Dr. Joseph Ladapo of “America’s Frontline Doctors” is now in charge of public health in Florida
Dr. Joseph Ladapo, a member of the fringe medical group “American’s Frontline Doctors” and signer of the widely criticized Great Barrington Declaration, is Florida’s new Surgeon General, appointed because he agrees with the dubious COVID-19 policies of Gov. DeSantis and, like the Governor, allows ideology to trump science.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/dr-jos ... n-florida/
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While obviously qualified in his particular area, it is equally obvious that he is not the most qualified person to head the public health agency of the country’s third largest state. In my view, the only reason he got the job is because DeSantis needed window dressing for his anti-science views on managing the state’s COVID response. In this regard, Dr. Ladapo is eminently qualified.
Dr. Ladapo is both a member of the fringe medical group “America’s Frontline Doctors” and a signatory to the Great Barrington Declaration, which we’ll return to in a moment.
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T
he COVID pandemic has brought the kooks out of the woodwork and, in a crowded field, none kookier than Dr. Stella Immanuel, one of the founders of the fringe medical group, America’s Frontline Doctors, which is affiliated with the right-wing organization Tea Party Patriots Action. She has famously claimed that “tormenting spirits” are responsible for “serious gynecological problems” and impotence, and that “many women suffer from astral sex regularly”, “astral sex” being “the ability to project one’s spirit man into the victim’s body and have sex with it” which is “very common among Satanists”.
Dr. Immanuel was a speaker at an America’s Frontline Doctors-sponsored “White Coat Conference” held last year on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, although the Court had nothing to do with the event. She falsely claimed that hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and Zithromax were “cures” for COVID-19. (This and other misinformation caused a video of the event to be pulled from social media.)
Also speaking was Dr. Simone Gold, who later distinguished herself by participating in the January 6th insurrection, going so far as to enter the Capitol Building, which had conveniently been opened up for her by thugs smashing through the windows and doors and overcoming the Capitol police. This got her both arrested and fired from her job. Among other crackpot statements, Dr. Gold has claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine is actually an “experimental, biological agent deceptively named a vaccine”.
And guess who else put in an appearance at the “Conference”? Florida’s new Surgeon General, Dr. Ladapo, himself a member of America’s Frontline Doctors.
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In his WSJ columns, Dr. Ladapo has continually flogged ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, writing as recently as September 16th that the evidence regarding these drugs is “unsettled”, citing (and linking to the website of) the self-declared Early COVID Care Experts group, because they “have reported low rates of hospitalization and death when using these therapies”. In other words, anecdotal evidence trumps clinical trials. The Early COVID Care Experts include (in addition to Dr. Ladapo himself), conspiracy theorist Dr. Peter McCollough, who falsely claimed that COVID vaccines have killed up to 50,000 people, that vaccines don’t protect against the delta variant, and there’s no clinical reason to go get vaccinated. He was recently sued by a Baylor University health system affiliate to stop him from claiming he is associated with that institution because of “irreparable reputational and business harm” to the institution.
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