Dr. Judy Mikovits scores 5/5 on our Quack Scale. She represents a high risk to the general public and we encourage members of the public to seek alternate medical or health advice. Do not follow recommendations from this individual relating to your personal health or the health of others.
If you’re not sure how our Quack Scale works, click here for a detailed explanation
Qualification: Judy Mikovits obtained a Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology from George Washington University in 1991. By 2009, she was research director at the Whittemore Peterson Institute (WPI), a private research center in Reno, Nevada.
Current Licensing Status: NOT APPLICABLE
Resident: Southern California
Existing Complaints: None listed publically.
Website: None listed
Mikovits epitomizes the definition of a Quack. She is well known in the scientific community. Her reputation for publishing controversial theories that do not withstand scientific scrutiny by her colleagues precedes her. She continues to pursue her own agendas, contrary to proven science, and buffers her reputation with lies and falsehoods, or inaccurate representation of the facts. She is manipulative and ruthless in the pursuits of her own theories which she promotes with no concern for the wider ramifications or potential health impacts of her many fallacious statements.
Her association therefore with the conspiratorial movie Plandemic came as no surprise. In a trailer advertising the movie, Mikovits was painted as a professional beyond reproach. The claims made about her career couldn’t have been further from the truth and the excellent article below from ScienceMag disputes these by fact-checking each individually.
Her claims relating to autism, vaccines and a host of other conditions and their causes are all fabricated fantasies that have no basis in solid science and have in fact been incontrovertibly disproven. Her latest book, “Plague of Corruption” which is co-authored with Kent Heckenlively, was published by Skyhorse Publishers and is a complete affront to sensible science-based medicine. Packed with lies and unsubstantiated claims, the book exemplifies just how dangerous and deluded Judy Mikovits is.
Don’t be misled by the book’s endorsements, look rather to those who offer scientific criticism of the content. Mikovits plays the persecuted scientist role to perfection and she should know. She’s been persecuted for good reason. She is dangerous and delusional. In a damning review, Rolling Stone suggests Plague of Corruption is, essentially, an act of self-hagiography. Read the full review below.
You may also enjoy this thoroughly entertaining destruction of Mikovits and Plandemic by John Oliver on Youtube, as he dissects Covid conspiracies and Mikovits ridiculous claims.
Supporting Articles
Publication – Sciencemag: Authors Martin Enserink and Jon Cohen on May. 8, 2020. Fact-checking Judy Mikovits, the controversial virologist attacking Anthony Fauci in a viral conspiracy video. Verdict: Mikovits lies and misleads to intentionally inflate her reputation with the public and makes completely unfounded statements that have no basis in solid science.
Around the same time, Mikovits had an explosive breakup with WPI. The institute filed suit against her in November 2011 for allegedly removing laboratory notebooks and keeping other proprietary information on her laptop, on flash drives, and in a personal email account. She was arrested in California on felony charges that she was a fugitive from justice and jailed for several days. Prosecutors in Washoe county, Nevada, eventually dropped criminal charges against her in June 2012.
Publication – LiebertPub.com: Authors Stuart J.D. Neil and Edward M. Campbell, July 2, 2020 ! https://doi.org/10.1089/aid.2020.0095. Fake Science: XMRV, COVID-19, and the Toxic Legacy of Dr. Judy Mikovits. Verdict: A damning condemnation of sad and disgraced professional who has not had the good grace or sense to retire from the public stage.
So, all in all Mikovits has form as a serial scientific fantasist who has consistently made unsubstantiated claims about mouse retroviruses as the cause of a number of human diseases. The only “evidence” ever published by her was unequivocally shown to stem from laboratory contamination and explicit fabrication of data. She was never a leading researcher in the field; her doctoral studies were only very minor contributions to the field and until the XMRV debacle, very few had ever heard of her. Her subsequent “research” took advantage of people desperate to have an explanation for their debilitating symptoms, giving them false hope and many a false narrative where they are the victims of a massive medical cover up. In doing so, she also trashed the reputation of her former mentor, Frank Ruscetti. Her reappearance now as an apparently maligned “scientific leader” challenging the orthodoxy on vaccines and COVID-19 would be a source of eye-rolling were she not being taken seriously by countless Internet warriors posting and reposting the trailer for Plandemic. Her claims have been picked up by right-wing commentators in the United States desperate to show that the lockdown measures taken against COVID-19 are a pernicious over-reaction designed to damage President Trump, whose inconsistent handling of the crisis has garnered a huge amount of criticism. In doing so, she is playing with fire in the heightened atmosphere of our “fake news” era. It is incumbent on scientists to call this out for what it is: fabricated nonsense. There is no legitimate debate to be had on these issues, and any credence given to these dangerous conspiracies will lead to even greater suffering resulting from COVID-19. Steer well clear of Plandemic and the claims of Judy Mikovits.Derek Beres, a freelance journalist who hosts the podcast Conspirituality, about conspiracy thinking in the new-age community, recently devoted an episode to Northrup. “She’s been very influential—women, mothers, have really appreciated her advocacy around the idea that you know best for your own kid, that doctors are just trying to make money off you and your family,” he told me. He explained how this fits with Northrup’s recent slide into the QAnon trope of rampant child sex trafficking. “You imagine your child being stolen or molested,” he said, “and that’s just hitting the same fear button.” Indeed, my colleague Ali Breland noted this in his 2019 piece “Why Are Right-Wing Conspiracies so Obsessed With Pedophilia?” He wrote, “Conspiracies centering on the vulnerability of children are neither new nor distinctly American.” This is just the latest iteration.
Publication – Rolling Stone: Author EJ DICKSON on May, 12, 2020. Judy Mikovits, Disgraced Doctor at the Center of ‘Plandemic,’ Has a Bestselling Book on Amazon. Verdict: Mikovits knows her audience, and she sets herself up as a courageous whistleblower raging against the machine rather than a disgraced scientist with a grudge against an establishment that rejected her.
Plague of Corruption is, essentially, an act of self-hagiography. Throughout the book, Mikovits is compared or compares herself to, among others, Galileo, Martin Luther King Jr., and Thomas Jefferson (in the latter instance, she quotes a lyric from Hamilton in the process). At one point, she quotes someone else describing her as “really brilliant.” Plague of Corruption is replete with villains, and one of Mikovits’ favorites (as also documented by Plandemic) is Dr. Anthony Fauci. “Whenever you ask yourself why the truth hasn’t been told in a critical area of public health, you’ll probably find the fingerprints of these men at the crime scene,” she writes, citing Fauci as an example. In one particularly egregious excerpt, Mikovits implies that Fauci ordered the murder of virologist Kuan-Teh Jeang, who died in 2013, as part of a cover-up burying Mikovits’ research. “The rumor is that [he] left a suicide note, which was confiscated by the National Institutes of Health police. I wonder if it resembles the torn-up note found in Vince Foster’s briefcase,” she writes, slyly sounding another far-right conspiracy-theorist dog whistle.
Publication – Reuters: Author Reuters Stqff on June 23, 2020: Fact Check: Unfounded claim that 50 million Americans would die from COVID-19 vaccine Verdict: Complete nonesense and disproven misinformation.
Several social media users are sharing a two-minute video featuring an interview with Judy Mikovits in which she alleges that “at least 50 million Americans would die, probably from the first dose” if a COVID-19 vaccine was mandated for the whole population. This claim is unfounded.
Dr Judy Mikovits images are all used in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, commonly known as “fair use law”. This material is distributed without profit with the intent to provide commentary, review, education, and increase public health knowledge.
