Florida’s Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced on Wednesday that the state would soon be moving to end all vaccine mandates, including those that require children to be vaccinated in order to attend public schools.

Ladapo, who gained prominence as a COVID skeptic and was appointed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2021, compared life-saving shots to slavery. “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” he said at a press conference announcing the move.

“Who am I as a man standing here to tell you what you should put in your body? Who am I to tell you what your child should put in your body?” he said to raucous applause.

Florida would become the first state in the nation to not require children to be vaccinated in order to attend school. Currently, Florida requires schoolchildren to be vaccinated against multiple diseases including polio, measles, and hepatitis B.

Ladapo is framing the push as one centered around freedom. “You want to put whatever different vaccines in your body, God bless you. I hope you make an informed decision,” he said at the press conference. “You don’t want to put whatever vaccines in your body, God bless you. I hope you make an informed decision. That’s how it should be.”

According to The Washington Post, DeSantis added that the state can end some mandates, but will need approval from the lawmakers for the rest.

Childhood vaccines save millions of lives around the world each year, which is why schools, a place where infectious diseases can spread in close quarters, around the country require them. Without vaccine prevention, diseases like polio — which can cause respiratory issues, muscle weakness and even death — could spread.

In recent years, the U.S. has seen a decline in childhood vaccination, as anti-vax activists spread misinformation, particularly about the COVID-19 shot, including claiming getting the shot would make you sick or that it was secretly microchip implantation.

These beliefs contradict medical consensus: Public health experts say that vaccines help your immune system fight off disease and can prevent you from getting extremely sick, even if you do get infected.

And the risks of vaccine denial are real. The country is currently in the throes of its worst measles outbreak in more than 30 years. As of July, 14 states had active outbreaks, according to The Associated Press, with another four states having outbreaks that had since ended. So far, hundreds have been infected and three people, including two children, have died. The reemergence of the disease — which had been declared eliminated in the United States as recently as 2000 — has been largely attributed to vaccine refusal.

Florida’s changes come at a time when public health is in grave danger thanks to the Trump administration. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, has thrown the government’s public health agencies into chaos. Kennedy, who embraces anti-vaccine conspiracies, announced last week that the coronavirus vaccine would only be available to a smaller pool of people. Then, after Susan Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, refused to sign off on Kennedy’s unscientific policies — he fired her.