Professors: Florida needs a surgeon general who knows something about medicine | Opinion

Once again, Florida’s surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, shows that he is a political hack who is prostituting his medical and academic credentials to support the anti-science, anti-public health agenda of Ron DeSantis and like-minded Republican legislators. This endangers the health of Floridians. Editorials by H. Holden Thorp, the editor of Science, the most prestigious Science journal in the United States, last April called out Ladapo for his faulty argument opposing vaccinating men between the ages of 18-39 with the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.

Only last January in a presentation to NSU health professions students, Ladapo advocated the use of gas stoves in homes while at the same time acknowledging their contribution to indoor air pollution that exacerbates asthma in children; with his solution being to “just open the windows.”

More on Ladapo: Holy hell! Florida Surgeon General goes "Antichrist" on COVID vaccines

Ladapo’s latest attack on COVID-19 vaccination with RNA vaccines that have saved millions of people globally from death and debilitation is yet another example of the danger he poses to the health of Floridians. Ladapo bastardizes an improbable theoretical construct to argue against the use of these vaccines to prevent severe COVID-19 infections. Based upon his past support of the use of alternative therapies such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, (now shown to be ineffective against COVID-19 as well as posing a health hazard) for the treatment of COVID-19. His latest dictate once again shows his determination to promote a flawed political agenda as well as to pursue a pseudochristian mentality of referring to the mRNA vaccines as “antichrist” that is “interfering with our connection to God,” ahead of the universally validated medical science and well proven public health medicine.

Ladapo should do some homework to learn that approximately 8% of the DNA in our genome is of viral origin, including DNA from RNA viruses (AKA retroviruses like SARS-CoV-2) that have accumulated over many millennia of exposure to viral infections. According to a recent article in Science Magazine, this viral DNA may help our innate protective immunity to certain infectious diseases. It is part of evolving genetic resistance to retroviral disease.

So, Ladapo’s argument that the minuscule probability of viral DNA in the mRNA vaccines for COVID-19 becoming incorporated into our DNA could cause harm is thousands of times less likely than the probability that severe COVID-19 infection will cause death and long-term debilitation.

More on Ladapo: Sorry, Gov. DeSantis, Count me out of your Florida death cult. I got COVID vax again.

Florida needs a surgeon general who is going to be guided by rational scientific evidence rather than bastardized, misinterpreted or, worse, misleading conceptualizations that will encourage vaccine hesitancy not only for COVID-19 but for all vaccines, endangering our citizenry and our children who may now fall prey to diseases such as measles and polio that once were all but eliminated by safe and effective vaccines..

Florida hardly needs a surgeon general who is a lapdog to the dystopian aspirations of presidential candidate Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is not even close to an expert on medical heath issues. DeSantis has pledged by the way to take Ladapo to Washington as the US Surgeon General if the voters were to elect him as president.

Yikes!

Robert C. Speth, of Davie, is a professor of Pharmaceutical Science in the Barry and Judy Silverman College of Pharmacy at Nova Southeastern University and Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology and Physiology at Georgetown University; Jose V. Lopez, of Hollywood, is is a Professor of Biological Sciences, Halmos College of Arts and Sciences at Nova Southeastern University; and Stephen J. O’Brien, of Hollywood, is a professor at the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences at Nova and director of the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity of the National Institutes of Health. The comments in this letter should not be construed as representing any of the academic organizations with which we are affiliated.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: We need a surgeon general guided by medicine, not conjecture