US & British Gov’ts Target US Citizens for Defamation

March 3, 2014

NSA documents recently leaked by Edward Snowden reveal the tactics used by US and British spies to destroy the reputations of their enemies. These same tactics are used by American activists tied to academia, drug companies and government agencies to harass and defame reputable scientists, journalists, and private citizens whose only ‘sin” is to question the industry views about HIV, AIDS and antiretroviral drugs.

You may know a man by the company he keeps the famous proverb says.  If that’s true, it may come as a surprise to know who Robert Gallo, the co-discoverer of HIV, is friends with. His circle includes a convicted embezzler, a perjurer and identify thief, and two profs detractors for decades. And in every situation, they attack the individuals, not the questions they raise.

Jeffrey "JT" DeShong

Jeffrey “JT” DeShong

The revelations surfaced in an email that connects the academic and corporate ties related to a defamation lawsuit brought by Clark Baker, founder of the Office of Medical and Scientific Justice (OMSJ), against Jeffery Todd DeShong, an AIDS activist in Texas. Since 2009, DeShong has used numerous aliases in an effort to defame Baker, calling him a liar and a fraud, in an effort to ruin OMSJ, whose mission is to defend victims of medical and scientific corruption.

DeShong denies working with anyone else in these endeavors and claims he works for free. But it’s simply not true. Supporting documents in the lawsuit show that DeShong works with this group of people – all funded directly or indirectly by the pharmaceutical industry, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

The evidence illustrates how this multi-billion dollar industry and government agencies fund proxies like DeShong to ruin the lives and reputations of scientists, journalists and private citizens whose only “sin” is to question the industry views about HIV, AIDS and antiviral drugs. As the email indicates, DeShong’s “colleagues” and partners in vengeance include Atlanta doctor James Murtagh M.D., Cornell Virology Professor John Moore Ph.D., University of Connecticut social psychology Professor Seth Kalichman Ph.D., and the controversial “co-discoverer of HIV,” Robert Gallo M.D.  The evidence illustrates how this multi-billion dollar industry and government agencies fund proxies like DeShong to ruin the lives and reputations of scientists, journalists and private citizens–and OMSJ–who simply raise questions about the validity of the science underlying HIV and HIV testing.

FRIENDS OF BOB

Another attack dog for the AIDS industry is social psychologist Seth Kalichman who is also cc’d in the email. A recipient of at least $17 million in NIH/NIAID funding, he uses his academic credentials to vilify, defame and crush AIDS and other mainstream science skeptics. He has authored several books on AIDS and operates the AIDS propaganda website, Denying Aids, which is funded (directly or indirectly) by the NIH.

In 2012 Kalichman got his wish to create an Internet surveillance system to track anti-vaccine proponents when Bill Gates gave him $100,000 for start up costs. The program is disturbing: “an internet-based global monitoring and rapid alert system for finding, analyzing, and counteracting misinformation communication campaigns regarding vaccines to support global immunization efforts,” not unlike the blog he has operated since 2009.

The “colleague of Bob Gallo” mentioned in the email is James Murtagh, M.D. who left his tenured position at Emory University under controversial circumstances in 2001. After claiming he was forced out and discriminated against because of his “Irish ancestry,” Murtagh filed several lawsuits against Emory. Murtagh then breached a settlement agreement with the university, and was fined by the court for “perjury, poor patient care, issuing false and defamatory emails in other people’s names, altering evidence, identity theft, and tax fraud.” In 2013, the Georgia Court of Appeals upheld the decision against Murtagh.

kalichmanMurtagh openly admits the pharmaceutical companies keep his destructive endeavors going. “Without TAC (Treatment Action Campaign) and the pharmaceutical industry,” he wrote in a 2009 email, “I could not withstand Clark’s [Baker] attacks on my employment.”

TAC is funded by the Treatment Action Group, a New York-based advocacy and activist organization that is a key stakeholder in all matters related to HIV. TAG’s biggest donors include Gilead Sciences, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Genetech, Inc., all leaders in producing HIV and AIDS drugs. To sell their propaganda, drug companies rely on an army of activists who promote HIV tests and drugs.

For almost a decade, Murtagh and his close friend and associate Kevin Kuritzky promoted themselves as courageous whistleblowers. In his fourth year of medical school at Emory University, Kuritzky was dismissed, the university claims, for “plagiarism, repeatedly missing required clerkship training involving patient care, lying to his professors, and engaging in other unprofessional, dishonest and unethical conduct.” There’s more. In 2013, sheriff’s deputies arrested him near Atlanta on a fugitive warrant, and he pled guilty of embezzling $150,000 from an Atlanta law firm where he had worked.  In 2014, Kuritzky admitted that, between 2005-2013, he has served as a “foot soldier” for Murtagh and a core group of pharmaceutically-funded activists with the specific purpose of attacking, discrediting, and marginalizing so-called “AIDS denialists” to protect the AIDS industry.

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Murtagh and Kuritzky received support from the Government Accountability Project (GAP) which, according to another email, wants Murtagh “to do the dirty work… to take Clark down.”

LIKE ATTRACTS LIKE

James Murtagh MD

James Murtagh MD

Now to the obvious question: Why would Robert Gallo, a leading scientist with the National Cancer Institute for 30 years, the reputed co-discoverer of HIV and the patent holder on the first HIV test, need an army of attackers?

Real scientists with confidence and integrity let the evidence speak for itself and have no need to silence their critics. All these years later, it seems clear that Gallo is still defensive about the unanswered questions related to his HIV research. And with good reason. A startling 1993 report by the Office of Research Integrity found Gallo guilty of misconduct for misrepresenting in a key 1984 Science paper that he had been the first to discover HIV, when in fact, it was Luc Montagnier at the Pasteur Institute in Paris who was the first—and ultimately won the Nobel Prize for the discovery. The report said Gallo had “intended to mislead the scientific community” and he showed an “intent to deceive” readers of the paper “to maximize his achievements while minimizing those of the French,” wrote Science. Although the evidence against Gallo was considerable, sanctions against him were light, but he was eventually forced out of the NCI. Despite his scientific misconduct, Gallo continues to receive millions of dollars in funding from the pharmaceutical industry, NIH, and NIAID.

All these years later, the vitriolic attacks against Gallo’s detractors continues, ruining many lives and reputations in the process. It is time to put a stop to it and, with any luck and a fair trial, Clark Baker’s defamation lawsuit against AIDS activist Todd DeShong will be the first step in disbanding the company Robert Gallo keeps.

The amended complaint and responses can be found at:

Jan 2014): US District Judge Sam Cummings dismissed DeShong’s anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss.

UPDATE (31 Jan 2014): DeShong files Memo in Support of 2nd Motion to Dismiss & Brief in Support of Deft’s Renewed Combined Special Motion to Dismiss (31 Jan 2014)

UPDATE (21 Feb 2014): Baker files this response and a new declaration, connecting DeShong to HIV “co-discoverer” Robert Gallo MD, James Murtagh MD, Kevin Kuritzky, John Moore Ph.D., Seth Kalichman Ph.D., Brian T. Foley Ph.D., AIDSTruth, and other NIH- and pharmaceutically-funded activists.