TAMPA, Fla. – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis unveiled a new front on his war against vaccine mandates Wednesday, urging lawmakers to ban all mandates for mRNA-related vaccines.
DeSantis made the statement at a news conference in Tampa with state Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo and first lady Casey DeSantis at his side.
Currently, there are only two mRNA vaccines on the market, the Moderna Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines.
“I don’t know what the future holds, but I know people should be able, to, to control their own destiny with respect to these MRNA shots," DeSantis said.
MRNA, which stands for messenger ribonucleic acid, is a molecule that copies your DNA’s instructions and brings them to the protein-making structures in your cells, called ribosomes. The ribosomes use those instructions to make proteins for your body.
An mRNA vaccine takes the instructions from a pathogen and carries them to your immune system, so that it can create the tools to fight off the infection that pathogen causes.
This is different from a regular vaccine, which uses parts of viral cells, or dead viral cells, to strengthen the immune system, like the flu vaccine.
Research into mRNA vaccines began in the 1990s at the University of Pennsylvania.
Human trials began for use against infectious diseases began in 2013, and researchers were testing the vaccine for rabies, influenza, Zika and other diseases when the pandemic came along in 2020. The COVID-19 vaccine was approved for emergency use after several trials on Dec. 11, 2020.
While Gov. DeSantis was initially supportive of getting the COVID-19 vaccine out quickly, he has since been highly critical of mRNA vaccines. Over the last couple of years, he has pushed exemptions and banned local governments from COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
[Watch the full news conference below]