Dr. Richard Pan is no stranger to blood. As a pediatrician, he was trained for its inevitability. But unlike your average medical professional—and despite his approachable and buoyant demeanor—he’s had menstrual blood launched at him in protest. He’s been assaulted on the street by a person livestreaming the attack on Facebook. He’s been the subject of racist memes comparing him to Asian despots. … He’s gotten plenty of death threats, too.
Oh, and by the way, he’s running for Congress.
What’s with the hate? Most of it stems from the fact that during his tenure as a California state senator, Pan authored some of the nation’s strongest vaccine laws.
After four years in the California Assembly and 12 in the state Senate, Pan termed out and took a hiatus from politics—returning to his teaching post at UC Davis School of Medicine. But the rise of the vehemently anti-vaccine Make America Healthy Again movement and its erratic figurehead, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has compelled him to jump into the national ring, where his résumé, unflappability, and knowledge of vaccine science and its deniers make him uniquely qualified to push back.
