine posed no significant risks to young men.
Ladapo doubled down on his decision to edit the language. “To say that I ‘removed an analysis’ for a particular outcome is an implicit denial of the fact that the public has been the recipient of biased data and interpretations since the beginning of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine campaign,” Ladapo told Politico. “I have never been afraid of disagreement with peers or media.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis appointed Ladapo at the height of the pandemic in 2021, ostensibly in a bid to lend institutional support to his public opposition to federal efforts to curb the spread of Covid-19.
At the time of his appointment, Ladapo was already a prominent vaccine skeptic. Early in the pandemic, he wrote an op-ed for USA Today arguing against the shutdown and downplaying the deadliness of the virus. Ladapo also appeared in the infamous America’s Frontline Doctors press conference filmed on the steps of the Supreme Court. In the 43-minute video, which gained tens of millions of views on social media, the physicians (none of whom were epidemiologists or immunologists) heavily promoted the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a cure for Covid-19, while downplaying the effectiveness of personal protective equipment.
Last month, Ladapo was publicly rebuked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In a letter sent to Ladapo, the organizations requested he correct various “misinterpretations and misinformation about the data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), in the spirit of transparency and supporting and serving the health of our nation.”
In another pandemic-era op-ed, written for The Wall Street Journal, Ladapo accused Democratic leaders of politicizing the Covid-19 response in their own self-interest, saying they bastardized “‘science’ to justify decisions manifestly guided by their personal preferences.”
Scientists and researchers who spoke to Politico indicated that Ledapo’s actions were exactly that — an attempt to manipulate factual findings in order to further his own anti-vaccine agenda. “He took out stuff that didn’t support his position,” said Daniel Salmon, director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Ladapo remains at his post as the chief public health official of America’s third-most populous state.
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