Children in Florida will no longer be required to receive vaccines against preventable diseases including measles, mumps, chickenpox, polio and hepatitis, said Joseph Ladapo, the state’s surgeon general, on Wednesday in a speech during which he likened vaccine mandates to “slavery”.

Ladapo, hand-picked for the role by Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, is a longtime skeptic of the benefit of vaccines, and has previously been accused of peddling “scientific nonsense” by public health advocates.