If you’re not sure how our Quack Scale works, click here for a detailed explanation. This individual also appears on our Rotten Retailers List

Qualification: None

Current Licensing Status: NOT APPLICABLE

Resident: Germany, previously Mexico, Puerta Vallarta, after fleeing US authorities.

Existing Complaints: Too many to list, including FDA warnings. Here is the latest issued in September 202

Website: Keto Kerri

If you have a child or loved one who suffers from Autism, this is a name you may be familiar with. Rivera’s been in the spotlight for years now, peddling bleach under the guise of MMS and other dangerous products as a cure to autism. She is an author and uses encouraging lies about her son’s apparently miraculous recovery from autism to sell her poisons online and in Facebook support groups to desperate parents.

Rivera is a con artist that belongs in prison and will, with any amount of good fortune, find her way there in the not too distant future. She has no medical experience or training which begs the question, why do people trust her with their children’s lives?

She cleverly mixes the Keto diet with self-produced liquids, pills, lotions, and technology to baffle her customers with bullshit and she is a past master at the art of deception. Rivera taps into the parental social media support groups of seriously ill children and those suffering from autism. She then takes advantage of these extremely vulnerable individuals by selling them her brand of hope. Hope which it turns out is based on dangerous lies and is completely unsupported by science. Hope which costs people their lives.

The list of articles below are merely the tip of the iceberg. Articles that completely discredit her and the poison she markets are to numerous to list in full below and this is one instance where the value of negative press really counts. Share this article wherever you can to raise awareness. Discrediting Kelly Rivera isn’t difficult. The challenge lies in getting the message out everywhere so more vulnerable people are not sold false hope and potential death.

Her book, “Healing the Symptoms Known as Autism” is simply an expanded marketing tool for the poison she peddles online. There is absolutely no substance to any of her fanciful claims. She has now moved her evil sales practices to other social media platforms such as Telegram as Youtube, Facebbok and Twitter have been forced by public outcry to remove her accounts.

Supporting Articles

Publication – The Guardian: Author Dr Frances Ryan, Wed 13 Jul 2016, The Fake Cures for Autism than can prove Deadly. Verdict: Rivera is one of the driving forces behind selling fake autism cures.

It is highly dangerous to ingest. Taken directly, MMS can cause severe nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea, damage to the gut and red blood cells, respiratory problems, and can be fatal. “MMS can cause serious damage to health and in some cases even death,” says a spokeswoman for the Food Standards Agency (FSA). “Anyone who has bought these products is advised to throw them away.”

Publication – Fiona O’Leary: By Author Fiona O’Leary, August, 2019 ! BLEACH Quack Still Experimenting On Autistic Children Via Telegram Platform Verdict: A graphic and deeply disturbing article on Rivera’s selling practices and how she abuses the children she claims to treat.

Rivera is NOT a doctor but an evil charlatan torturing Autistic children and adults for profit. Rivera denies selling MMS but we have evidence of her being involved with an MMS company called WPS. She also sells unregulated and unproven quack treatments to parents of Autistic children from her home in Bremerhaven in Germany. Rivera moved to Germany after separating from her husband in Mexico a few years ago, read more here. She is now married to Alper Bilgic an eye doctor in Bremerhaven, see them below.

Publication – Business Insider: Author Tom Porter on Apr 23, 2020. Advocates of a toxic bleach fake ‘miracle cure’ are telling desperate people it can cure the coronavirus in thriving groups on Telegram Verdict: Supporting confirmation of Rivera’s deceptive sales techniques and how she offers bleach or MMS as a an effective treatment for Covid-19. It isn’t!

In a video published in that group, Rivera claims a coronavirus infection can be prevented and cured with chlorine dioxide. She says it can be drunk from a bottle, sprayed into the mouth and nose throughout the day, or even loaded into a humidifier device and inhaled via droplets in the air.

But it’s not just COVID-19 that Rivera claims can be cured using bleach. Rivera has for years — and with no supporting scientific evidence — pushed chlorine dioxide bleach as a treatment for autism in children, as well as a range of illnesses.

Some of the most shocking messages in her group are from parents, who share images of the injuries MMS appears to have caused their children, desperately seeking answers about what is happening.

Publication – Vice: Author Anna Merlan on 17 October 2020: ‘Don’t Call 911’: In Private, Fake Autism Experts Gave Dangerous Advice Verdict: A long read on the dangers to children of Rivera’s brainwashing in her closed Telegram groups.

“Firefighter,” the substance M Rob referred to, is one of many supplements marketed by a man named Roby Mitchell, who calls himself Dr. Fitt. Group members make frequent reference to using Dr. Fitt-branded supplements and Rivera recommends some of them as a core part of her “protocol.” That in itself is deeply concerning.  Mitchell was stripped of his medical license in 2005 by the Texas Medical Board for not following a previous probationary order, then ordered again in 2012 to stop holding himself out as a doctor after a bizarre incident where he told a terminal cancer patient she could be “treated” by injecting her blood into the udder of a pregnant cow, then drinking the milk. The patient died before attempting the “treatment,” per the Texas Medical Board, and Mitchell declined to provide a refund to the patient’s family. Mitchell has a long history of making questionable medical claims, particularly around autism: as VICE previously reported, he boasted this spring of using untested ketamine treatments on a six-year-old child to “cure” their autism.

Publication – NBC News: Author Brandy Zadrozny on May 21, 2019: Parents are poisoning their children with bleach to ‘cure’ autism. These moms are trying to stop it. Verdict: An expose on the perpetrators behind the bleach / Autism sales pitch.

But it was Kerri Rivera, a former Chicago real estate agent, who brought chlorine dioxide to the autism community and became its best-known proponent.

The ingredients that make up Rivera’s chlorine dioxide protocol aren’t illegal — sodium chlorite and acid are used together for purposes outside of human consumption like bleaching paper and for wastewater treatments — so regulation of its sale is nearly impossible. But it is illegal under both federal and state consumer protection laws to market or sell chlorine dioxide as a cure for human ailments. After inquiries from the Illinois attorney general’s office in 2015, Rivera agreed not to conduct seminars or sell products in the state.

Kerri Rivera 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.

The post Kerri Rivera on Medika’s Quack Scale appeared first on Medika Life.

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.

The post Dr. Judy Mikovits on Medika’s Quack Scale appeared first on Medika Life.