Proposal for Sarasota Memorial to adopt Ladapo anti-vaccine guidance stirs controversy

A Sarasota County Public Hospital Board Member wants Sarasota Memorial Hospital to incorporate a post on the hospital's website embracing assertions by Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo that COVID–19 vaccinations are risky and inappropriate for human use, a stance that federal health officials say is contrary to science and potentially deadly.

Board member Victor Rohe raised the idea during the board’s Jan. 23 meeting, and the topic is now scheduled for consideration when the board that governs Sarasota County's public hospital meets May 21. But as word about the possibility of Sarasota Memorial adopting Ladapo’s views spread in recent weeks, several community members – many of them fresh from skirmishes in other local culture war issues before the School Board and County Commission – preemptively spoke out on the topic at the panel’s March 26 meeting.

Rohe is one of three self-dubbed "Health Freedom" advocates who won a seat on the hospital board in 2022 as the issue of how Sarasota Memorial Hospital handled the COVID pandemic intensified. Their election prompted SMH to conduct an internal study of its COVID-19 response. The study's positive review of the hospital's performance fueled more controversy, as critics decried Sarasota Memorial's adherence to federal guidelines during the pandemic.

Four more board seats are on the ballot this year, with another slate of "medical freedom" candidates running, with the potential to give them a majority of seats on the board.

Here’s what Ladapo claims about mRNA COVID-19 vaccines

In January, Ladapo questioned the safety of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines and ultimately recommended against their use. The federal Centers for Disease Control defines mRNA as genetic material that tells the body how to make proteins that work on the COVID-19 virus to prompt an immune response that helps people fight off the illness.

In a December 2023 letter to the Food and Drug Administration, he raised concerns about "the risks of contaminant DNA integration into human DNA" through the messenger RNA vaccine and "the integrity of the human genome.”

In a response that same month, the FDA answered his concerns and warned that vaccine "misinformation and disinformation" will result in fewer people getting vaccinated, which contributes to the "continued death and serious illness toll of COVID-19." The CDC says the vaccine "cannot change your DNA in any way" and that the body breaks down and eliminates mRNA.

In 2023, when Ladapo advised against young men getting the mRNA vaccines, a task force of University of Florida medical school doctors concluded he was "cherry picking results" of scientific studies, ignoring evidence that contradicted his bias and focusing on "exceptionally small event rates that distort magnitude of risk and do not consider magnitude of benefit."

Here's what Rohe asked the board to consider

In January, Rohe told his fellow board members that members of the community handed him what turned out to be a five-page motion and asked that it be placed on a future board agenda.

The essence of the motion is to put post on the hospital website in support of the surgeon general and his advice, said Rohe, who did not elaborate on the reason for his request.

Rohe did not respond to an email or five phone calls over several days from the Herald-Tribune asking him about who gave him the “Motion to Inform the Public About the January 2024 Recommendations by the Florida Surgeon General Regarding Risks of COVID-19 mRNA injections,” and why he thought it was important for the hospital to adopt a stance that runs counter to the opinion of a majority of medical professionals.

The motion asks that the website be updated in the news and events section with the following suggested language: “Recent data suggests that there may be significant risks of both short term and long term harm from taking the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.”

It went suggested language attributed to Ladapo that “these vaccines are not  appropriate for use in human beings,” and closed with the sentence, “In the spirit of transparency and scientific integrity, State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo will continue to assess research surrounding these risks and provide updates to Floridians.”

Public reacts to proposal to back Ladapo vaccine stance

While several Health Freedom advocates spoke to the board, none of them specifically addressed the prospect of adding Ladapo’s vaccine perspective to the hospital’s website.

Most reached back to the hospital’s original COVID-19 response with what has been an ongoing call for at least two physicians be empowered to examine how nine cases were handled by SMH staff during the pandemic – including that of Dr. Stephen Guffanti, the only one of those nine still alive.

Guffanti’s experience, which included hospital staff’s response when he said he attempted to advocate for the health of his roommate, formed the initial rallying cry for that 2022 Health Freedom movement.

Last Thursday, Guffanti became the fourth Medical Freedom candidate to file for election this year.

One frequent hospital critic, Sally Nista, said the hospital had a long way to go to regain patient trust. She said the hospital must stop “following a standardized government protocol” and refuse federal money for programs as a way to earn back that trust.

“The more you tie yourself to government money, the less we will trust you,” Nista said.

The hospital had been heavily criticized for restricting loved ones from seeing COVID-19 patients following treatment protocols established through the CDC – including a reliance on Remdesivir – and a refusal to readily prescribe alternative therapies such as Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin when requested. Medical studies have deemed those treatments to have no impact.

But Robin Taub Williams, a critic of Ladapo, urged the board to follow those federal protocols and ignore the motion to embrace Ladapo’s recommendations.

“How many Floridians died unnecessarily from COVID because they didn’t get vaccinated, due to Ladapo’s dangerous propaganda?" she asked rhetorically in a statement that also blamed Ladapo and anti-vaccine sentiment for a resurgence in childhood measles cases and an increased number of unvaccinated Sarasota County schoolchildren.

Carol Lerner, the director of the Sarasota nonprofit Support Our Schools, framed her opposition as part of a trend that started with the 2022 School Board campaign and included policies approved by the Sarasota County Commission to end the public library system’s affiliation with both the American Library Association and Florida Library Association.

Vicki Nighswander decried a pattern of evidence-based science “being replaced by values-based initiatives.”

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Board member wants SMH to adopt Ladapo's opposition to COVID-19 shots