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November 28, 2011
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Specially Treated Stem Cells May Be Curative for a Retrovirus Disease
Anthony Fauci of NIAID
From the New York Times, in an article by Andrew Pollack, we read, "...The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which says a cure is one of its top priorities, this year awarded grants that could total $70 million over five years to three research teams in pursuit of that goal. More grants are coming.
California’s stem-cell agency has committed a total of $38 million to three projects intended to find a cure. Companies like Merck, Gilead Sciences, Sangamo BioSciences and Calimmune have begun research."
The excitement and resulting granting activity at NIH seems to be based on the results of two patients, one of whom was suffering from leukemia, and whose AIDS seems to have been cured as a consequence of being treated for leukemia with bone marrow transplants.
According to Pollack, "The donor was among the 1 percent of Northern Europeans naturally resistant to H.I.V. infection because they lack CCR5, a protein on the surface of immune cells that the virus uses as an entry portal."
Tony Fauci is the government health official who directed that "CFS" become the responsibility of the Office of Research on Women's Health at NIH more than a decade ago when his friend and NIAID colleague Stephen Straus left the field.
November 19, 2011
Judy Anne Mikovits was arrested on Friday in Ventura County, where she lives, and transported to the Ventura County Pre-Trial Detention Facility. When I called that facility this evening, I was told that she was being transported from there to the jail facility on Todd Road in Ventura County. Information about this facility can be accessed on the website of the Ventura County Jail website.
According to the clerk I spoke to, Dr. Mikovits was arrested on an "out of county warrant." The county was Washoe County, he confirmed, when I asked. Washoe County includes Reno and Sparks, NV.
Currently, the charges against Dr. Mikovits are "being a fugitive from another state."
Saturday update: She is being held as a felon, has been designated a "fugitive from justice," and a bail option was not available to her. Her booking number is 1259336 (see the Ventura County Jail website for information).
Her arraignment will take place at 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 22 in courtroom number thirteen at the courthouse in Ventura, California. Mikovits was scheduled to fly to New York City on Saturday in order to participate in a medical conference that was held on Sunday at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan.
November 13, 2011
On November 4th, a Friday, attorneys for the Whittemore Peterson Institute filed a lawsuit in Reno, Nevada’s Second Judicial District Court against Judy Mikovits, the former chief of research for that institute, 36 days after firing Dr. Mikovits. The lawsuit is fourteen pages in length, not including three “exhibits.” It is titled, “COMPLAINT FOR BREACH OF CONTRACT, SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE, TRADE SECRET MISAPPROPRIATION, CONVERSION, BREACH OF IMPLIED COVENANT OF GOOD FAITH AND FAIR DEALING AND REPLEVIN.”
At the heart of the WPI’s complaint is what the lawsuit calls “purloined” lab notebooks, flash drives and all other materials containing records of experiments and related intellectual property that the WPI insists belongs to the institution and that WPI alleges Dr. Mikovits took from her lab. The lawsuit contends that Mikovits has denied the WPI “profit” from “trade secrets” that were contained in notebooks, flashdrives, Mikovits’ laptop and even her Gmail account.
The lawsuit describes Mikovits’ alleged “misappropriation” as “willful, wanton, or reckless misappropriation or disregard of the rights of WPI,” and claims the alleged act has subjected the WPI to “unjust hardship,” and says as a result, the WPI is entitled to attorney’s fees and exemplary damages. Exemplary damages are also known as punitive damages. In all, the WPI seeks money from Mikovits in four categories: “Damages in an amount to be proven at trial,” “Exemplary damages,” “Attorneys' fees and costs,” and “Such other relief as the Court deems proper.”
In the lawsuit, the WPI’s four attorneys of record, Dan Bowen and Ann Hall of Reno (of Bowen Hall), and attorneys Stafford Matthews and Pam Fuller, of Palo Alto, Ca., write that the WPI “…seeks to recover key research materials, including critical laboratory notebooks and related confidential and proprietary information on a laptop computer, on flash drives, and in emails, which were wrongfully taken by WPI's former employee, defendant Judy A Mikovits. Defendant Mikovits has no right to this intellectual property that was developed by other researchers and Mikovits while they were employed by WPI, and Mikovits is contractually required to return it to WPI.” (more…)
November 7, 2011
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Copyrighted material, (c) Hillary Johnson, 2009, 2011. Originally pulished June 20, 2009.
On October 10, 1982, just days before my 32nd birthday, I attended the wedding of Steve Ross, who owned Warner Communications and its subsidiary, Atlantic Records. The man I was dating at the time was a well-regarded investigative journalist who seemed to know everyone, from the neo-con policy-makers in the Reagan administration, to entertainers like Carly Simon, as well as every independent writer of note then residing in New York City and a large cast of movers and shakers in the city’s media and business elite. Ross, his friend, was marrying a twenty-seven-year old documentary filmmaker and Texan named Courtney Sale in the ballroom of the Plaza Hotel.
The Plaza’s venerable ballroom had seen several generations of sixteen-year-old WASP debutantes curtsy their way into lives of extraordinary privilege. That night, the hall was filled with elite members of Hollywood’s aging gentry and their moneyed admirers. The guest list, studded by stars of film and music, dazzled even my date. Indeed, when Cary Grant arrived, the most world-weary and famous New Yorkers in the room seemed unable to keep their cool. Conversations slowed and all eyes turned to gaze at the movie legend, his hair a well-cropped thatch of alabaster white, a shade accentuated by his trademark heavy-rimmed black glasses. He was greatly less tall than one might have imagined and wore a spiffy dark suit; his fifth and last wife, Barbara Harris, accompanied him. The room was electrified again minutes later when Frank and Barbara Sinatra, the latter in a glittering ball gown and Sixties-bouffant blonde hair, made their entry.
Subtle glances were exchanged all around. Clearly, the night ahead was to be one of those singular New York evenings when emissaries from the nation’s meritocracy mingled with the city’s aristocracy to the mutual fascination and exhilaration of everyone involved. Bottoms up!
(more…)
August 3, 2011
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COPYRIGHT MATERIAL, PERMISSION TO REPOST NOT GRANTED
Is it just me, or does the British press appear to have lost its collective mind? How many times do these journos need to have Malcolm Hooper and other rational, clear-headed people take pains to explain to them that Simon Wessely—a.k.a. Crybaby—is up to his neck in nasty deeds, fraudulent science and conflicts of interest that rise to the level of obscene? (My language, not Hooper’s.)
One headline, “Torrent of Abuse…” says it all. Poor wee Simon! Except that in truth he has had a free ride for decades on the backs of ailing and dying patients and British taxpayers. Every time Wessely whines, the question of just who is being abused is very much in play. (more…)
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