This is Part 2 of a series. Last Sunday’s missive focused on the evolving RFK Jr. healthcare recession and national policy regarding vaccines.
Please remember that part of the national policy is to shrink the federal role and delegate healthcare issues to the 50 states. Decades of national health policy success are being reversed. And please recall that viruses and other disease-causing pathogens are indifferent to state boundaries. So, today’s Part 2 will focus on my home state of Florida.
Here’s a recent headline:
“Florida surgeon general says his ‘goal’ is to ban mRNA COVID vaccine” | Orlando Sentinel, https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2025/09/15/florida-surgeon-general-says-his-goal-is-to-ban-mrna-covid-vaccine/
Florida’s surgeon general is a well-known, controversial anti-vax political appointee who has been repeatedly endorsed and supported by presidential wannabee Governor Ron DeSantis. Note that DeSantis shows no political will to pivot on public health issues.
DeSantis’ own press release follows:
“Governor Ron DeSantis and First Lady Casey DeSantis Call to Protect Patient Freedom and Permanently Ban mRNA Mandates in Florida” | Executive Office of the Governor, https://www.flgov.com/eog/news/press/2025/governor-ron-desantis-and-first-lady-casey-desantis-call-protect-patient-freedom
Note that DeSantis focuses on banning mandates and then adds an mRNA ban. Political posturing against mandates provides some “cover.”
What is significant about this is the timing of these press announcements. While Florida politicians are trying to make mRNA vaccines illegal, Florida-based university physicians are developing mRNA vaccines to battle cancers, including deadly ones like glioblastoma.
In the same timeframe of 2025 that Gov. DeSantis and Surgeon General Lapado called for a total ban on mRNA vaccines, the University of Florida announced research success in development of the mRNA vaccine for use against cancer. Here’s the link to a two-minute YouTube from the research Center at the University of Florida:
“mRNA vaccine triggers fierce immune response to fight malignant brain tumor” | UF Health via YouTube, https://share.google/jbPFP1BTqRP3I1BoT
The university study in a Florida medical research institution was conducted in conjunction with MD Anderson in Houston. Here’s the published announcement, which only takes three minutes to read:
“Study finds COVID-19 mRNA vaccine sparks immune response to fight cancer” | UF Health, https://ufhealth.org/news/2025/study-finds-covid-19-mrna-vaccine-sparks-immune-response-to-fight-cancer
Dear reader, please ask yourself if this timeline resembles a story by Lewis Carroll. For those who don’t recognize the pen name, he is the creator of Alice in Wonderland.
Policy in Florida is broadly applied. Another headline tells the story:
“Doctors muffled as Florida moves to end decades of childhood vaccination mandates” | Orlando Sentinel,https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2025/10/30/doctors-muffled-as-florida-moves-to-end-decades-of-childhood-vaccination-mandates/
At the same time that Florida policymakers are opposing the evolution of a Florida-based mRNA research initiative to fight cancer, the same Florida political agents funded $60 million to research the use of the antiparasitic drug ivermectin, among others, to fight cancer. See
“Governor Ron DeSantis and First Lady Casey DeSantis Announce $60 Million Funding Opportunity for Innovative Cancer Research on World Cancer Research Day” | Florida Department of Health, https://www.floridahealth.gov/newsroom/2025/09/20250924-Cancer.Innovation.Fund.pr.html
Google offers an AI-derived summary for a quick review of the Florida ivermectin initiative.
Kotok conclusion
In Florida, doctors are “muffled.” This happens while research doctors develop an mRNA vaccine for cancer and while politicians simultaneously try to make mRNA illegal and even punishable under Florida law. (This proposed law hasn’t passed the legislature yet.) And while $60 million will chase other cancer treatments or preventive methods that have no known indicators of success. Imagine what $60 million could do for the research budget of the University of Florida as it proceeds in developing a cancer cure with mRNA science applied. Readers can decide this for themselves. Fellow Floridians, instead of writing to me, please send a missive to your Florida state legislator. Believe me, they are afraid of your disapproval.
I think often about what we may be throwing away because policy is succumbing to falsehoods distributed on social media. Imagine having a personalized cancer-fighting vaccine.
“Personalized mRNA Vaccines Will Revolutionize Cancer Treatment—If Funding Cuts Don’t Doom Them” | Scientific American, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/personalized-mrna-vaccines-will-revolutionize-cancer-treatment-if-federal/
My warnings about Florida health have two dimensions.
First, there are great medical institutions in Florida. I use Moffitt Cancer Center for my own treatment of two types of leukemia. I have seen and contributed money to the research there and also have seen research physicians at MD Anderson. The University of Florida has an excellent medical research facility. There are other great centers of medical expertise in Florida, in places like my hometown at Sarasota Memorial Hospital and in Jacksonville or Miami or Naples or elsewhere. Those institutions and their skilled staff fight disease while a crazy patchwork of social media-distributed falsehoods seems to have driven politicians to attempt the unskilled and ill-informed practice of medicine with Alice in Wonderland types of initiatives. This is my opinion.
I will use three photos taken from my kitchen window to tell the second part.
The first is a daylight photo of a sailboat anchored in Sarasota Bay.
The next is the same scene at a beautiful setting of a crescent moon around midnight.
And the last is a photo of the same setting crescent moon scene when the aircraft warning light flash was caught by the iPhone camera.
Warnings are visible sometimes. And without them the scene may look serene and pleasant. But the warnings don’t go away. They are there to be either heeded or ignored as each of us decides.
Here’s one right now from South Carolina, where measles vaccination rates have fallen to 90% — below the high threshold of 95% that keeps measles at bay:
“South Carolina measles outbreak is ‘accelerating,’ driving hundreds into quarantine” | NBC News, https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/measles-south-carolina-quarantine-utah-arizona-us-rcna248435
We are living in the period of the RKF Jr. Health Recession; it is underway. There is a transference of healthcare responsibility to the 50 states, and Florida is one of those states. Results will vary. Harms will follow. Opportunities will be lost.
Please stay safe, enjoy a visit here or live here in peaceful serenity and healthy environments if you can. And please remember where you are as you look around at others less fortunate.
Thank you. And best wishes for the holiday season and the new year.
