Judy Mikovits

Judy Anne Mikovits is an American researcher. She was involved in controversies regarding her research in the area of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).

Mikovits was the research director of the Whittemore Peterson Institute (WPI), a chronic fatigue syndrome research organization and clinic in Reno, Nevada in the United States from 2006 to 2011. Mikovits led a research effort that reported in 2009 that a retrovirus known as xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) was associated with CFS and may have had a causal role, however the research came under fire, leading to an eventual retraction on December 22, 2011 by the journal Science.

In October 2011, Mikovits was terminated by WPI for refusing to turn over her work to another scientist^[1] and subsequently came under investigation for alleged manipulation of data in her publications related to XMRV.^[2] On November 18, 2011, Judy Mikovits was arrested in her Ventura County, California home. Her lawyer said she was arrested on charges of theft brought by the WPI, but that the charges had no merit.^[3] By November 28, after negotiations with the WPI, 18 missing notebooks were returned.^[4] Later, the criminal charges against her were dismissed by the Reno, NV District Attorney's office.

Background

Mikovits worked for Francis "Frank" Ruscetti at the National Cancer Institute in Maryland during the 1980s. She then completed a joint PhD program in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology with Ruscetti and remained in his lab as a postdoctoral researcher. Her work with Ruscetti included studies of several retroviruses and their interactions with the immune system.^[5]

XMRV and CFS

The Whittemores hired Mikovits as research director of WPI in 2006.^[6] Frustrated by a lack of answers for the illness, Whittemore decided that, "if there was a place of our own where we could find the answers, we could do it more quickly."^[7] Her attempts to find a viral cause of CFS were initially unsuccessful. In 2007, she met a co-discoverer of XMRV, Robert Silverman, at a conference. Silverman had found XMRV sequences, which are highly similar to mouse genomic sequences, in prostate cancer specimens several years earlier. Using tools obtained from Silverman, Mikovits began to look for XMRV in her CFS samples. In late 2008, a postdoctoral researcher obtained two positive results from a group of twenty samples. He and Mikovits successively altered the experimental conditions until all samples gave a positive signal.^[8]

In 2009, Mikovits and co-workers reported in the journal Science that they had detected XMRV DNA in CFS patients and control subjects.^[8][9] Negative results were published soon after, disputing Mikovits's findings.^[8][10] Robert Silverman, who was a co-author of the original XMRV-CFS article, told the Chicago Tribune that he was "concerned about lab contamination, despite our best efforts to avoid it".^[11] The paper was ultimately retracted.

Two of the original authors of this paper subsequently reanalyzed the samples used in the research and found that the samples were contaminated with XMRV plasmid DNA, leading them to publish a partial retraction of their original results,^[12] and on December 22, 2011, the editors of Science retracted the paper in its entirety.^[13]

Lo and Alter in their 2010 paper entitled Detection of MLV-related virus gene sequences in blood of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome and healthy blood donors stated "Although we find evidence of a broader group of MLV-related viruses, rather than just XMRV, in patients with CFS and healthy blood donors, our results clearly support the central argument by Lombardi et al. that MLV-related viruses are associated with CFS and are present in some blood donors." This paper was later retracted by the authors.^[14]

Mikovits and collaborators went on to participate (alongside two other research groups) in a larger 2012 study over 147 CFS patients and 146 controls. The study concluded that there was no evidence of XMRV or MLV infection in either group, a result she is quoted as calling "the definitive answer" on the issue.^[15][16]

Criticism

Mikovits has garnered criticism from some scientists for stating that XMRV is a communicable infection which is "clearly circulating through the population as is our fear and your fear". Virologist Vincent Racaniello responded to that, saying that it "is just inciting fear."^[11][17] Mikovits showed slides at a conference which linked XMRV to Parkinson's disease, autism and multiple sclerosis. However, there is no published evidence that XMRV is associated with these diseases.^{[18][19][20][21]}

Mikovits was arrested on November 18, 2011, based on allegations by the WPI that she had removed notebooks and other proprietary information from WPI. She was held temporarily pursuant to that case.^[3] Subsequently, criminal charges brought against Mikovits by Washoe County, NV were dismissed by the District Attorney and Assistant District Attorney in Reno, NV.^{[22][23][24][25]}

Published Book

In 2014, Mikovits co-authored, "Plague: One Scientist’s Intrepid Search for the Truth about Human Retroviruses and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome".^[26]

References