Deetee
Illuminator
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2003
- Messages
- 3,789
The LA Times has announced the death of AIDS skeptic and activist Christine Maggiore on the 27th December. She came to prominence in the 1990s following her own HIV positive diagnosis, writing a book “What if everything you knew about AIDS was wrong?” and set up an organisation “Alive and Well” to promote her views that HIV did not cause AIDS and to encourage others to “rethink” their own diagnoses. She advocated breast feeding in HIV positive mothers, and the refusal of preventative HIV medications to pregnant women, probably resulting in numerous infants getting HIV. Her activism also caught the eye of President Mbeki of South Africa, who was influenced to think HIV did not cause AIDS. The result of this was the denial of therapy to those with HIV in his country, resulting in what has been estimated at 330 thousand deaths over the last 10 years.
Maggiore did not just influence others, she took her own advice to heart, delivering her own 2 children without taking any HIV medication, and breast feeding them (taking medication and avoiding breast feeding can help reduce the transmission rate from mother to child to under 2%, from the usual 20-25% risk). Her first child, Charlie, was born healthy and had no problems. Her second child, Eliza Jane, developed problems during her second year of life, and died of AIDS with HIV encephalopathy and Pneumocystis pneumonia when she was 2 and a half years old. She had never been tested for HIV.
LA County Authorities, alerted to the case, arranged testing for Maggiore’s first child, Charlie (who was fortunately negative). There was consideration given to removing Charlie from his mother’s care and charging his parents with negligence, but the case was dropped.
Now, it appears Christine herself has died from pneumonia at the age of 52. She had been unwell over the last 6 months. It seems probable that her premature death is AIDS-related, but of course we may never know for sure. Even now, the AIDS denialist propaganda machine is rewriting the story of her life and her death. They will claim this was due to stress, or some other improbable reason (as they did for Eliza Jane, who was said to have died from a reaction to antibiotics).
Maggiore did not just influence others, she took her own advice to heart, delivering her own 2 children without taking any HIV medication, and breast feeding them (taking medication and avoiding breast feeding can help reduce the transmission rate from mother to child to under 2%, from the usual 20-25% risk). Her first child, Charlie, was born healthy and had no problems. Her second child, Eliza Jane, developed problems during her second year of life, and died of AIDS with HIV encephalopathy and Pneumocystis pneumonia when she was 2 and a half years old. She had never been tested for HIV.
LA County Authorities, alerted to the case, arranged testing for Maggiore’s first child, Charlie (who was fortunately negative). There was consideration given to removing Charlie from his mother’s care and charging his parents with negligence, but the case was dropped.
Now, it appears Christine herself has died from pneumonia at the age of 52. She had been unwell over the last 6 months. It seems probable that her premature death is AIDS-related, but of course we may never know for sure. Even now, the AIDS denialist propaganda machine is rewriting the story of her life and her death. They will claim this was due to stress, or some other improbable reason (as they did for Eliza Jane, who was said to have died from a reaction to antibiotics).
