Florida is set to become the first state to eliminate vaccine mandates. Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo announced plans last month that would affect not only school-age children but also adults.
The state health department currently requires a number of vaccines for children to enter school or day care, including shots to protect against hepatitis B, chickenpox, measles, polio and other diseases. The state has removed requirements for several vaccines, but some, like measles, mumps and polio, can only be scrapped with legislative action.
Health experts are concerned that lifting the mandates will result in vaccination rates dropping and lead to a resurgence of preventable diseases, like polio.
ALSO READ: U.S. measles cases continue to climb, with outbreaks across the country
Tampa-area hospital physician Dr. Jennifer Caputo-Seidler said that when she heard about Ladapo's plan, she began noticing many doctors asking how to treat polio.
"Today, the people who are training to be pediatricians, they're not taught how to recognize a case of acute polio when it comes in," she said. "And the doctors practicing today have never managed it."
While some specialties, like neurology, likely learn about the disease since it attacks the nervous system, it's not something commonly put into practice since polio was eliminated from the U.S. in 1979.
Caputo-Seidler said she didn't learn about the disease in medical school.
"Other than the fact that it's part of the childhood vaccine schedule," she said.
In 1980, the World Health Organization declared that smallpox was eradicated worldwide — the only infectious disease to achieve such status.
Polio survivor speaks out
Kenneth Fuller is a father, minister, musician and polio survivor.
He was born in 1955 in Cocoa and was given the oral polio vaccine (OPV), which is used in other countries but is no longer licensed or available in the U.S.
“I was 6 months old when I was given the live vaccine (OPV) that contributed to my being in the hospital from ages 3 to 12 and enduring seven orthopedic surgeries,” Fuller said.
He'd gotten vaccine-derived poliovirus.
"It was very crippling from my left hip down to my left foot," Fuller said. "My leg was twisted like a pretzel, and my left foot was, according to X-rays that I actually saw, was on backward."
Despite multiple surgeries, his left leg is 2½ inches shorter than his right. But he could walk. Fuller went without mobility aids until around 1990, when he was standing at the pulpit and his legs gave out. Now, he often uses a scooter.
Fuller was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome, something that happens to people who contracted the virus as children. And for nearly three decades, he said he has experienced doctors' lack of knowledge firsthand.
"We go to doctors who are like, 'What's polio? You know, what's polio syndrome? We don't know how to treat it here,' " Fuller said.
And he said responses like that make him feel unseen and unheard.
"Every morning I wake up with pain. I use a bed jet to use heat to try to soothe the aching in my legs," Fuller said. "I can walk to the restroom. I can bathe in the shower. I can take care of myself, but sitting up for longer periods of time, taking care of my yard, going to the mall, those are things that I am limited in doing now."
He said if he goes out for two hours, he's in bed for the next 24.
ALSO READ: Ladapo's targeting of Florida vaccine requirements gets bipartisan opposition
In 2000, the U.S. stopped using the OPV vaccine and moved to an inactive polio vaccine (IPV). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, high vaccination rates of IPV are the best way to keep the country polio-free.
Fuller agrees.
"If they roll back this vaccine, it's going to be devastating for not only America, but I think, for other countries of the world," he said.
What is polio?
Poliomyelitis, or polio, is caused by the wild polio virus. University of South Florida infectious disease expert Michael Teng said it's a "wasting disease."
"It's a really dramatic disease when you get poliomyelitis because a lot of times for kids, it's lower-limb paralysis. And so they end up in a wheelchair or in braces," he said. "Also, a little bit more severe is when you have (an) infection of the lungs."
Teng said if the virus hits people's lungs, they'd typically end up living in an iron lung — an airtight chamber from the neck down that provides positive and negative pressure to mimic the lungs' opening and closing.
Teng said most modern cases of polio come from other countries where wild polio is still around, like remote places in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Doctors there use IPV and OPV.
If vaccination rates drop in the U.S. though, global travel could bring the virus back.
That may be what happened in 2022, when an unvaccinated resident of Rockland County, New York, was diagnosed with vaccine-derived polio transmitted to him from someone who’d gotten the live vaccine.
"We barely see, we don't see polio really here," Teng said. "And the polio that we do see that's coming in from imported cases or people who have traveled."
Fuller continues to advocate for others who have experiences like his.
Despite his post-polio symptoms of debilitating fatigue, depression and pain, he’s an advocate for today’s IPV given in the U.S.
"Why in the name of Jezebel and Beelzebub ... would you say we don't need to have these vaccines?" Fuller said. "I mean, I understand Darwinism, I understand the survival of the fittest, but damn it, we can do something about this."
Want to join the conversation or share your story? Email Meghan at bowman4@wusf.org.
If you have any questions about state government or the legislative process, you can ask the Your Florida team by clicking here.
This story was produced by WUSF as part of a statewide journalism initiative funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
