NEWS: HIV-Positive Woman's Denial and Ignorance Kills Child

CULTURE: HIV-Positive Woman's Denial and Ignorance Kills Child

I am filled with rage at a story in today's Los Angeles Times. Christine Maggiore, a wealthy woman who tested HIV-positive in 1992, convinced herself that HIV did not cause AIDS, and that in fact she wasn't sick at all. Despite the fact that she has no formal medical training, she wrote a book on the topic. She gave birth to and breast fed her two children, ignoring a huge body of medical research about parent-to-child HIV transmission. She refused to get her children tested for the disease, going to great lengths and questionable measures to avoid doctors who would require such tests. She has been supported in this task by a bizarre nationwide network of similarly-minded people.

Her 3-year-old daughter died of AIDS-related pnuemonia this year. Maggiore refuses to admit fault or change her views.

Maggiore's daughter, Eliza Jane, was shielded from HIV and AIDS testing by Dr. Paul Fleiss (who once got himself in some trouble by hiding the assets from his daughter Heidi Fleiss's high-class brothel), who was also in denial of the child's condition.

The Los Angeles police department is investigating everyone involved for potential child neglect.

Neglect?!? How about criminal fucking negliance, reckless endangerment, and voluntary manslaughter? Every doctor who examined this child should be sued for malpractice, and this woman and her husband and everyone along the line who helped hide or ignore this child's condition should be put in fucking prison. I hope the Maggiores' son, Charlie, gets the medical attention he most likely desperately needs.

can we shoot her to clean up the gene pool?

If I were a hit-man I'd take this job for free. It's true what they say, pricks live forever. I wonder whether she secretly takes AIDS or HIV medication to keep extending her life. Her doctors should be slapped around.

"Why our child — so appreciated, so held, so carefully nurtured — and not one ignored, abused or abandoned?" she wrote. "How come what we offered was not enough to keep her here when children with far less — impatient distracted parents, a small apartment on a busy street, extended day care, Oscar Mayer Lunchables — will happily stay?"
This is the part that got to me. This poor child WAS abused, not in the beatings sense, but abused nonetheless. How in this lifetime can a MOTHER ingore her health and continue to put her child in danger.
And another thing, she made it sound like ignored abused or abandoned children SHOULD die. This woman is severly messed up in the head.

It's really quite astonishing how many followers they have. Even Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters. There's even a link on their website under "causes" they support to the Alive and Well group's home page.

Well, I'm convinced.

I have no words to describe this.... I just hope something is being done for the other child.

I want to dump that woman naked in the middle of africa. what ignorance!

sounds like christian scientists... i hate those ignorant bastards...

i was raised in that damned church....

they don't believe in "modern medicine" and routinely avoid vaccinations/doctors/hospitals and get themselves dead..

I think of this woman in the same light as those who let their children slowly die of treatable cancers beacuse they believe their faith will heal them.

Some people just need killin'.

I now hate people again.

Fucking people. . .

Well said.

Is the line to slap some sense into Christine Maggoire?

Seriously, how do you not arrest this woman?

Don't forget her husband and the doctors.

THe dangers of wishful thinking taken to horrible extremes.

I vaguely remember an angry prostitute in the news that had knowingly transmitted HIV to some of her johns. She was charged and imprisoned.

This woman should be treated no different.

[Edited on Sep 25, 2005 2:32PM]

These people are the same as those who claim the Holocaust never happened