Dr. Judy’s bankruptcy was final yesterday. She has lost everything financially. Let’s hope the vengeance is now complete. Her homes are being sold and she still doesn’t have her notebooks. She isn’t working as a lab scientist because of the Whittemore’s defamation of her character, despite Dr. Lipkin’s support.
And still the WPI asks for money from the community? For what? They have not published one paper in the year and a half since Dr. Mikovits was fired. Instead they have spent a bunch of money to ensure she is completely stopped. What kind of people would do that? Why wouldn’t they want her to be able to work? To live her life? She gave them five years, trying to help their daughter, but wanted to follow the truth instead of the money, so they did everything they could to destroy her. What’s in those notebooks that they are so concerned about? There is no intellectual property, since XMRV is not a human retrovirus, but a lab contaminant, so there must be something incriminating, something that leaves them vulnerable. But they won. They have the notebooks.
From a big picture perspective, as affects the patient community, the whole misadventure was so wrong, it’s hard to count the ways. We were robbed, on many levels. From a personal perspective, it is still incomprehensible to me that the promise we felt, back when Dr. Judy was being promoted like a rock star, has turned to dust. However, she has told me repeatedly that they have taken her money, but they can never take the most important things from her. From an email last night, after reading my draft for this blog, copied here with permission:
The copies of my notebooks prove my total innocence. I did my job and beyond…their actions prevented the truth and prevented me from getting work, and not only me, my students as well…but as you say it robbed the scientific and patient communities of data paid for by federal dollars and donations to a “non-profit” institution. I could NOT LIE or ALLOW the truth to remain hidden or support those who would not tell the truth in order to take advantage of a vulnerable patient population.
Their intellectual property was unraveling when it was found that XMRV was a Silverman lab contaminant..what they are and were afraid of is that they will be held liable for the fraudulent testing.. Lombardi and the Whittemores lied for 3 years and they all had a financial interest in VIPDx. There simply cannot be intellectual property or diagnostic testing for a virus that does not exist in any natural organism!!!
From my personal perspective it is incomprehensible, that in the United States of America, all of my constitutional rights can be denied in order to cover up the truth …They do not want me to work because they are that vindictive. They know I live for my work in cancer and neuroimmune disease and for patients everywhere. They know my work is my life ..they thought they could take my integrity..but you know what ..THEY FAILED! Because Lipkin applauded my integrity and succeeded at showing the world what Silverman and Lombardi did to this patient population..THEY are the COWARDS and I have my honor and my integrity but most importantly of all, I have the support and confidence of the patient population, not just the CFS patients but the cancer, Chronic Lyme, Autism, MS ALS, Parkinson’s.. that is, ALL the patients to whom I have dedicated my life.
You see, my life was never about money and never will be. I am still working as a volunteer, I enjoyed coffee with two CFS patients yesterday and a cancer patient this morning, before I went with her to an appointment. I have never stopped being a patient advocate and will continue to be one in 2013. As one of my courageous friends with aggressive Parkinson’ s wrote in a Xmas card: “2012 was a year of change and loss, faith..we all needed tremendous faith to survive 2012!! 2013 will be a year of optimism, opportunity and HOPE”.
Today’s song: I Will Not Be Broken by Bonnie Raitt
This makes me so angry so sad and more determined than ever to fight
What’s wrong with us Gerwyn?
Why is this illness so mysterious?
Gerwyn, you seem to know what’s going on and have the scientific knowledge. Can’t you help us find an answer for this dreaded disease? Maybe work along side Judy?
I was one of those people with Judy yesterday for coffee. I can personally attest to the work she continues to do with the cancer patients, the ME patients, and many others who continue to contact her on a daily basis. It would have been so easy for Judy to walk away considering all that has happened to her personally, but she has not. She continues to do good where ever she can, despite her own personal loss. Anyone who has ever met her and many who have not realize what a truly special person she is and how lucky we are to have crossed paths with her.
Lilly, I can only second you. Judy is the most amazing person I ever met, and she never lost an ounce of my confidence and my trust during all the assaults and hardship she went through. For me, she really is a hero, a beacon in a corrupt world in which too many people only strive for power and money. If only we had more scientists of her moral and scientific grandness we would be much better off. And we would have a solution for all these horrible diseases. What a system in which great people like Judy are punished for their integrity, robbed of their money and their reputation and those who do that to her can get away with everything. Yet let’s hope for the better in 2013! And that Judy will finally get the honors she deserves.
Yes I feel blessed to have met so many nice people the last few years. If it wasn’t for XMRV we all would probably have never met.
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall — think of it, ALWAYS.
Gandhi, Mahatma
Jamie, maybe it is something silly what I am about to say, but why can’t you open your new practice jointly with Dr. Judy? I mean, isn’t she an MD as well or she’s just a researcher and investigator?
Massimo, Dr. Judy is a PhD. She has a great deal of knowledge to share with respect to immunology. She has a background of using this knowledge to support cancer patients. We are always discussing ways in which we might come together to help patients.
It was because of Judy Mikovits that this illness was even brought to the forefront. Before her there was no hope for any treatment or even recognition of this illness. We were as good as dead. And death does come for us, some sooner, and for others after a long and torturous life.
What those people did both to her and this patient community is despicable. I hope they rot for what they’ve done.
I am so much better and it’s because of Judy. I am so happy and privileged that she is my friend.
I have had the great priviliege of being able to spend time and attend various presentations with Judy in Northern Ireland. I have come to know her as one of the most honorable, humble and caring human beings I have ever met.
We showed the world that the patients here and Dr. Enlander still support Judy by having her as one of the guest speakers at the conference in Newry in November past. It’s not about that XMRV wasn’t the holy grail for us all, it’s about a very dedicated scientist who puts her work before money and power.
May God forgive the people responsible for depriving hundreds of thousands of patients a chance to benefit from the work of such a dedicated and experienced scientist as Judy Mikovits.
While many run scared, in the opposite direction of M.E. research, Judy stood firmly behind truth and the patients yet sadly has now been made suffer enormous financial lose because of this.
I hope all those responsible are happy tonight and can sleep with great satisfaction and a clear conscience while we continue to endure this nightmare illness. David and Goliath comes to mind, it’s not over yet. The truth will prevail.
Jamie, is there a class action suit being filed against the Whittemores by those who fell victim to their fraudulent testing? They are do for some Karmic kickback.
That the health of the Whittemore’s daughter has taken a backseat to their misplaced vengeance, only shoes the caliber of people they are.
There are blind alleys and dead ends in all research. However disappointing, the thing to do is to push on in a new direction.
I hope Judy can find a benefactor soon, so she can continue to work for us.
My health has improved because of her work and, although that may have been serendipitous, it is still one more piece in the puzzle. Whatever the agent, it responds to ARV’s, it screws up the RNase-L which is part of the anti-viral pathway. So if it isn’t a virus, it’s something that does a pretty good imitation.
To quote Maxwell Smart, I think Judy “missed it by that much” (indicating a very small amount).
I wish you and Judy the best,
Thanks,
Larry
Amen, Larry.
I appreciate all Judy has done, I truly hope that she finds a research facility willing to hire her, and dare I say I hope her focus can remain on the diseases her work is in and in helping us with this disease. ME/fibromyalgia.
I donated to the Whitemore’s hoping it would help us, so excited by the whole XMRV thing. I don’t regret it, but I do regret how this whole thing has gone down, and expecially to Judy and the whole ME etc. groups. I look forward to your blogs, a lifeline when there is so little information out there and I must say the excitement from XMRV and the hope it gave was really an adreniline rush.
Good luck Judy, would love to have you come to my doctors with me, I might get some form of treatment then, or at least some good testing.
Thanks, Lynn
I find it hard to believe: It was all contamination by Silverman? (And by Lombardi? And by Ruscetti? Contamination at three labs?) And Judy didn’t knew back then?
She was the only one who went around with these results, and very vocal at that!
And now she basically says that she was fooled by all these people? If she was “totally inoccent” as she says, then she seems to have been totally gullible (and easily fooled).
Besides, what was then her contribution to the research? You can’t have it both ways: That Dr. Judy Mikovits is the king-pin of XMRV-research, yet she is conned by everybody.
Plus, I find it hard to believe that three(!) labs are so corrupt, yet she is the only one in that area of research who is “totally innocent”.
The contamination came from Silvermans reagents used in studies and in VIPdx testing I would assume.What else would they have to go by since Silverman supposedly discovered XMRV in prostate cancer. They would have had to use his samples. And it appears that XMRV was contamination coming from his lab that he didn’t check for. So how would anyone know since Silverman had already discovered it as a human infection and got it published as such?
Dr Ruscetti didn’t have contamination. Dr Mikovits has not said he did. So it is not 3 labs that are the problem as you state. The complete sequencing of the virus was performed by Silverman only, in his lab.
Dr Mikovits and Dr Ruscetti’s serology and gag sequences can’t be contamination, but they are not XMRV. They can only be one of two things and only further investigation will reveal that. They are either exogenous or endogenous gamma retroviruses. However the serology antibody has not in 40 years ever reacted to an endogenous retrovirus. So the hypothesis still stands, but without knowing the full sequence of the retrovirus.
Dr Ruscetti and Dr Mikovits were not able to find the env gene of the XMRV virus in their samples, but Silverman insisted it was XMRV. This means that Silverman is the only person to have ever claimed to have sequences XMRV completely from any organism and that the viruses detected by Dr Mikovits and Dr Ruscetti can’t be XMRV. This was recorded the in the published work.
Silverman did not start admitting his errors until late 2011. Dr Mikovits was not to have known that Silverman had made such a mess. Including in his original work Urisman et al., which is now retracted. Singh and Arnold too had no reason to question it when they also detected section’s of what they said was XMRV. So why is their work not retracted? The truth is non of it should be, as the serology and gag sequences can’t be contamination.
Dr Mikovits does not have the notebooks does she. Dr Mikovits is not keeping information from the public.
Dr Mikovits has never made any claim that any test was clinically validated. Only the commercial tests sold by Redlabs through the WPI board had that claim placed on them by Redlabs and the WPI board. Mikovits had no involvement in this.
It was Dr Mikovits who was trying to tell the world about the data when she was fired.
This is interesting to read.
“Dennis Jones, lawyer for Judy Mikovits, also said the reason she was fired by the institute was because she “discovered a series of improper, unethical and possibly illegal acts” by the Whittemores and their lab director.” – 23 April 2012
http://www.rgj.com/article/20120423/NEWS/304230038/Fired-Whittemore-Peterson-Institute-researcher-claims-justice-system-flawed
And there is this.
“In the summer of 2011, Mikovits and her young lab assistant, Max Pfost, began poring through their notebooks, trying to find where such a contaminant might have entered their process.
In July, she says, she found it—an entry from March 2009 indicating that a culture of the XMRV virus had been placed into the same incubator with the rest of the lab’s blood samples. Mikovits says she was out of town the day this occurred.
In July 2011 she told Harvey Whittemore of the potential contamination, she says, and expected that the VIP Dx lab would cease testing patients for the XMRV virus. “I just kept saying, stop it, stop it, stop it. We have to sort this out,” Mikovits says. According to Mikovits, the testing did not stop. And after a tense summer, she was fired in September.” – 23 July 2011
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/23/how-research-into-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-turned-into-an-ugly-fight.html
Let me get this right. What you are basically stating is that a retrovirus is the culprit, it is not XMRV and that Dr. Mikovits was getting close to an answer?
I did find this at okeefe-lab.blogspot.com
AnonymousMay 22, 2012 7:11 PM
Tony, I suspect you are referring to Mikovits et al. In which table four includes only 94 of the 101 patients from Lombardi et al. If you read both papers the reason is obvious. Mikovits et al. does not include any testing that was only performed at Dr Silvermans lab at the Cleveland clinic.
Also;
The rjg page no longer exists but I did track down what I think is the same thing, from me-advocacy.com
It is sure worth a read. Holy Cow!
Nevada: State of gross injustice!
According to Dr Judy Mikovits lawyer, she was fired by Annette Whittemore on the 29 September 2011 through no fault of her own.
“Dennis Jones, lawyer for Judy Mikovits, also said the reason she was fired by the institute was because she “discovered a series of improper, unethical and possibly illegal acts” by the Whittemores and their lab director.” (1)
So far patients have not been privy to the “acts” that Dr Mikovits discovered. Potentially they are as follows (1).
That REDLABS (VIP DX) having been licensed by WPI to sell XMRV tests, failed to clinically validate those tests. In which case, if true, that would constitute conspiracy between licensor and licensee to defraud Medicare.
That Dr Vincent Lombardi was paid out of NIH funding, but was working in the clinical laboratory (REDLABS). In which case, if true, that would constitute a conspiracy to defraud the NIH.
Tragically patients have had their attention diverted from these grave matters by the simultaneous civil and criminal cases against Dr Mikovits (2,3). The criminal case instigated by the Whittemore’s allegations (dropped because of a lack of credible evidence) and the civil case instigated by them. A fact that the civil case Judge, Judge Brent Adams, who later admitted a conflict of interest, would have been well aware of (4).
In an almost unheard of ruling, Judge Brent Adams denied Dr Mikovits’s her constitutional rights several times, which he himself admitted he had never done before (1,4).
Firstly, Adams made a default judgment against Dr Mikovits while her own lawyer, Dennis Jones, was having medical treatment (1), denying her right to representation.
Secondly, Adams denied her the right to invoke the Fifth Amendment in the civil case when she was also charged with theft of property from the plaintiffs in the criminal case (1,4).
This was a gross violation of her constitutional rights (5). Invoking the Fifth Amendment would be the advice any competent criminal lawyer would give to a person in that situation and the judge would know that. Striking out her reply into court in such circumstances is almost unheard of. Even the judge admitted he had never taken this step before (1,4). So why now? Why deny a postponement so that Dr Mikovits’s lawyer could be present?
Judge Brent Adams subsequently admitted a conflict of interest as he had received substantial donations from the Whittemore’s for his previous election campaign, and stood down as judge but not before ruling in favour of the Whittemores’s in the absence of legal representation for Dr Mikovits.
This is something you might expect in communist China but how can this be allowed in a modern democracy where everyone is supposedly governed by the rule of law and that law is meant to apply equally to all.
Freedoms to do whatever you want if you are rich and powerful, free to be abused if you are not.
Does anyone still seriously believe that Dr Mikovits research notebooks contained trade secrets? If not what could be in them that would be so important that Nevada police still hold them without lawful excuse?
REFERENCES
Fired Whittemore Peterson Institute researcher claims justice system flawed. Martha Bellisle. RGJ. 23 April 2012. http://www.rgj.com/article/20120423/NEWS/304230038/Fired-Whittemore-Peterson-Institute-researcher-claims-justice-system-flawed http://www.dailystrength.org/c/Chronic_Fatigue_Syndrome/forum/14148241-latest-whittemoremikovitz
Lawsuit Filed Against Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Researcher by Former Employer. Jon Cohen. Science Insider. 14 November 2011. http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/11/lawsuit-filed-against-chronic-fatigue.html
Controversial CFS Researcher Arrested and Jailed. Jon Cohen. Science Insider. 19 November 2011. http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/11/controversial-cfs-researcher-arr.html
UPDATED: Civil Court Rules Against Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Researcher. Jon Cohen. (20 December 2011) http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/12/civil-court-rules-against-chronic.html
FIFTH AMENDMENT. Cornell University Law School. http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fifth_amendment
No, Larry I did not say “a retrovirus is the culprit”.
There are only two possibilities for the serology and gag sequences. An endogenous or exogenous retrovirus. The particular antibody for the serology test has only ever reacted to an endogenous retrovirus. It can’t have been XMRV or the rest of the retrovirus would have been present in Dr Mikovits deep sequencing. Dr Mikovits was obviously working toward the truth.
Do you disagree and why?
Correction. The above should say “The particular antibody for the serology test has only ever reacted to an exogenous retrovirus.”
No. This stuff is over my head. I’m just trying to grasp it. Thanks.
I think it can be summed up that the hypothesis for exogenous retroviruses infecting ME patients still stands and that further research should be funded.
I am one of the many, many patients who has had the wonderful opportunity to get to know Judy Mikovits. It is true what she says in her email to Jamie: She fights every day for the patients, STILL, even after all the hell she has been put through, including forced to engage in legal battles, forced to lose her life savings, forced to defend her good name, etc. As I have come to know Judy more this past year, I can unequivocally say that I trust her, respect her and believe her. She was deeply wronged. Thank you, Dr. Ian Lipkin, for affirming this year what we already knew about Judy: She is a good scientist with great integrity. Someone should hire her and put her to work. She is eager to keep researching this illness that so many of us suffer with on a daily (hourly!) basis. Thank you, Jamie, for posting this blog post.
Now that Judy’s bankruptcy is final does that mean that patients can start donating to her again without fear that the Whittemore’s can get their hands on her money?
The things that concern me a lot.
Why are psychiatrists aloud to be in charge of our illness here in the uk?
Why do Gulf war veterans also have M.E ?
If its a retrovirus or a HERV why doesn’t someone sequence M.E patients blood to find out?
Happy 2013! My cancer is over. Back to just plain CFS, whatever. Hope you all have a better year!
Peace.
Al Marcy
What wonderful news, Al! Happy New Year indeed…
Though lab-created, Silverman still discovered a retrovirus, and the XMRV research exposed that it has been growing in cancer cells used for research all over the world. And further investigation found that it can easily cause contamination of other cells. This is important information for cancer research that came out of M.E. research. And we still know the virochip showed more viruses in M.E. patients than anyone else, and the antibody is picking up something.