Judy Mikovits PhD
This first series of posts of our Rabbitholejournals.com blog covers a book entitled ‘The Plague of Corruption’ by Dr. Judy Mikovits which skyrocketed to the bestseller list on Amazon in 2020. The posts are a summary of the book with additional information and comment added.
The Foreword is written by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who is a nephew of the assassinated former US President John F Kennedy. He ran for the US presidency in the 2024 elections to be held in November but stepped out of the running in August. He was standing as an independent candidate and his polling is at the highest level for a third party candidate since 1992. Scandal is bad news for any politician. Kennedy has nevertheless chosen to write the forward to Mikovits’ book. This is an impressive endorsement indeed and belies the mainstream narrative of Mikovits as ‘a conspiracy theorist’. If this makes you curious, as it does us, let’s dive into the rabbit’hole together …
In the first half of the foreword, Kennedy gives an overview of Mikovits’ career. In the second half, he goes on to outline several scientists who have met a similar fate to Mikovits. Specifically, he lists some of the scientists who have unearthed inconvenient truths that were potentially embarrassing and costly to vested interests and what became of them. Most of the scientists were later vindicated.
Let’s start with Mikovits’ career. In 1980, she graduated with a BA in Chemistry from the University of Virginia. Later that same year, she joined the National Cancer Institute (NCI) as a lab technician purifying Interferon-alpha. Interferon is a natural substance that can help the body’s immune system fight infections and other diseases such as cancer. It can be made in the laboratory. Subsequently, from 1986-7 she worked for Upjohn, a private pharmaceutical manufacturing firm to monitor the safety of their Bovine Growth Hormone. However, Mikovits’ integrity as a scientist resulted in her leaving Upjohn. Specifically, her research led her to discover that the milk produced by cows who had been treated with Upjohn’s Bovine Growth Hormone could cause precancerous changes in human cell cultures. Therefore, women who drank this cow’s milk could develop breast cancer. Judy was told by her superior to hide her discoveries but would not do so and therefore parted company with Upjohn. It is interesting to note that Upjohn subsequently stopped marketing this product.
At the National Cancer Institute (NCI), Mikovits started a long-term professional relationship with Dr. Frank Ruscetti who made scientific history with the co-discovery of the first human retrovirus. #A retrovirus differs from a virus in that it has the ability to infiltrate the nucleus of the host cell and actually insert its genetic information there thus changing the host’s genome. A genome is the complete array of genetic information of an organism. The genome is stored in long molecules of DNA called chromosomes in the cell nucleus. Viruses however creates copies of themselves in the cytoplasm of the cell which cannot change the genetic information of the host. There is no cure for a retrovirus. AIDS is such a virus and without therapy someone with AIDs would survive for approximately three years. Globally, millions of people died from AIDS in the 1980s. Until effective treatment was developed AIDS was a killer and victims succumbed to it on average within three years of diagnosis.#
In 1991 , Mikovits earned her PhD from George Washington University. Her PhD defence changed the paradigm for therapeutic treatment of HIV. For this work, Mikovits was awarded the graduate student of the year. In 1999, Mikovits directed the Laboratory of Anti-viral Drug Mechanisms which developed therapeutics and diagnostics for HIV/AIDS so that AIDS was no longer a killer but a manageable condition. These are therapies that are still standard of care twenty five years later and are credited with saving millions of deaths from HIV/AIDS. It seems strange that such a talented scientist who has benefitted humanity so much could become so vilified by the medical profession. As we journey further down the rabbit hole we will discover the nature of the vested interests that found her so threatening and sought to discredit her.
In 2009 Mikovits and Ruscetti’s team discovered a link between Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and a retrovirus called XMRV. Mikovits found the virus in 67% of people with ME as opposed to 4% in a healthy population. Mikovits stated that the retrovirus was originally found in mice and had worked its way into humans. She also linked XMRV to children with autism (children of women with CFE), leukemia, prostrate cancer, autoimmune disease and Alzheimer’s. Mikovits also said that the retrovirus was in the blood supply and that 3 to 8% of the American population were carrying it.
Kennedy then goes on to document the fate of others who unearthed inconvenient truths .As a British ex-pat living in Hungary, I was aware of the first example – a Hungarian doctor named Dr Ignaz Semmelweis whose dramatic story became the source for Henrik Ibsen’s famous play ‘An Enemy of the People’ written in 1882. In 1847, Dr Semmelweis was working as an assistant professor at Vienna’s General Hospital maternity clinic.He was also a qualified physician, surgeon and scientist.
He is credited with carrying out the first ovarian surgery and the second caesarean section in Hungary. He was given the epithet ‘Saviour of Mothers’. He was researching into why such a high percentage of young mothers were dying in the clinic of puerperal ‘birth bed’ fever sometimes up to 30%. In one ward where doctors who had been performing autopsies came to examine women in the maternity department without washing their hands! Semmelweis insisted that they wash their hands in a chlorine solution from then on and the death rate dropped dramatically from 10% to 1%. Semmelweis published his findings but was met with strong opposition by his profession. Obviously, for the hospital to admit that basic antiseptic procedures had not been followed and that many deaths were caused by this omission could ruin their reputation, let alone lead the way to many lawsuits for compensation.
No statue was erected at that time to honour such a committed and dedicated physician. Unbelievably, Semmelweis was expelled from the medical profession. He was then tricked by some of his former colleagues into visiting a mental hospital in 1865 where he died mysteriously two weeks later. Semmelweis had tried to warn his peers about ‘cadaverous particles’ that he believed were responsible for the deaths. His ideas were vindicated soon afterwards through the work of Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister in the 1860s and their work with microorganisms but a decade too late to save him. Semmelweis’ story and fate became so famous that such a knee-jerk reaction by the medical and scientific communities, by the media and the involved financial institutions has come to be known universally as the ‘Semmelweis effect’. So, if you are paying a visit to the beautiful capital city of Budapest after your dip in one of the many famous therapeutic spas, don’t forget to go the Semmelweis’ museum to pay homage to him!
The second example that Kennedy draws our attention to of someone who suffered the Semmelweis Effect is Herbert Needleman from Pittsburgh University. Needleman was a pioneer in the field of medicine whose research revolutionized and transformed the understanding of the effects of lead on children. In 1979 he published an innovative and ground-breaking study in the New England Journal of Medicine which analysed the lead content of 3000 children’s teeth and how this correlated with their IQ, school performance and behaviour. A strong correlation was indeed identified evidencing the highly toxic effect of lead on children. What followed was a classic case of an industry endeavouring to protect its reputation and its profits. The lead industry used public relations firms and scientific consultants to undermine Needleman’s credibility. Much lead was used in petrol and paint and the industry sought to nullify any claim that lead was having a toxic effect on the community.
Subsequently, Needleman was investigated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), The Office of Scientific Integrity at the National Institutes of Health and even his own university. Needleman had the fortitude and courage to withstand this onslaught and eventually he was vindicated by the federal government and his university. His research laid the foundations for subsequent research by more scientists which confirmed Needleman’s findings and led the way to widespread legislation to prohibit the use of lead in petrol, paint and many other applications.
Kennedy then goes on to document the fate of researchers who were specifically concerned with virology.
#At this point, it may be useful to give a brief description of vaccination. Famously, in 1796, in one of the most significant and monumental moments of medicinal history, British physician Doctor Edward Jenner inoculated a boy with the cowpox virus and in doing so made him immune to the smallpox virus. Milkmaids contracted the cowpox virus from cows they had been milking. Jenner took the virus from one such milkmaid and gave it to the boy. Smallpox which is caused by the variola virus was one of the most harmful and pernicious deadly infections and was the cause of 500 million deaths over the last 100 years. It was finally eradicated in 1980. The rationale behind Jenner inoculating the boy in the first place was that he had noticed that milkmaids that had contracted cowpox from cow’s udders were immune to the smallpox virus. Cowpox is a much milder virus than smallpox and not a killer virus.
It may seem counter-intuitive to give a child a virus but in so doing, the boy’s immune system was triggered to produce antibodies that would attack and neutralize the foreign body. By priming the body in such a way the immune system is rendered more effective. As with the milkmaids, once infected with the cowpox the boy became immune to smallpox. This effect was repeated in dozens of subsequent trials carried out by Jenner and thus saw the birth of vaccination. (etymology: ‘vacca’ is Latin for ‘cow’.)
Previous medical interventions in the fight against smallpox had primarily consisted of variolation. (Remember ‘variola’ is the name of the smallpox virus). This involved the infection of a healthy person with a small amount of smallpox in order to strengthen that person’s immune system and render them immune to future infection by the virus. The earliest records intentionally priming the immune system by introducing it to a weakened or dead pathogen in order to strengthen the former are found in ancient China in the 10th century. Powder made from dried pulverized smallpox scabs were blown up the nose of a healthy individual who then contracted a mild version of the disease. Subsequently, this would then render the individual immune from the smallpox virus. The death rate for those who contracted the full-blown virus was 30%. The rate for those who had undergone variolation was 1% – 2%. In the West, in the 1700s the intentional infection was carried out by a puncture in the skin rather than via the nose. The procedure became very popular but not without risk and King George III lost one of his sons due to this intervention.#
This is the end of the first blog which constituted the first half of Kennedy’s introduction. Please view the second blog post below which consists of the second half of Kennedy’s introduction to the book.