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AIDS: A mother's denial

Chris Haynes

Perfectly Poisonous Person
Chris Haynes
Joined
Mar 14, 2003
Messages
4,432
Location
Wacky Washington Way Out West
Well, the thread on Christine Maggiore's really bad parenting decision has disappeared, so I thought I would bring it back. In the week or so that JREF was down I wandered around a couple of blogs on the event.

To catch up, here are a couple of news stories:
http://ktla.trb.com/news/local/la-me-eliza24sep24,0,2413234.story?coll=ktla-news-1

plus an update:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-charlie29sep29,0,5694731.story?coll=la-home-local

A commentary:
http://www.nationalreview.com/seipp/seipp200509290815.asp

Through the blogosphere I've become acquainted with the convoluted logic of the AIDS dissenters. Because of one guy, Peter Duesberg ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Duesberg ), many are convinced that AIDS is caused by drug use... Two notable blog entries:
http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/09/another-tragically-unnecessary-death.html (which has some good information, plus and illustration of one of our least favorite parenting rags: http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/09/this-is-what-im-talking-about.html )

and
http://bennett.com/blog/index.php/archives/2005/09/24/mother-kills-child-bloggers-help/ (where there seem to be some very icky people)
 
Thanks, HCN for re-creating the thread.

We must not forget the contributions made by ? another of our own JREFers who has a blog- (at least the avatar is familiar - who he?)http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2005/09/a_horrible_stor.html#comment-9749315


LA Times has 2 letters in response to their original piece
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion...7,0,872957.story?coll=la-news-comment-letters.

The AIDS-dissenting journalist Liam Sheff has some stuff on his blog, and reading some of the readers responses will demonstrate how deeply some can buy into the myth.
http://liam.gnn.tv/ (scroll down the blog articles until you get to it)

If you go to the site promoting Maggiore's husbands film which tries to rubbish the HIV-AIDS link, and click to enter, you will see a statment by the family about the
http://www.theothersideofaids.com/

Robin and Christine have serious concerns and questions about the coroner's conclusion and have hired an independent pathologist to review the autopsy in detail. The autopsy report is also missing crucial data which their attorney requested on Friday September 23. As of today, the coroner has not responded to their attorney's request.
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ETA - the film transcipt features Christine Maggiore saying this:
Hey, I'm Christine Maggiore. I'm convinced it's wrong to encourage HIV testing and to administer death sentences to people who test positive. The HIV test is well documented to cross-react with numerous non-HIV antibodies that can be found in normal, healthy people. They read these as HIV antibodies and give a positive test result. Cold, the flu, flu shots, hepatitis, herpes, rheumatoid arthritis, other immunizations and pregnancy can read as HIV positive on these tests.

Pregnant women who test positive are told they have to take this, AZT, or abort. That's an actual AZT label. AZT is a chemotherapy. It's a known carcinogen and works by destroying DNA chains as they're forming in the body. It causes severe anemia, so severe people need blood transfusions. It causes muscle wasting, neuropathy, diarrhea, dementia, spontaneous abortion, fetal deformities, and lymphoma.

As we meet here today, there are parents across the country who risk losing their children to state custody for their refusal to give their children AZT. Next week in Eugene, Oregon, the parents of an HIV negative baby are being charged with negligence and intent to harm for objecting to orders to give their baby AZT. This baby's father is HIV negative, his sister is HIV negative, and he's HIV negative. But since his mother came up positive on an HIV antibody test, the state says that they must give this HIV negative baby AZT and she cannot breast feed him. This isn't public health policy; this is madness.
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No Christine - to play russian roulette with the lives of your family is madness, and to encourage the rest of the world to do likewise is just incomprehensible and bordering on the criminal.
 
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I saw that Reason post this morning. Breaks my heart. Is this one of the areas where the line between libertarianism and woo fades into murkyness?
 
shecky said:
I saw that Reason post this morning. Breaks my heart. Is this one of the areas where the line between libertarianism and woo fades into murkyness?
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Alt med? Yup there is a grey libertarian candidate walking around somewhere. Problem is that alt med is basicaly free market medicine so it produces bit of an iderlogical problem.
 
I guess my only real issue here is that if she contracted AIDS in '92, why isn't she not dead or at least deathly ill? I understand that it has one hellatious gestation period, but I'd think we'd see her in a "compromised" condition in the interveining 13 years. Or are all the pix we see of her old ones?
 
kmortis:For what it's worth: She didn't contract AIDS in 1992, she contracted HIV. HIV does indeed have a very long incubation time, often several years, and a very small minority of people who contracts HIV will not develop AIDS at all (even without taking the now available medicine cocktail, that is).

I won't pretend to understand the exact process of HIV and how it turns into AIDS, so I'll let others delve more into the details about how the HIV virus acts, if you're interested in that. It's better than to risk me getting in even deeper water.
 
Hawk one said:
kmortis:For what it's worth: She didn't contract AIDS in 1992, she contracted HIV. HIV does indeed have a very long incubation time, often several years, and a very small minority of people who contracts HIV will not develop AIDS at all (even without taking the now available medicine cocktail, that is).

I won't pretend to understand the exact process of HIV and how it turns into AIDS, so I'll let others delve more into the details about how the HIV virus acts, if you're interested in that. It's better than to risk me getting in even deeper water.
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Oh, ok. I know the general knowledge of HIV/AIDS, but not being an immunologist/doctor/guy-who-knows-THOSE-kinds-of-things, I recognize my ignorance on this issue.
 
I have to side with the editor. It's disingenuous to say parents have the right to make medical decisions for their children, and then declare that they have to make "correct" decisions. That's just substituting society's judgment for that of parents'. If you're going to rule that people must accept medical treatment for their children when society decides it's desirable, then just say so.

I'd love to be able to overrule each and every person who makes an uninformed, stupid, or disagreeable decision on the behalf of someone else... but I shouldn't have that power, and neither should anyone else.

Letting people make their own decisions inevitably means letting them make stupid, tragic decisions. That's the price of autonomy.
 
Sorry... I meant the editor of Reason, who was specifically mentioned by Mr. Siefert.
 
This is just tragic. I can't for the life of me see what these mothers could have against a simple blood test that might save their child's life. OK, if they won't give them the drugs, we don't have the authority to force the matter. But if it's true that a stronger penicilan might have saved this girls' life, isn't it worth at least KNOWING? It's not as if they were against giving her antibiotics.

Also, I find it odd that the two articles that mentioned the questionable medical backgrounds of the 'doctors' included anti-circumcision as one of those possible 'quack' theories. I seem to remember reading that there is no medical basis for circumcision, and plenty of reasons to argue against it.
 
The Maggiore camp seem to be preparing themselves for a fight to establish that there were no "AIDS-related" problems such as pneumonia at autopsy, and that it may have all been a reaction to antibiotics prescribed for a Haemophilus ear infection.
An "independent" review of the autopsy requested by the family is expected in a couple of weeks time.

We do not really know why the child died - the coroner said "AIDS-related pneumonia", which does not specify whether it was something like pneumocystis, a particularly nasty type of fungal pneumonia (PCP-which everyone has assumed the coroner means), or a simpler form of pneumonia which was lethal because of underlying immunodeficiency in the child.

If the family come up with an alternative diagnosis to PCP such as heamophilus pneumonia, they will feel vindicated that everyone's assumptions were incorrect, and claim that they were "right" all along and the child did not have AIDS. However, death from a severe pneumonia in an immunodeficient child with HIV would still be an unecessary and avoidable death - the child should never have caught HIV in the first place if the mother had followed medical recommendations.

If Haemophilus infection is proven, it is a tragedy that the child was never vaccinated against this infection, as per childhood immunisation schedules. (Oh yes- the mother was also an antivaccinationist, along with her pediatrician, the well known Dr Jay Gordon). http://www.drjaygordon.com/

Either way, the mother and doctor must bear responsibility, and I hope that Gordon in particular is somehow called to account for his (in)actions in this case.
 
Who are they sending the records too?

What doctor would be comfortable doing an autopsy based on records alone with no body? Are they going to exhume the body or what?

My bet is they sent these records to a pre-arranged quack (just like the other 3 doctors that mom used as "consults") and he is going to say whatever she wants him to say.

We really need to go after these doctors. They are spreading lies and misinformation and need to be held accountable for it.
 
Just want to hop in the express my utter repulsion at these people. Of all the things that are discussed on this forum - oija boards, dowsing, psychics, etc. - it's something like this, where a person's willful ignorance causes the unnecessary death of an innocent child, which makes me want to strangle somebody. Hopefully, the records will be reviewed by an honest physician who will come to an honest conclusion. And if the conclusion is that the child's death was AIDS related, I hope there is some just punishment inflicted.

That's all.
 
Melendwyr said:
I have to side with the editor. It's disingenuous to say parents have the right to make medical decisions for their children, and then declare that they have to make "correct" decisions. That's just substituting society's judgment for that of parents'.
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Any decision? Is there anything that is out of bounds? I would say a parent has the right to make medical decisions that do not reflect indifference or negligence. Sure, that can be a fine line in extreme cases but that is what our courts are for. Children are not the guinea pigs of the parents. Withholding scientifically sound medical care on ideological, theological or any grounds that do not have some rational basis is just silly. A parent can choose to believe in voodoo or fairy dust but they don't really get to abuse their children in the name of parental rights and responsibility. That is turning the concept on its head.
 
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