No, you don’t have to vaccinate your children. That is, if you don’t mind watching them die.

That’s not precisely how Kirk Milhoan, a Hawaii physician who chairs the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, expressed himself the other day. But it’s the plain gist of the message he sent in a podcast interview that has rightly alarmed public health authorities nationwide.

He said shots against polio and measles, and perhaps all diseases, should be optional in consultation with a health professional.

All states require school children to be vaccinated to at least some extent.

Admitting to “concerns” that children might die or be paralyzed on account of his advice, Milhoan said freedom of choice is more important.

He said he was also “saddened” when people die from alcoholism, but that he respects their right to choose.

However valid that analogy might be for an adult, it is outrageous as applied to children who can’t make their own health decisions.

Milhoan is a pediatric cardiologist. A man trained to save the lives of children is effectively giving irresponsible parents his approval to put their children’s lives at risk.

There’s legislation pending in Tallahassee to that same intolerable effect.

Milhoan asserted that making vaccines optional even for public school students would restore trust in public health.

If not for RFK

Such incandescent malarky is the consequence of the Senate’s 52-48 vote to put the professional vaccine denier Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of the nation’s health. It would have gone the other way, 49-51, if just three Republican senators who have since shown misgivings about President Trump had stood up to him on that vote.

They are Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, the health committee chair who told the Senate of Kennedy’s assurances that have turned out to be worthless; Susan Collins of Maine; and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. Rick Scott of Florida and Ashley Moody of Florida also voted, shamefully, for the reckless nominee.

Kennedy appointed Milhoan. Without waiting for the advice of the panel Milhoan chairs, Kennedy’s CDC has already reduced the government’s recommended vaccines for children to 11 from 17, but did not exclude those for polio and measles, mumps and rubella.

Measles, once thought to have been eradicated in the U.S., is back. More than 600 cases have been reported in just one South Carolina county, Spartanburg, where only 90% of schoolchildren have been vaccinated against it.

Milhoan’s pronouncement is particularly bad news for public safety in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis’s quackpot surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, has already delisted four mandatory school vaccines and wants to repeal them all — polio included. That would be up to the Legislature.

No such bill has been filed, but there are two that could yield that same result indirectly by allowing parents to claim “conscience” as an exemption from mandatory vaccines for their schoolchildren. That vastly broadens the existing religious excuse.

Freedom for measles

These so-called medical freedom bills are House Bill 917, which hasn’t gone anywhere, and Senate Bill 1756, which was barely approved Monday by the Senate Health Policy Committee in a 6-4 vote that saw two Republican defections.

The bills allow for quarantining unvaccinated children where an emergency is declared to exist, but that’s specious. Measles, for example, is contagious four days before symptoms appear. An entire school could be infected by then.

There are also two bills aimed at vaccine manufacturers, authorizing patients to file suit in Florida courts over advertising that they allege results in harm from vaccines. These are HB 339, which hasn’t moved, and SB 408, which has already won a 5-3 vote in the Senate Regulated Industries Committee.

It passed despite a staff warning of a conflict with federal law and the opposition of business lobbies that object to more lawsuits. It was a largely party-line vote with Democrats prevailing — a rare event these days.

“Yes” votes, we regret to report, were cast by Democratic Sens. Mack Bernard of West Palm Beach and LaVon Bracy Davis of Orlando and Sen. Jason Pizzo, an independent from Hollywood.

A better way

A federal law enacted in the 1980s to insulate vaccine manufacturers from a surge of lawsuits provides a no-fault recourse for people claiming injury. They may file in the U.S. Court of Claims, which has overseen more than $4 billion in compensation, much of it by negotiation, to some 9,500 people.

The law preempts state litigation. The Florida bills attempt to evade that by making advertising the issue, but it’s doubtful that any federal court would fall for it.

These bills should be stopped where they are. They’re just another backward-looking attack on modern, lifesaving medicine.

Yes, vaccines can have serious side effects. So do many medicines. But they are rare, and the federal compensation law is the right way to deal with them. It is an undeniable fact that vaccines have saved millions of lives. Vaccines eradicated smallpox and were thought to have done so with polio and measles, which can cause encephalitis and other potentially fatal complications.

The Legislature should leave well enough alone. And Milhoan should go back to medical school.

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The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

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