After watching the twenty-six minute “Plandemic” video, Michael said, “It resonated with me. It was sort of outrageous. But when I saw the media walking in lockstep to discredit it, and the social media companies working in lockstep to ban it, I immediately said, ‘Okay, the establishment is terrified of this.’ And whenever you see that you have to say to yourself, well, maybe there’s something to this.”5
He got a copy of our book, Plague of Corruption, and read it. He found the foreword by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be very compelling, and considered the main story of me and XMRV to be credible.
Whether or not there was a cover-up with XMRV, a cover-up was certainly possible, because of the environment in which Judy was operating, which was unbelievably corrupt. And you can’t really confront Judy’s story, unless you understand that science is not the last guardian of objective knowledge. It’s just as rotten and corrupt as the government, the media, and the intelligence agencies. Peer review is a disaster. My first start-up, a few years ago, was addressing the problems with peer review. So, this was something with which I was very familiar and a story I always wanted to tell.6
Michael and his team signed the deal with Skyhorse to make a documentary of Plague of Corruption. To answer the question of whether I was telling the truth, they hired one of the top investigative companies in the country, who often perform deep forensics for government agencies, celebrities, large companies, and billionaires. It was rumored that many of their senior members had worked for the National Security Agency (NSA). They scrutinized me, the claims made in our book, and the “Plandemic” video to determine if there was anything questionable.
Nothing came up.
But of course, Michael and his team wanted to be thorough, and what investigation isn’t complete without a lie detector test, right? Michael gave me a call one day when I was in Carlsbad, CA and said, “Hey, Judy, can we give you a lie detector test in LA in about two hours?”
On a good day to drive from Carlsbad to LA in two hours was tough. But on a Friday afternoon? I whined a bit about traffic, but hey I’d only seen lie detector tests on TV, so I thought it sounded like fun. It didn’t sound like fun to David but I promised him lunch at one of his favorite restaurants, Kristi’s in Malibu, and he was game.
Michael told me he expected me to pass and was surprised when I accepted. As he later explained, “It was very last minute. And she said, ‘Sure, I’ll do it.’ Absolutely no hesitation. We gave Judy a very rigorous lie detector test. It was four redundant lie detector tests in one. And she passed with flying colors. It really ruled out her being deceptive.”7
However, trying to put together a well-balanced film, letting our side make our best case and the other side as well, didn’t sit well with some people.
Maybe they were more used to our side not being able to speak.
Michael said:
We really tried to present the opposing view as strongly as we could. We’ve had some complaints from people involved in the production and distribution that the film is one-sided. And I said, ‘Maybe it’s because Judy, Frank, Robert Kennedy, Jr., and Kent are winning the argument. And that’s making you uncomfortable.’ Now, I didn’t say they were winning the argument. But that’s the conclusion a lot of people have drawn, and it makes them very uncomfortable. As the filmmakers, we’re going to be neutral on Judy and Kent’s story. You make up your own mind. But there was a lot of fishy stuff going on. And we know these pharmaceutical companies, and these regulators, they’re criminal enterprises. So, it wouldn’t surprise us if Judy and Kent were correct.8
The willingness to take on some very sacred cows led to some humorous moments in the shoot. The production had hired a music composer who was comfortable with the attack on Big Pharma in general but bristled when the film veered into criticism of Dr. Anthony Fauci. The composer said, “Fauci is worshipped like a god. Brad Pitt plays him on Saturday Night Live. You can’t do that. This is a right-wing film.”9
But an artist searches for truth, and this was no less the case for Michael. As he told Kent, “If through our investigations we had uncovered that she was full of shit, we would have buried her.”10
Prior to interviewing John Coffin and Ian Lipkin, Michael showed his list of questions to Kent and asked if there were additional ones he should ask.
For each list, Kent added an additional eight to ten questions. After a decade of working with me, he knew where the scientific bodies had been buried by the establishment.
First up in the witness chair was John Coffin. A good interviewer makes his subject comfortable and Michael did an excellent job with his first few softball questions. As the interview continued and Kent’s questions started being asked, Coffin said, “You guys have really done your homework on me.”
As Michael described it, “He started being comfortable with us and really letting the mask slip and saying she had a terrible reputation. At the beginning of the interview, I asked if he was the peer reviewer on her Science paper. He said he shouldn’t answer that, so he wouldn’t. Later in the interview he said ‘When I reviewed that paper, I didn’t know Judy’s reputation and she had a terrible reputation. She is known as the worst person to work with.’”11 He went even further later, saying I threatened to take a gun and shoot one of my critics.
When Coffin believed the filmmakers were on his side, that’s when Michael said he “really started letting the mask slip.”12 In the beginning of the interview, Michael had questioned Coffin about his statement comparing me to Joan of Arc, when he claimed scientists would “burn her at the stake.” He claimed not to remember making the comment, even though it was reported in Science magazine.
But when he believed Michael was on his side, a different, far nastier person appeared.
After the interview with Coffin, Michael called Kent to talk about whether that footage should be used. Kent told Michael, “The argument we’ve been making is that these scientists present one face to the public, but another in private. You now have evidence of that to show the world. I know it makes you uncomfortable, and you may get criticized for it. But people need to see this with their own eyes. The public’s right to know about these people outweighs the embarrassment it might cause them.”
***
By contrast, Ian Lipkin was much smoother than John Coffin.
Lipkin started off warm and friendly, and when my name came up said it was wrong I didn’t have my notebooks but didn’t know what he could do about it. He seemed to get a little worked up as Michael moved into Kent’s questions, specifically on the question of whether XMRV would only intermittently be in the blood of the sickest patients, thus necessitating multiple blood draws over several months. “We didn’t test for that,” he grudgingly admitted.
I wasn’t necessarily surprised by Lipkin’s honest answer, as he often seems to shade the truth and confuse, rather than outright lie. As Michael’s questions continued in difficulty, though, Lipkin became agitated. “Where are these questions coming from?” he asked at one point, then at another, “All these questions were answered years ago. We don’t need to go over them again.”
Michael did get Lipkin to admit on camera that the edict demanding that I not set foot on any NIH property under threat of arrest during the XMRV investigation came directly from Dr. Anthony Fauci. (We had emails from Lipkin detailing this arrangement.)
Michael also asked Lipkin about the Montoya samples he tested, in which he said on a CDC conference call on September 10, 2013:
We found retroviruses in 85 percent of the sample pools. Again, it is very difficult at this point to know whether or not this is clinically significant. And given the previous experience with retroviruses in chronic fatigue, I am going to be very clear in telling you, although I am reporting this as present in Professor Montoya’s samples, neither he nor we have concluded that there is a relationship to disease.13
Lipkin claimed he didn’t remember saying such a thing on a CDC conference call.
And although Lipki
n had told Michael he had all the time in the world, after a few more questions, he cut the interview short, saying, “I have a class I have to go teach.”
The world’s most celebrated virus hunter was driven off camera by the questions of my coauthor, an attorney and middle school science teacher.
***
As Michael eventually concluded, “What matters are her scientific claims. What’s interesting is the science.”
As Michael put it, “The question is whether our mechanism for the discovery of knowledge gets inherently hijacked by ideologues and corruption. And I think it does. Again, we’re presenting the whole film as a conversation that’s bigger than Judy. It’s bigger than XMRV. XMRV is the jumping off point for us to look at this broken system.”
Just as interesting as who would go on camera is those who would not. Michael emailed Annette Whittemore and received the following response:
From: Annette Whittemore
Date: September 25, 2020 at 12:07:15 PM PDT
To: Michael Binda
Subject: Re: CFS interview request
Hi Michael,
I’m happy to hear that you are doing a documentary about ME/CFS. The world needs to know what many scientists have learned over the years about the seriousness of this disease. The public needs to understand how much the patients are still suffering from the lack of effective medical intervention. The Institute continues to serve this patient population, through its support of medical care, patient education, and outreach, in addition to its advocacy efforts to increase funding for research and clinical care. We are aided in these efforts by experts such as WPI Medical Director, Dr. Kenny DeMeirleir, and Associate Professor of Research at the University of Nevada, Reno, Dr. Vincent Lombardi, and by working together with many other nationally-recognized ME/CFS organizations.
The Institute has no comment on XMRV. However, you might be interested in interviewing Dr. Nath of the NIH on his efforts to discover the relationship between endogenous retroviral activation and chronic disease. He has advanced the study of this area of science in MS and ALS and is the lead NIH researcher in ME/CFS. His research focuses on understanding the pathophysiology of retroviral infections of the nervous system and the development of new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for these diseases. Avi Nath, NINDS clinical director, is also developing a clinical protocol to study postinfectious myalgic encephalomyelopathy–chronic fatigue syndrome (ME-CFS).
(Look up endogenous retroviruses and you will understand why this would be a good place to look for evidence of disease.)
Good luck with your documentary!
Best Regards,
Annette Whittemore
How interesting that NIAID continues to fund the Institute and investigators who committed federal crimes of misappropriation of federal funds and admitted retroviruses play a role in ME/CFS, MS, and ALS, yet the meager funding for the disease comes not from the NIAID but from the National Institute of Neurodevelopmental Disease and Stroke (NINDS). They are not neurodevelopmental diseases if you inject the retroviruses from animals and aborted fetuses in contaminated vaccines!
Although it took Michael a long time to convince Frank to appear in the film (and though Frank agreed only to appear in shadows, his thick Boston Italian accent gives him away immediately and he also says his name repeatedly), it solidified in Michael’s mind the two competing narratives about me.
There was “Saint Judy,” who was right about everything, and “Crazy Judy,” who was wrong about everything. And with Frank, he realized there’s a nuance about me, just as there is with every human being. For example, regarding XMRV I said we absolutely discovered a new virus, and they covered it up. When Michael questioned Frank, his response was, “We may have discovered a new virus, but the replication studies were rigged to fail, so we don’t know for sure.”
As Michael said, “I asked her on camera, you say it this way, and Frank says it that way. Is he being too cautious, or are you not being cautious enough? She said without hesitation, ‘Frank’s right. I’m not being cautious enough.’”14
That’s right. Perhaps I wasn’t being cautious enough. But when even Frank says the replication studies were “rigged to fail,” doesn’t it mean they’re terrified we were right? And if they were “rigged to fail,” didn’t that mean there was something they wanted to cover up?
Frank has long told people I’m the most “intuitive” scientist he’s known. I take that as a compliment, and after I have my insight, I know the evidence needs to be assembled. I’m like the architect who sees the bridge before it’s built, and Frank is the engineer who gets the job done. So, maybe I’ll be a little more cautious in my words, for the benefit of those who don’t yet see the bridge. But I still think I’m right. The data still support my interpretations and by the way my enemies act, it seems like they do as well.
In Michael’s opinion, “At the end of the day, I find Judy and Frank’s interpretation of what happened around XMRV to be persuasive. And what the film ends with is: we need an honest replication study. Because there’s enough smoke here, that, well, maybe there’s a fire.”15
Spoken cautiously, like a true scientist.
But for this scientist, when I see the millions of people struggling with chronic conditions, it seems like there’s a raging inferno out there.
CHAPTER FIVE
2008 Nobel Prize Winner Luc Montagnier—From World War II to COVID-19
Nothing in life is to be feared.
It is only to be understood.
—Marie Curie
In 1940, war came to France, and seven-year-old Luc Montagnier, along with his mother and father, fled the advancing German army, along with many others during this French exodus. Their home had been near a railway station and they thought it safer to run, but this led them to be more exposed to the German bombing. They would have been safer at home. The war years were terrible, with no food reserves, and Luc’s family often found themselves starving.
In 1944, French Resistance fighters had alerted the Allies of a German fuel train near the Montagnier home. During the successful Allied bombing of this enemy fuel train, Luc’s home was destroyed. In addition, soldiers of the retreating German army came to the farm where Luc’s family had taken refuge, stealing his parents’ two bicycles, as they tried to pedal furiously back to Germany.
The end of the war brought mixed feelings to young Luc.
Peace brought with it the liberation of the concentration camps and the emaciated survivors, survivors of a horror he could not even begin to imagine, many of whom were returning to France. During his primary school years, the young Luc was pushed ahead two grades because he was so advanced. Luc retains a vivid memory of being close to his thirteenth birthday when he heard the news of the atomic bomb being dropped on the city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, ushering in the nuclear age in a fireball that immediately killed over a hundred thousand people.
Prior to that time Luc had tried to lose himself in reading, devouring the works of Balzac and Voltaire, as well as the science fiction novels of Jules Verne with their tales of adventures in the stars. His father, an accountant, was also a voracious reader, preferring to spend his free time reading popular science books on topics ranging from physics to organic chemistry. But Luc realized his beloved science, instead of enlightening humanity, could also be used to usher in a dark age of terror under the threat of nuclear annihilation.
After the bombing of their house, the town government put the family into a modern, empty house which had been used by the local Gestapo during the war. In the cellar, Luc set up a small chemistry lab, producing hydrogen gas, sweet-smelling aldehydes, and nitro compounds. The proud parents of the young scientist were understandably concerned about the possibility of explosions. More than once, Luc proved the concern of his parents to have been a reasonable one.
Luc’s parents wanted him to study literature as a prelude to becoming a lawyer, but he was interested in science. He’d considered becoming a physi
cist, but chose biology, which was called “natural sciences” in France at the time. However, his parents were pleased when he enrolled in a preparatory program in “Medicine” at the University of Poitiers, imagining he would someday become a doctor. The young Montagnier pursued a two-track strategy, taking medical courses, but also science classes, so that he might become a researcher. He found the science offerings of the Sorbonne to be disappointing, but frequenting the library of the famed Pasteur Institute challenged him to advance his scientific thinking.
At the age of twenty-three, Montagnier became an assistant in Cellular Biology at the Curie Institute, a laboratory specializing in cancer research. Fortunately, the Curie Institute had close ties with the Pasteur Institute. His interests shifted radically during this time, from plant biology and animal cells to viruses. Especially compelling to the young student was foot and mouth disease virus, an RNA virus.
In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick (along with an uncredited Rosalind Franklin) discovered the double-helix, the so-called twisting ladder of DNA which carries the four nucleic bases, adenine, cytosine, thymine, and guanine. In 1957, the outlines of modern genetics were starting to become clear. Genetic information could be carried by either DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) or RNA (ribonucleic acid.) DNA was used to carry genetic information for cells, while RNA was used only by certain viruses.
Around 1958, Montagnier spent several months developing an original technique for allowing RNA to enter the cells to determine if this RNA was enough to allow the virus to replicate. Exciting research during these years showed that certain viruses could replicate using only RNA, prompting many to wonder whether RNA might have a similar double-helix shape to DNA, or be using a completely different configuration.
In 1960, the future Nobel Laureate was already becoming acquainted with petty scientific power struggles. Montagnier’s medical school thesis, “Infectious RNA of Bovine Foot and Mouth Diseases,” was at first refused by his thesis adviser, Professor Fasquelle, a small-minded man. Soon thereafter, a more intelligent and open-minded professor recognized the importance of the work and willingly endorsed the thesis. But throughout his career, Montagnier found there were many small-minded people who tried to stymie scientific progress in various ways.
Ending Plague Page 26