(TNND) — Florida plans to end all vaccine mandates, a move criticized by leading medical groups.

Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo made the announcement Wednesday at an event focused on “medical freedom” in the Sunshine State.

“Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and, and slavery,” Ladapo said of vaccine mandates.

Ladapo said he doesn’t have the right to tell people what they must put in their bodies.

“Your body, your body is a gift from God,” he said at the event.

Ladapo called vaccine mandates “immoral.”

He said the Florida Department of Health will rewrite rules to get rid of about a half dozen vaccine requirements.

“So, those are going to be gone for sure,” Ladapo said.

Ladapo said he and Gov. Ron DeSantis will work with state lawmakers to eliminate the rest of the vaccine mandates.

The American Academy of Pediatrics said this sets Florida up to become the first state that won’t require vaccines for school entry.

The Florida Department of Health currently lists school immunization requirements for measles-mumps-rubella, chickenpox, hepatitis B and more.

The AAP said scrapping vaccine mandates will put kids at risk.

“When everyone in a school is vaccinated, it’s harder for diseases to spread, and easier for everyone to keep the fun and learning going,” the AAP president, Dr. Susan Kressly, said in a post on the AAP website. “When children are sick and miss school, parents also miss work, which not only impacts those families, but also the local economy. We are concerned that today's announcement ... will put children in Florida public schools at higher risk for getting sick, and have ripple effects across their community."

The AAP noted that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found vaccines prevented 508 million lifetime illnesses, 32 million hospitalizations and 1.1 million deaths among children born from 1994-2023.

The American Medical Association also condemned the announcement.

“This unprecedented rollback would undermine decades of public health progress and place children and communities at increased risk for diseases such as measles, mumps, polio, and chickenpox resulting in serious illness, disability, and even death,” Dr. Sandra Adamson Fryhofer, an AMA trustee, said in a statement.

Jennifer Nuzzo, the director of Brown University's Pandemic Center, told The National News Desk on Thursday via email that Florida leaders are using frustration over COVID-19 vaccine mandates to weaken protections against deadly outbreaks.

“Mandates for routine immunizations are important for maintaining vaccination coverage levels that prevent outbreaks and are widely supported by the vast majority of adults,” Nuzzo said. “Florida is acting against the best interest and wishes of its citizenry, who will not be happy when they have to contend with deadly, costly outbreaks as a result of these efforts.”

DeSantis also announced the formation of a Florida “Make America Healthy Again” commission, modeled after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s national agenda.

Kennedy, a noted vaccine skeptic, spent Thursday morning on Capitol Hill being grilled by lawmakers over the ouster of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director and his big changes in vaccine policy.

Kennedy remade the expert advisory panel that develops vaccine recommendations for the CDC.

The Food and Drug Administration last week limited its approval for new COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax. All of the vaccines are approved for people 65 and older, and approval for younger people was narrowed to those with underlying health conditions.

And the AAP felt it necessary to split with the government vaccine recommendations under Kennedy’s leadership, issuing its own recommendations for kids.

SEE ALSO: RFK Jr. grilled in Senate hearing over vaccine policy, CDC turmoil

DeSantis said the new Florida commission would recommend state-level integration of MAHA principles.

“And those principles are ... individual medical freedom, informed consent, parent rights, and also market innovation,” DeSantis said at the event.

The governor said the working group would focus on transparency and accountability in health care, chronic diseases, and “restoring trust in the medical profession and in public health.”