News > Culture > HIV-Positive Woman's Denial and Ignorance Kills Child

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SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 24 2005 11:45 AM

HIV-Positive Woman's Denial and Ignorance Kills Child

Submitted by Shal

Edited by Shal

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.

These days, given advances in HIV care, it's highly unusual for any young child to die of AIDS. What makes Eliza Jane's death even more striking is that her mother is a high-profile, charismatic leader in a movement that challenges the basic medical understanding and treatment of acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

Even now, Maggiore, a 49-year-old former clothing executive from Van Nuys, stands by the views she has espoused on "The Ricki Lake Show" and ABC's "20/20," and in Newsweek and Mothering magazines. She and her husband, Robin Scovill, said they have concerns about the coroner's findings and are sending the report to an outside reviewer.

"I have been brought to my emotional knees, but not in regard to the science of this topic," said Maggiore, author of an iconoclastic book about AIDS that has sold 50,000 copies. "I am a devastated, broken, grieving mother, but I am not second-guessing or questioning my understanding of the issue."

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.

"I don't understand it," Fleiss said of Eliza Jane's death, "because I've never seen her sick or with anything resembling what she supposedly died of. I don't believe I could have done anything to change this outcome."

Fleiss, who said he could be "convinced either way" on whether HIV causes AIDS, has known the family since before Eliza Jane was born. In 2000, the county Department of Children and Family Services investigated Maggiore and Scovill after a tipster complained that Charlie was in danger because he hadn't been tested for HIV and was breast-fed.

The department found no evidence of neglect, based partly on reassurances from Fleiss, according to an official report reviewed by The Times.

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.

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Comments

Snottlebocket

Netherlands

March 2004

SEP 24, 2005 12:17 PM

can we shoot her to clean up the gene pool?

Vestril

Coronado, CA

February 2003

SEP 24, 2005 12:37 PM

Snottlebocket said:
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.

Liante

SUICIDEGIRL

Kiribati

SEP 24, 2005 12:37 PM

Unbelievable.

I realize that part of what makes America great is the "democracy of ideas." I understand the benefits of leaving people free to espouse and argue any half-assed wacko theory they want, under the assumption that other people will be able to evaluate those idiot theories and discard them in favor of good ideas.

But it never fails to baffle me how people can sign on to such blatantly stupid ones, and it never fails to irritate me that kids end up being the collateral damage to their parents' incredible stupidity.

Lys

USA

February 2005

SEP 24, 2005 12:40 PM

"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.

ThisIsWhoWeAre

Oakland, CA

July 2004

SEP 24, 2005 12:51 PM

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.

ThisIsWhoWeAre

Oakland, CA

July 2004

SEP 24, 2005 12:53 PM

"AIDS is a toxic disease caused by either long-term recreational drug abuse or short-term anti-HIV medications," writes a 22-year-old member of the Alive and Well-affiliated Students Reappraising AIDS on the Foo Fighters' Web-based message board. "HIV is not spread sexually, nor is it the cause of any disease."