Not coincidentally, Andrew Wakefield is also currently focused on the federal vaccine compensation system. Wakefield was the lead author on a now-retracted study falsely linking vaccines to autism, and is still one of the most revered figures in the anti-vax world. In the last few weeks, he's been busily promoting a new film called 1986: The Act, about the passage of the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which he views as a disastrous mistake.These are heady times, not just for Mikovits and Wakefield, but for the broader anti-vaccine movement. Amid the ongoing devastation of the coronavirus pandemic and the promise of a COVID-19 vaccine—one experts worry could potentially be rushed into production, and thus subject to fear and suspicion and rejection from people who desperately need it—they see an opportunity to discredit the entire vaccine schedule, and the science behind it."Doctors get significant money to bully patients into these vaccines," she claimed, falsely. "All should be liable for these crimes against humanity and the murder of these innocent men and women."
A judge ruled that Mikovits had provided "no basis or logical support" for some of her claims in testimony before the court.
If Mikovits is truly "ghostwriting" anything that's submitted to the vaccine injury court, even after being functionally barred from submitting expert testimony, that could undermine the credibility of a petitioner's case, says Dorit Reiss. She's a law professor at UC Hastings who writes frequently about vaccine policy issues. She points out that Mikovits' claim doesn't really make sense; cases in vaccine court require expert testimony on both sides. "If the court finds out that someone they consider not credible has written testimony for other experts, that would undermine the credibility of other experts. It'll hurt the cases they testified on. Which isn't always fair to the petitioners. The lawyers put together the case and the petitioner may not be aware of these complexities.""We know the lawyers. We'll help you find the attorneys. We ghostwrite these now. We're all working together to get justice for the injured."
Ronald Reagan signed the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Act in 1986—albeit with "serious reservations," he said—and the compensation program it established came into existence about two years later."We went from 18 vaccine makers in 1980 to basically four today. Litigation was a big part of that. The vaccine court stopped the bleeding."
But like many things that are government-run, Offit and Reiss agree, the system is flawed, antiquated and in desperate need of reform."There are things that desperately need to be fixed,” Reiss said. “We need more special masters. We need a longer statute of limitations. They need to raise the caps. They were set in 1986 and haven't been raised since." (For the death of a child, for instance, the maximum a family can expect is just $250,000 for pain and suffering. In injury cases, the court will pay what the government calls "a reasonable amount" for past and future non-reimbursable medical, custodial care, and rehabilitation costs, and related expenses, and there's no limit on how much a litigant can be paid for that.)A separate issue, according to Offit, is that there are, in his words, "a number of settlements that aren't based on science at all." That is, the court will sometimes pay compensation even when it's not clear a vaccine caused the injury. The New York Times reported last year that, in its words, "about 70 percent of the awards have been settlements in cases in which program officials did not find sufficient evidence that vaccines were at fault."“The law is designed to make the program generous. It may not feel that way to people in the program, but it's designed that way."
Gentry and the law students she oversees represent litigants in the vaccine injury court. One of the more common ones injuries she sees is in adults, and it's called SIRVA, a shoulder injury related to vaccine administration, which happens when the vaccine is given incorrectly, too high on a person's arm.Gentry says she's often criticized by vaccine advocates for being "anti-science," she said, or personally anti-vaccine. And, she acknowledges, "These are incredibly difficult cases to prove. There's not a lot of research being done outside of what's sponsored by pharma or the government and both of those have a particular point of view. And because vaccine injuries are rare, you don't get big epidemiological studies.""The vaccine, genetic predisposition, genetic makeup, a person's immune system on that day: It all comes together to create a perfect storm of conditions that cause these rare reactions."
And a decision from December 2019, written by Special Master Brian H. Corcoran, laid out in withering detail why he no longer wanted to see Mikovits in his court. Corcoran is the judge who called Mikovits' testimony "garbled" and "confusing." His ruling pointed out that Mikovits had had to retract her XMRV paper, a major blow to her professional reputation, and was accused of stealing notebooks from the lab where she was formerly employed, a charge that was ultimately dismissed. She had also, he wrote, called her own credibility into question by making relentless anti-vaccine statements in public."Ms. Mikovits' work in this case was, frankly, poor. Her reports were riddled with errors, exaggerations, and false statements."
It's still unclear whether Ruscetti and Mikovits are still working together through their former shared business, MAR Consulting Inc. In our emails, VICE News asked Ruscetti whether the business is still active, whether he is still providing expert medical testimony in federal court or anywhere else, and whether he had any comment on Mikovits' claim that she and Ruscetti are working with lawyers and "ghostwriting" materials to be submitted to the vaccine court. He responded, somewhat mysteriously, "Yes and yes." He did not respond to follow-up emails requesting further clarification."I have never commented on the drivel that besmirches my work."
In the book excerpts included in the email, Mikovits also specifically attacked the decision issued by Special Master Christian J. Moran, which criticized her work and her credentials."Apparently," she wrote, "my twenty years of government research experience, including the world-renowned Lab of Anti-Viral Drug Mechanisms at the National Cancer Institute, mean next to nothing. The same could be said of my research, which changed the treatment of HIV-AIDS, saving the lives of millions. Special Master Moran also trashes the reputation of Frank, one of the greatest scientists to ever work in the field of cancer and who co-founded the discipline of human retrovirology. What does Special Master Moran make of the fact that Frank also signed the report in this case? Apparently nothing. Does Special Master Moran believe I spiked Frank's morning coffee as we were working together, then in his dazed state I got him to sign the report?"The author of the email added, in an aside apparently directed to me and not part of her book excerpts, "When Frank and I continued to work on several additional cases for the courts knowing full well we would not get paid a fair wage, Special Master Moran next Threatened [sic] attorneys that if they hired MARC Inc not only would the special Master Moran guarantee the client would lose, but NOBODY would get paid. He carried out that threat in the Case of CFS developed from Flu [sic] vaccine. A case we and the attorneys worked on Since [sic] April 2015."Mikovits did not respond to an email seeking clarification on several of her claims.Mikovits isn't the only person who's submitted dubious expert testimony. Several luminaries in the anti-vaccine world have tried to use vaccine court cases to promote scientifically questionable ideas. Yehuda Shoenfeld is an Israeli immunologist and longtime critic of vaccines; court records show that he acted as an expert witness in several cases, sometimes promoting a syndrome he called ASIA. But several other studies have questioned whether ASIA exists at all. A 2017 study in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology found no evidence for Shoenfeld's pet theory that vaccine adjuvants containing aluminum are the cause of autoimmune diseases."He's made up a syndrome," Paul Offit told VICE News, bluntly. "He was able to promote it by giving it an acronym."David and Mark Geier have also testified in vaccine court; they were a father-son team who promoted the entirely false theory that mercury in vaccines caused autism. As Science reported, the pair "established an unapproved treatment that involved daily injections of leuprolide (Lupron, a drug used to treat prostate cancer and to chemically castrate sex offenders)." Mark Geier's medical license was revoked in 2012, although, in a related case, he successfully sued Maryland state regulators for breaching his medical privacy in 2018. (Geier was accused of improperly prescribing drugs for himself and his family; Geier sued the Maryland Board of Physicians for posting the names of the drugs online in their revocation order.)In several cases, Mikovits even presented expert testimony for litigants in the Vaccine Injury Litigation Clinic, the very reputable program Renee Gentry now directs. Gentry says that Mikovits and Ruscetti largely worked with her former co-director, Clifford Shoemaker."Cliff handled most of the contact with them and the expert reports," Gentry told VICE News. "I edited a few letters. I was primarily editing them for clarity."Shoemaker was a longtime vaccine court attorney; an Associated Press story called him one of the most "prolific filers" in vaccine court. Shoemaker, it's noted in the story, made a substantial amount of money in vaccine court, whether the cases were won or lost for his clients: more than $11 million in fees and expenses, including $4.1 million in cases he lost. The story also notes that Shoemaker billed for a number of unusual expenses:Two professors who specialize in virology and microbiology wrote that Mikovits has a "toxic legacy."
But it wouldn't be possible for Mikovits to still be working with Shoemaker, though he was one of the attorneys she mentioned in her talk at Autism One. That's because he surrendered his law license in February 2020 after he was convicted of embezzling money from an 86-year-old client with dementia, for whom he had power of attorney. Shoemaker pleaded no contest to the charges; in an affidavit to the Virginia State Bar, he wrote, ""It was never my intention to permanently retain the monies taken from [the widow's] insurance proceeds (with the exception of legal fees) but I acknowledge that taking those monies constituted a misappropriation … in violation of my fiduciary duties."(Reached by VICE News at his office, Shoemaker declined to comment. Renee Gentry told VICE News, "He's no longer the attorney of record in any case. I had taken over all the active cases prior to any action" taken by the Virginia Bar against him.)Mikovits doesn't tend to mention any of this unflattering background in her recent talks, or when describing her many profitable years as an expert witness. Instead, she's insisted that the court is not just corrupt, but outright evil. And these days, she said in her remarks during The Truth About Vaccine 2020, she's specially focused on proving that the Gardasil and flu vaccines are dangerous. "They're so, so toxic," she said.There's another possible reason Mikovits and other vaccine critics are focused on Gardasil: It's one of the only vaccines where there's a case against it outside of vaccine court. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s organization, Children's Health Defense, has been heavily publicizing a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court that attempts to sue Merck, Gardasil's manufacturer, for fraud.The suit is ongoing, and there are significant signs that the same people hope to follow the same playbook for any potential COVID-19 vaccine. Vaccine opponents have claimed that a coronavirus vaccine is being rushed to market, standard safety protocols ignored, and that vaccine manufacturers stand to make millions from it. (There are, to be sure, genuine concerns that a COVID vaccine could be rushed, and many of the world’s leading public health experts are trying to make sure that doesn’t happen. Meanwhile, news of successful ongoing trials for a vaccine are indeed causing some drug companies' stocks to soar.)In the meantime, Mikovits and her fellow travelers continue to insist that all vaccines are unsafe, and that the 1986 law should be repealed. She's also said there's no need for a COVID vaccine to begin with. "If many people are walking around with antibodies… As with SARS and MERs no vaccine has been developed that didn't kill many more people."That's absolutely not true. But Mikovits' career is a testament to the length that untrue statements can travel before they're stopped, and the amount of money that can be made and fame that can be won while issuing them. Even as her outrageous claims and checkered career are fact-checked, Plandemic continues to circulate. As Buzzfeed News noted, the film has been translated into 12 languages and is currently making an alarming viral world tour—much like COVID-19 itself.Mikovits herself continues her own tour, through fringe conferences, viral videos, and dubious "natural health" sites. On June 4, Mikovits celebrated as her book hit #2 on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list. "This," she exulted, "is the beginning of Something Great for all of us!"Update, July 27:After publication, Dr. Mikovits sent the following statement to VICE News, which has been reproduced here in full:Shoemaker once submitted a bill that the special master said could “easily exceed the hours available in a day.” Other special masters said he would submit “unreasonable or duplicative” hours, then say the entries were in error. His payments would be reduced, but AP found no evidence he had been sanctioned.In one early case, he tried to charge the court for repairs to his car, which broke down on the way to a hearing. In another, Shoemaker billed for travel to Paris and Italy, including a stay at a Ritz Carlton.Shoemaker said his billing problems were honest mistakes and that he now has a better tracking system. He said the European trip was necessary to meet with experts.“I’m not ashamed of anything that was done at that time,” he said.
Correction: An earlier version of this article misattributed the authorship of a piece on the website For Better Science. Follow Anna Merlan on Twitter.I absolutely answered from this email
and I did respond that the Ghostwriting was that we were hired to do the Research for the lawyers because of the corruption of Special Master Moran When one testifies in vaccine court the written report is "testimony" as if one is in a court of law. All of our reports are part of official court documents.I quoted those court actual documents in all of my presentations. To misrepresent our words is defamation and we will take appropriate legal action We did not sign our research assignments as court testimony..the ghostwriting..and they were NOT written as testimony or signed as such. There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing research for attorneys on mechanisms by which vaccines may cause injury in a susceptible person. [Sic through]