Vice President Kamala Harris took a trip down memory lane on Tuesday when she received her second dose of the COVID vaccine at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.
"I want to take everyone here at NIH for all you do. As you've said, so growing up, my mother, our mother, would go to – we always knew mommy was going to this place called Bethesda. Mommy is going to Bethesda. Now, we're living in California and my mother would go to Bethesda. And of course, what she was doing was coming here to NIH," the vice president said. "And she was in the biochemical endocrinology studies section. She was a peer reviewer and my mother had two goals in life: to raise her two daughters and end breast cancer.
Harris recounted her "first job" that she had in her mother's lab where she cleaned pipettes. It was an attempt to show that her entire being is rooted in science.
"I grew up then around science in a way that was taught to me by someone who was so profoundly passionate about a gift, which is a gift scientists give to us in that their whole reason for being is to see what can be unburdened by what as been," Harris said. "Their whole reason for being is to pursue what is possible for the sake of improving human life and condition. It is such a noble pursuit."
Recommended
According to Harris, NIH is important because it's the government's responsibility to put health over profits, a clear jab at the pharmaceutical industry.
She encouraged Americans to get the Wuhan coronavirus vaccine when it's their turn to do so because it could save their life and the lives of those around them.
Vice President Kamala Harris, visiting the National Institutes of Health for her second Covid vaccine, recounts how her mother frequently traveled to NIH as a peer reviewer: "I want to say to everyone who works here, I know who you are. I know what you do" https://t.co/87dbjCw91o pic.twitter.com/B5Gzc6qhfJ
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) January 26, 2021
The last time Harris recounted a childhood story it turned out to be plagiarized from one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s speeches. Let's see if this one stands the test of time.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member