PENCE WOULD AT LEAST HAVE A SHOT AT HOLDING THE SENATE:

[B]right is an expert in the development and production of vaccines to combat menaces like the coronavirus. He has a track record of success. America is drowning in the coronavirus crisis. Why, in the midst of the pandemic, would the Trump administration toss aside one of the leading figures in government with expertise and experience?

According to Dr. Bright, he was sidelined for voicing concerns "about the pressure that . . . government officials were exerting on BARDA to invest in drugs, vaccines, and other technologies without proper scientific vetting or that lacked scientific merit." He objected to the administration's award of contracts to companies with political connections rather than "exclusively on scientific merit." Bright insisted "that BARDA would only invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the COVID-19 pandemic in safe and scientifically vetted solutions and it would not succumb to the pressure of politics or cronyism." He paid a political price for his integrity as a scientist, physician, and steward of taxpayer dollars.

Dr. Bright was particularly troubled by Trump's reckless promotion of the broad use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19, as well as the administration's plan to source these products from uninspected labs in Pakistan and India. In touting the drugs, Trump promised on March 19: "The nice part is, it's been around for a long time, so we know that if it--if things don't go as planned, it's not going to kill anybody." After hydroxychloroquine became a conservative cause célèbre for a few weeks, as the Trump administration's reflexive defenders tripped over one another to praise the president and the drug, the interest petered out--because it became clear that it is not at all the magic bullet they thought it was.

The fight over chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine finally drove a frustrated Bright to go to the press, on the rationale "that Americans needed to have this critical information available to them to better inform them of the risks before taking the medicine." He claims he "felt that he had exhausted all avenues to alert government officials, who refused to listen or take appropriate action to accurately inform the public."

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