The next day, Judy and I were on the bus going back to Paris with the other conferees, who had also gone to that restaurant. They asked if anybody had gotten the truffle menu and were surprised when Judy said she had. They asked if it was good.
Judy said it was, but the ice cream tasted like dirt.
Then Judy wondered what the big deal was and pulled out the receipt. Her eyes nearly popped out of her head when she saw the bill for the meal was $1,500.
We thought there must be some mistake so as soon as we got to Paris we walked all the way to the American Express office and asked them to call the restaurant to inquire if the bill was correct.
We overheard the clerk assure the restaurant we loved the meal and just wanted to make sure we’d given the wait staff the appropriate tip. We almost choked.
To this day when someone asks if a restaurant is expensive, we reply, “Just a truffle.”
At his sixtieth birthday party in 2002, Kendall graciously proclaimed I taught him how to do science. But the good feelings were not to last.
In 2007, Jo Oppenheim was asked to write an article in the Journal of Immunology’s “Pillars of Immunology” section, celebrating the discovery of IL-2.13 He did not ask me to coauthor or review it prior to publication. It minimized Kendall’s important role in IL-2. A few days after its publication, I received an email from Kendall, saying, “Et tu, Brute?” He thought I’d stolen credit from him.
Kendall and I have never spoken since that email. Is the amount of credit received for scientific discoveries more important than friendships? Gallo called me many times over the years complaining about Kendall demeaning our contributions and claiming too much credit for himself.
***
Several times, Gallo’s subordinates invited me to give a lecture in Gallo’s new virology institute at the University of Maryland to give a lecture. When I was finally asked about my constant refusals, I responded, “I only want to piss on his grave. But ever since I was in the service I’ve never wanted to wait in long lines, again.”
I did not receive any further invitations.
Much later I heard that the Nobel Prize committee would have considered Gallo if Bernie Poiesz and I had made peace with him. We never knew if this was true, but if so, it is poetic justice.
When Gallo did not get the Nobel Prize, most of my friends were surprised that I had mixed feelings about the decision. It would have been a de facto recognition of the work Bernie and I had done in his lab.
But Gallo’s lack of character spoiled it all for us.
***
My greatest pleasure in the early part of the twenty-first century was teaching, practicing, and watching our son, a left-handed pitcher/outfielder, play traveling league baseball.
One of my top thrills was watching him pitch at Saint Mary’s Home for Wayward Boys, where Babe Ruth had pitched as a young man. World Series tournaments in Tennessee and Mississippi in the summer were miserably hot, but we remember them fondly. Our son graduated from high school in 2004, and from the University of Virginia in 2008, which had one of the few surviving student-run honor systems in the country. I’d hoped he would play baseball in college, and possibly in the pros, but he preferred the family business of science.
In 2007, I was elected to the Senior Biomedical Research Service, for which I had been nominated and denied since 1994. (Sandy had been elected in 1996.) Although the position was an honor with a higher salary, it had a downside. One had to give up their civil service retirement protection to accept the honor, which would later become an issue for us both.
In 2009, I was the first coauthor and Sandy was also a coauthor of the paper in Science, showing isolation of XMRV, a mouse retrovirus, from the blood of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).14 We did not use the word “cause” in the paper, as the isolation of a virus from a disease population does not usually involve showing causation. (The first paper on HTLV-1 and HIV did NOT prove causation.) Yet everything else about the XMRV discovery was ignored, and Judy was accused of saying it caused chronic fatigue syndrome, which she did not. Since Judy and Kent’s first book details these events, I will provide my own recollection of events which followed the publication of that paper.
First, the Department of Health and Human Services called Judy and I the day after the paper was published in 2009 to say its first priority was to determine if the blood supply was contaminated. I suspected this was a knee jerk reaction by the government to their failure to act quickly on this question during the HIV/AIDS epidemic. But, of course, we both enthusiastically agreed to participate, happy the government was apparently going to do the right thing.
Second, John Coffin gathered a group of intramural investigators to develop diagnostic tests, many reagents, and possible therapies, to the tune of about a hundred thousand dollars, so that the NIH and Coffin could be the leaders in studies of this new human retrovirus’ role in human disease.
Third, the following year, 2010, Harvey Alter (now a Nobel Prize laureate) and his long-time collaborator, Shyh-Ching Lo, published a confirmatory study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, whose findings showed an even higher association of XMRV-related sequences with chronic fatigue syndrome patients.15 That paper, as Alter said, not only confirmed our study but detected variants; that is, there were other gammaretroviral sequences in the blood of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome and heathy blood donors.
However, Harold Varmus, at the time the head of the NCI, quickly said that it was not a confirmation because it was not the same strain or sequences. The confirmatory studies for HIV and HTLV-1 did not require the exact same strain of the virus! Varmus quickly said in the press that the Lo/Alter study only confirmed the presence of murine viral sequences in human blood samples, not the presence of infectious and transmissible viruses, and thus our work had not been confirmed.
Next, several “peer-reviewed” studies, one in as little as three days after our paper was published, were rapidly published saying there was no evidence of any murine viral sequences. John Coffin quickly declared all the positive sequences were lab contaminants. In fact, rumors were leaking from his Frederick lab that this was the case before having the courtesy of telling me, as I was a collaborator in his XMRV group and on these publications. As usual, gossiping about credit at NIH brings out the worst in collaborators. Next, several more studies after the Lo/Alter paper was published concluded there was no evidence of mouse viral sequences.
Judy and Harvey Alter, as well as their collaborators on these publications, have steadfastly maintained to this day the absence of contamination in any of their laboratories. Let me give you my perspective so there can be no mistake: there was NEVER any evidence of contamination in the Mikovits or Alter laboratories.
However, the increase in the number of papers publishing negative results caused the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to change the study design of the blood working group to assess the risk of blood safety of not only XMRV but all MLV variant sequences.
Dr. Michael Busch, director of the Blood Systems Research Institute, was supervisor of the study and senior author on the September 22, 2011 Science paper about the blood supply. In phase 1a, a small pilot study panel to test the specificity and sensitivity of the PCR tests of each lab, the Coffin Lab’s PCR test reported all samples as negative. Judy’s PCR test confirmed the results in the Science paper, detecting all four patient samples as positive and the four controls as negative. The CDC’s PCR test also got positive results in all four patients, but not in controls.16 Phase 1a used fresh plasma, processed from blood, two and four days after being drawn, from ME/CFS patients. These were the same patients in whom XMRV viral protein sequences, and in two cases viral isolates, had been shown in our 2009 Science paper.
As you might imagine, Coffin said that Judy’s lab and the CDC PCR tests had sensitivity issues. Coffin felt that these PCR results were false positives. Coffin did not consider that his lab’s PCR test had sensitivity i
ssues. This is, it could not detect low levels of XMRV expression.
That is what Judy meant when she wrote in an email (included in this book), that the negative cutoff on Coffin’s test was so high it would not find a willing Roman in a whorehouse. Coffin “fixed’ the PCR primer issues and the positivity reported by the CDC disappeared. The CDC never explained. The Abbott serology test, which had previously reported a few positives, was now reporting all samples as negative.
Judy objected to the Science paper senior-authored by Dr. Michael Busch, its conclusions and title, because the study was not statistically powered to be valid as a confirmatory study of the virus in CFS samples. Since the goal was to ascertain the safety of the blood supply, both Judy and I agreed we would not coauthor the paper unless the title and the conclusions were changed.
Judy called me very concerned because Simone Glynn and Michael Busch had called her on the phone. She said Harold Varmus was also on the line and said that if Judy and I did not coauthor the paper, Sandy and I would lose our retirement, as Varmus would claim the 2009 Science paper was fraud.
A decade later, I am still sorry I did not call Simone Glynn’s bluff.
But since we did not have the civil service protections because of our membership in the Senior Biomedical Research Service, losing our retirement for more than seventy-five years of service, was a scary but unlikely possibility.
I was additionally sorry because Judy had given a talk at the New York Academy of Sciences on March 29, 2011 saying that the INTERCEPT system developed by Cerus worked on any XMRVs in the blood supply. Judy had spiked 148 platelet samples with the infectious molecular clone of XMRV (VP-62), and after treatment with the INTERCEPT system, all showed no detectable infectious virus. So, Judy had already shown that blood supply could be safely decontaminated and protected. Naturally, Cerus is still using this system.
So, they could have told the truth. They had the technology to decontaminate the blood supply and prevent future contamination of the blood supply. Why was it necessary to instead destroy Judy’s career and reputation?
***
In June 2011, at a retrovirus meeting in Leuven, Belgium, Bob Silverman, whose lab did most of the PCR for the Science paper, told me that he and his collaborator, Joy Das Gupta, were sorry but found all the positive samples were positive for the VP-62 plasmid he had created, and none of the healthy negative controls in Figure 1 were positive. That’s highly improbable, if not statistically impossible if the samples were handled the same.
Silverman said he was going to write a retraction in Science. When we received the letter that he was going to send to Science, the implications were that it was not his lab’s fault.
My head nearly exploded because it meant to me that the way they did the experiments, all PCR sequences were excluded except VP-62—the molecular clone of XMRV—thereby missing all other possible strains or variants, which probably suggests that Mikovits and Alter labs were right in finding variant sequences and that the Silverman lab may have treated patients and normal samples differently, which never should be done.
This is a lesson for all scientists.
Be careful with whom you collaborate. Make sure that they are men and women of integrity who honor a scholar’s obligation to show all the data and communicate it regardless of the cost.
Judy’s treatment after the publication of the 2009 paper finding XMRV was unbelievably cruel.
First, the endless greed of the Whittemores to capitalize on the discovery made relations difficult for her within the scientific community. I was required to attend NIH meetings with the Whittemores where they tried to get money without peer review from the NCI and NIAID, and, with US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, to get money through Congress to bypass the NIH. It’s my opinion they started to sell an unproven PCR test for XMRV in patients though a spin-off company, VIPDx, using NIH grant money to fund it, as Judy and I discussed at the time.
Judy pleaded with them not to sell the test until the science was resolved.
I personally witnessed Harvey Whittemore grab Judy by the neck and threaten her during discussions. Judy and Kent detailed these incidents in their first book, Plague.
In September 2011, Judy was fired from the Whittemore-Peterson Institute (WPI). In my opinion, this was so the Whittemores could keep all their ill-gotten revenues from their unvalidated PCR test for XMRV, company collaborations, and NIH grants with Judy as principal investigator. Therefore, it was necessary to scapegoat Judy.
It was obvious to me that Judy had been “home-towned” from the beginning of the civil and criminal cases by the Reno criminal justice system, because of the controlling influence of the Whittemores.
The savage bail hold placed on Judy as a flight risk when she was living in her own home was an abuse of power and resulted in her being confined to jail for five days.
The bail bondsman who eventually provided her bail said a convicted drug dealer would have gotten out quicker than Judy.
Not only was she prevented from preparing a defense for herself, but she was ordered to surrender herself in Reno for rebooking.
Nothing about the treatment of Judy convinces me that justice exists in America for figures at odds with the power structure.
I first talked to Ian Lipkin after Anthony Fauci announced that the government was going to sponsor an XMRV replication trial, directed by Lipkin, applauded in the media as the “world’s best virus hunter.” I must admit that I’d never heard of Lipkin and there was little in his curriculum vitae which justified the media praise.
All Lipkin has ever done, in my opinion, is to misconstrue the truth, make promises he never intends to keep, and then complain about not having enough research funds.
While Judy was in jail, Harvey Whittemore told Ian and me that Judy would not get out of jail until she signed an apology that admitted that she was guilty of fraud in the XMRV CFS studies and returned the notebooks. Then she was out of jail and the notebooks returned. Those notebooks, though she would have legally had copies, were not in her possession the day she was jailed, November 18, 2011.
But now the NIH wanted to finish the demolition that the Whittemores started. On November 15, 2011 (three days before Judy was jailed), it was decided that Judy could participate in the Lipkin study in my laboratory in Frederick.
On November 30, it was decided that she could not come to my lab in Frederick to do the experiments but could work as a consultant from a distance. Virus isolation by phone? Judy was good, but not that good.
On December 2, 2011, the two-pronged attack delivered two crushing crescendos. In Reno, Judy had to be present in the viewing of the returned lab notebooks to detail where she went, as well as the time, place, and chronological order of each notebook. Still, the eternally corrupt Whittemores thought there had to be more to steal. They needed to have all of Judy’s information to claim as their own to be forgiven their crimes and keep the NIAID grants, which they receive to this day. (As do several other University of Nevada Reno professors who participated in the destruction of Judy’s career.)
At the same time, Judy and I received an email from Lipkin’s program assistant concerning arrangements to attend a December meeting to discuss the Lipkin study. The email read in part:
Dear Judy:
In order to protect the study’s integrity, we are unable to support an itinerary that includes a stop in DC. I am happy to book you a direct flight from LAX to NYC. If you will be stopping in Washington DC, unfortunately we will be unable to host you at Columbia.
Allison M. Kanas
Project Manager
Center for Infection and Immunity
Mailman School of Public Health
Columbia University17
Holy crap! How does stopping in Frederick, Maryland to visit her mother affect the integrity of any study? At the planning meeting in Lipkin’s office, Lipkin received calls from John Coffin and Harold Varmus.
Clearly, Lipkin was only the puppet master in this study who
would get his financial reward in the end.
Neither Judy nor I thought Lipkin was the originator of the insulting gag order. Shortly thereafter, Judy received another email, this one from a member of Anthony Faucis’s staff, which read, as I recall, something to the effect that if she entered the Frederick Cancer Research Facility at Fort Detrick, she would be escorted off the grounds by NIH security.
Years later, on her mother’s eightieth birthday in 2016, Judy went to Fort Detrick to check on her retirement status. She was still listed as a “fugitive from justice” who would be arrested if she set foot on the federal property for any reason. In my opinion, this could only have been orchestrated from the very top, by people like Harold Varmus, Anthony Fauci, and Francis Collins.
I’m sure these three will deny doing anything so odious but does anybody believe this would be done without the full knowledge of the head of the NCI, NIAID, and the NIH?
I had already gotten an email from Harold Varmus in September of 2010, shortly after the publication of the Alter/Lo confirmation of our work. The email read in full:
Frank:
As you have probably heard, Francis Collins, Tony Fauci, and I and a few others met recently to discuss plans for NIH’s coordinated activities in response to concerns about the confusion surrounding XMRV, polytropic MLV, and CFS (and also prostate cancer.) Ian Lipkin is designing a study to help with this, but the group in Bethesda is pulling together some confidential reports of work in progress at the NIH, as well as published work, to help guide our thinking.
We would appreciate receiving from you sometime this week a short summary of your unpublished findings that bear on this matter and your short-term plans for addressing the controversial issues. That report will not be circulated beyond the small group that will continue to meet with Francis and will be treated with the confidentiality it deserves. Thanks for your help and let me know if you have any questions.
Best, Harold.18
Ending Plague Page 14