Book Review of Plague: One scientist's intrepid search for the truth about human retroviruses and CFS, Autism, and other diseases

Unfortunately science is not immune to politics.

Plague is written by Kent Heckenlively and is Dr. Judy Mikovits's tell-all book on how she was railroaded out of scientific research.

It starts talking about her arrest and jumps back and forth between her time in jail and her scientific career that lead up to her getting arrested without a warrant and held in jail for five days. The tale that she tells is centered around her research on finding solid evidence of a mouse retrovirus (XMRV) in human blood in the general public. The problem was that populations of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Cancer, and Autism had significantly higher levels of this virus than the general public.

Going between the two general timelines helps to keep the reader engaged in the book as there is a lot of scientific terminology discussed as the details of the discovery of the virus are unfolded. I have a degree in Biochemistry and Biotechnology so I followed the scientific explanations fairly easily. However, someone without a science background will likely have difficulty understanding all the details explained. All the details provided were to give evidence for and backup Dr. Mikovits's story which is counter to the official narrative which got some of her papers retracted.

First Impressions.

I first came across Dr. Mikovits on a YouTube video a couple of years ago after the gag order that was imposed on her was lifted. I was very impressed with how passionately and intelligently she articulated her points. Here is the talk that I saw.

Professional Career

The resume that Dr. Mikovits has is very impressive. Most of her career was spent working for the National Institute of Health researching viral interactions in cancer. Her PhD focused on HIV and AIDS and she worked on discovering the macrophage's involvement in the disease. She actually was able to predict that Magic Johnson would be able to be successfully treated for HIV when defending her thesis based on her research.

Integrity or Money?

There were two different powerful groups that Dr. Mikovits upset with her research and opinions: the Whittemores and the government.

The Whittemores

The powerful family that started the Whittemore Petterson Institute, which employed Dr. Mikovits while she was doing the controversial research, came after her and were the ones that had her put in jail. The charges were trumped up after Dr. Mikovits commented on a lab test that WPI developed and was trying to commercialize for detecting XMRV in blood as insufficient. The big money that those comments lost the institute likely was the main catalyzer that made the well-connected founders turn against her and bankrupt her.

The Government

The government scientists started turning against Dr. Mikovits immediately after her group mentioned a link of XMRV to Autism and vaccines. The implications of the findings of Dr. Mikovits were that the immune stimulating effects of a vaccine causing an activation of a latent XMRV infection in children. Some of the other implications of the discovery of XMRV to the govenment and medicine include:

• All biological medications were likely contaminated with various retroviruses.
• Vaccines were likely contaminated with retroviruses themselves.
• Many lab workers were likely infected with XMRV as a result of their work since the virus could go into the air.
• The blood supply was contaminated with the virus.

Part of what is mentioned in the above video is that the government is now filtering the blood supply to get rid of the viruses in it. The government, however, didn't want anyone to know that they could have contracted a potentially dangerous retrovirus in the blood supply before starting the filtration process.
As a result there was a study done to purposely discredit Dr. Mikovits which of course wasn't able to replicate her findings. The issue with the study done was that the selection group was purposely made so strict that it wasn't likely to include any of the patients infected with XMRV. One of the exclusion criteria was "any medical or psychiatric illness that might be associated with fatigue." The question you need to ask yourself is how does that make sense when people that have a compromised immune system often have multiple co-infections.

My Takeaway From the Book

Being part of the Naturopathic community and seeing how my own profession is portrayed in the media I tend to believe the scientists who get excommunicated from their professions because of their research findings. Anytime there is a scientist's reputation being ruined it is likely because their research is going to cost some government or large corperation a lot of money. Some scientific controversies that I have looked into include:

• Benveniste Affair
• Serilini Study
• Wakefield's study
• Pusztai Affair
• Tyrone Hayes

The results of the above scientist's research lead to massive propaganda campaigns to cover up their findings. The reason that the researchers don't backdown is because they know the truth and won't compromise their integrity. Dr. Judy Mikovits is one of those researchers, and her dedication to her cause is an inspiring example of what research ethics should be.

The book most definately deserves a read if you have a science background and are interested in government coverups. There is enough happening in it to keep you interested while going through some of the more detailed explinations about what happened and why.

If you don't agree please read her book yourself and lookup the references that she provides to show her proofs.

Picture taken by myself.