"Take the time, the extra weeks. No shortcuts. Nobody will regret it," Topol cautioned. "I've been doing clinical trials for decades. I don't know if there's ever been a more important one than this one. I'd like to see it done right, and not stopped early."
The Trump administration has ignored requests by the House of Representatives for information on COVID-19 spending. "[R]ight now, the entire process is riddled with political interference and a lack of transparency," Sen. Patty Murray, (D-Washington), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, wrote in a statement to NPR. "These contracts need to be made public so Congress and the American people are not left in the dark; there is too much at stake."
Rick Bright, who was fired as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, filed a whistleblower complaint, charging that some federal COVID-19 contracts were awarded based on "political connections and cronyism" instead of scientific evidence. Bright said there's no reason to hide the contracts, which causes him to suspect "that there's something interesting in there they don't want discovered."
Trump's stubborn insistence on having a vaccine by Election Day does not comport with reality. Neither do Big Pharma's predictions. The shortcuts they threaten to take for political gain and mega-profits endanger the public safety. That should frighten us all.
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