Who is Judy Mikovits, the woman behind banned ‘Plandemic’ conspiracy video?

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This week, social media networks scrambled to take down the 26-minute “Plandemic Movie,” a viral conspiracy video spreading false claims about the coronavirus.

Among the discredited, bogus and inflammatory claims that were made by the discredited former research scientist Judy Mikovitz and her co-author, famed anti-vaxxer Kent Heckenlively, were that the coronavirus pandemic was created to make profits off vaccines, masks can make people sicker and that sheltering in place harms the immune system.

But who is Mikovitz? The woman at the center of the saga has a long history with conspiracy theories surrounding vaccines and has been accused of scientific misconduct and theft.

Originally from the East Coast, Mikovits got her BS from the University of Virginia, spent 22 years working for the National Cancer Institute and got her Ph.D. in biochemistry from George Washington University. Her thesis, according to Wikipedia was titled, “Negative Regulation of HIV Expression in Monocytes.”

She left the NCI in 2001and – after a brief stint as a bartender in California – in 2006 became the research director of the Whittemore Peterson Institute, which studied chronic fatigue syndrome. In 2009 she Mikovits “co-wrote a research paper that linked the mysterious condition known as chronic fatigue syndrome to a retrovirus that came from mice, thousands of sick patients hoping for relief rallied behind her,” according to the Washington Post.

Unfortunately, her findings could not be replicated – and the journal “Science” retracted her findings after it concluded Mikovits’ findings resulted due to contaminated lab samples.

Mikovits stood by her findings and told the Chicago Tribune: “Some are not trying in completely good faith.” She was fired and shortly thereafter arrested for allegedly stealing notebooks, proprietary data and computers from her former employer. Although she was briefly jailed, the charges were dropped in 2012.

Mikovits then turned to writing books with her co-author Heckenlively, churning out “Plague: One Scientist’s Intrepid Search for the Truth about Human Retroviruses and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), Autism, and Other Diseases” in 2014 and in April of this year, the two released “Plague of Corruption: Restoring Faith in the Promise of Science” – now at number six on Amazon. Two weeks later Mikovits dropped “Plandemic” on social media, in which she suggests there is a vast conspiracy to crush her career and destroy her credibility as a scientist. It also outlines her grudge match against Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, who are leading the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

While her views are extreme and have been discredited by scientists, Mikovits still has her cheerleaders. While “Plandemic” was taken down by Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo and other major social media networks, and widely discredited by mainstream media, Mikovits still appears on the America’s Voice News YouTube channel – which describes itself as “destroying fake news.” In a video that was posted April 30 which now has over 360,000 views, Miskovits is interviewed by Christina Aguayo, who refers to Miskovits as a “brilliant researcher.” Mikovits asserts that vaccines cause cancer and that the COVID-19 vaccine that her nemesis, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has put in the works is “not safe… are not a good idea and they will drive the disease.”