Florida Surgeon General to Appear With Ivermectin Group That Called mRNA Vaccines “Weapons of Mass Destruction”
Ladapo just announced Florida will halt all school vaccine mandates.
This piece has been updated from its original email version.
Later this month, Florida’s anti-vax state surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, will appear at a conference hosted by an arm of a UK-based group that promotes the antiparasitic drug ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19 and just “declared” the mRNA vaccines “weapons of mass destruction.”
On September 27, Ladapo, who recently vowed to get rid of all school vaccine mandates, will give opening remarks at an event called “Healing Beyond COVID,” organized by the Florida chapter of World Council for Health.
World Council for Health is a UK-based pseudo-medical group co-founded by anti-vax obstetrician Tess Lawrie in 2021. The group is known for its promotion of conspiracy theories about vaccines and 5G technology and for pushing ivermectin-for-COVID despite the drug’s proven failure against the disease. It even hosts an annual “World Ivermectin Day.” Although the group was denied charity status in the UK, it has nevertheless grown into a multi-national operation with an international roster of “coalition partner” organizations.
Those partners notably include the U.S.-based Independent Medical Alliance and Children’s Health Defense. The former, previously called the Frontline Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), was co-founded by Wisconsin intensivist Pierre Kory, whose promotion of ivermectin for COVID Lawrie has cited as an inspiration for another project she founded to promote the drug, The British Ivermectin Recommendation Development Group. The latter is the anti-vax advocacy group founded by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., which is itself internationally active.
In January 2022, during the peak of COVID’s deadly initial Omicron wave, the three organizations were sponsors of the “Defeat the Mandates” rally in Washington, D.C., along with other anti-vax groups like Informed Consent Action Network, run by long-time Kennedy ally Del Bigtree, and the California-based The Unity Project, of which Lawrie and Kory are both members.
Since the D.C. rally, Lawrie’s World Council for Health has continued making inroads in the US anti-vax space, particularly in Ladapo’s Florida where it set up shop in May 2024. The upcoming ”Healing Beyond COVID” is not the first World Council for Health event Ladapo has headlined. In January, the group’s Florida chapter announced that it had booked Ladapo to give opening remarks at their “Detox and Wellbeing Fair” which featured a talk about ivermectin. Other booked speakers included Lawrie and Kory.
Several months earlier, in July 2024, Ladapo appeared at an anti-vaccine forum alongside World Council for Health’s Florida Chair Maravic Villa, a pulmonologist who claims to treat mRNA vaccine injuries at her private clinic. The event, a benefit for the Lee County Republicans, was hosted by Joseph Sansone, who authored an “mRNA bioweapons prohibition act.” Ladapo sat next to Villa, who called the mRNA shots “bioweapons” in her opening remarks and later, during a Q&A session, called to “remove” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health on the grounds that “they’re part of the tyranny.”
(The above clip is used in compliance with Fair Use.)
A third speaker was former pediatric resident Andrew Zywiec who has published with the right-wing, anti-vax Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Zwiec also called the mRNA shots “bioweapons” in his opening remarks. Later, he indicated he believed the nation was living through Biblical end times.
The COVID vaccines have saved millions of lives and prevented millions more hospitalizations.
During the panel discussion, Ladapo himself said the vaccines had “enormous problems,” including containing “DNA contaminants”—a popular anti-vax narrative—and claimed the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC were in “denial” about their efficacy.
“They’re somehow managing to pretend that these vaccines have only saved lives and everything’s fine, and they’re safe and effective and all that,” said Ladapo, who was previously caught altering findings in a study on COVID vaccine safety.
Both Villa and Zwiec are slated to participate in this month’s World Council for Health Florida forum with Ladapo.
Like World Council for Health, Ladapo has a history of pushing disproven COVID cures and engaging with conspiracists. He was a founding member of America’s Frontline Doctors, a right-wing group formed to push MAGA’s first failed COVID cure, the Trump-endorsed hydroxychloroquine, ahead of the 2020 election. As a state surgeon general he has been criticized for pushing vaccine disinformation on far-right, conspiracy-peddling podcasts.
The anti-vax Florida surgeon general is not the only public health official to agree to participate in a World Council for Health event this month. Kennedy – who promoted hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin for COVID, continues to claim pandemic “early treatment” was suppressed, and is waging war on vaccines at the federal level – was slated to appear at an event hosted by the group in Estonia this week. He appears to have pulled out due to public pushback—what World Council for Health’s X account described as “targeted political and personal attacks.”
However the Estonia event will still have American representation in the form of anti-vax cardiologist Peter McCullough, who is a member of The Unity Project and various other anti-vax groups. McCullough has written prolifically in support of COVID “early treatment” and against the vaccines, including one pro-early treatment paper co-authored with Ladapo and a self-published book chapter recently cited by Kennedy’s HHS to justify cuts to mRNA vaccine research. He currently serves as the Chief Scientific Officer of the Florida-based The Wellness Company, which sells ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and COVID vaccine “detox” supplements, and is a coalition partner of World Council for Health.