"HIV Does Not Cause AIDS" Says Christine Maggiore

It is assumed that HIV and AIDS entered the US sometime in the 1970s, although they were not given a name until the early 1980s. After a decade of research, enough was known about HIV and AIDS to dispel such myths as "only gay men contract HIV", "AIDS can be spread by merely touching an infected person", or "HIV patients cannot have children". However, just as the medical community rolled out explanations for each myth that developed, some chose to hold to a specific myth that may have caused more harm than good: HIV does not cause AIDS.

The AIDS Dissident Movement Begins

In the late 1980's, a UC Berkeley Virologist named Peter Duesberg questioned the evidence that supported the theory that AIDS developed from an extended infection with HIV. HIV infected patients began to listen to the dissenters from the medical community and formed groups such as HEAL, Alive and Well AIDS Alternatives, ACT UP, and AIDS Reality Check, which supported the notion that HIV did not cause AIDS. Each group encouraged HIV infected patients to refuse antiretroviral drugs that were created to slow down the destruction of T-cells, which is seen as the main cause of the development of AIDS.

The AIDS dissident movement had come alive. Supporters sprung up around the country like wildflowers; all of them heeding the notion that HIV was not a killer, you could have a perfectly normal life, protected sex was not necessary, antiretroviral drugs were not necessary, bearing children and breastfeeding them without regard to passing on the infection was ok, and HIV absolutely did not cause AIDS. Their reasoning behind this notion was most of the newly diagnosed HIV patients felt fine. They were not ill nor were they having any symptoms that would lead them to believe their immune system was slowly being destroyed.

The information that seemed to be missing at the time the AIDS dissident movement came to be was that HIV takes an average of 10 to 12 years to destroy enough T-cells to develop into AIDS. They also assumed that sexual partners with HIV need not worry about unprotected sex because dissenting medical experts touted that HIV was not a killer. It was also acceptable to have unprotected sex if both partners were HIV positive. HIV all but became something as trivial as a cold and was not seen as something that needed to be addressed by the medical community.

Alive and Well AIDS Alternatives and Christine Maggiore

Alive and Well AIDS Alternatives is an AIDS dissident movement that was started by Christine Maggiore, a HIV patient who was diagnosed in 1992. When Christine found out that she was HIV positive, she was a little confused because she did not exhibit any symptoms of her illness. Even seven years after her diagnosis, she still felt alive and well without the use of antiretroviral drugs. She created Alive and Well to try to speak to others in the same predicament and let them know that they would be alright, even without taking the drugs the mainstream medical community professed would help them.

Christine traveled all over the world teaching people that HIV did not cause AIDS and antiretroviral drugs were a government/pharmaceutical conspiracy they should not support. She argued that the drugs had horrible side effects that made living almost unbearable. She even rallied in Africa, a nation where the HIV/AIDS population is the highest in the world, and caused mass protests against the use of the antiretroviral drugs.

The Death of Eliza Jane

Christine Maggiore also bore two children with her ex-husband Robin Scovell. Her first child, Charles, was breastfed without the use of HIV impairing drugs. When she saw that both she and her baby were healthy, she felt she was doing the right thing by avoiding the drugs. Then came her daughter, Eliza Jane, whom she also breastfed while declining the antiretroviral drugs, but both she and her children seemed healthy so there was no cause for alarm.

Maggiore felt that it was unnecessary to label her children with the name of a disease, thus she consistently refused to have her children tested for HIV or AIDS infections.

When her daughter, Eliza Jane, was three she came down with a nasty cold. Maggiore took her daughter to two different pediatricians within a week. Both doctors, unaware of any possibility of an HIV infection, just saw a mildly ill child. She was sent home to get better and return to school.

A couple of weeks later, Eliza Jane was still not healing. Maggiore then took her daughter to a holistic practioner that worked for her organization Alive and Well, Dr. Philip Incao. Dr. Incao saw nothing more alarming than an ear infection that would not heal and prescribed Amoxicillin for Eliza.

Just three weeks after 3 year old Eliza Jane fell ill, she died. She collapsed in her family's home on May 15, 2005 and was rushed to the hospital where she was pronounced dead a few hours later. Maggiore stated that her daughter had not started to deteriorate until she had administered the amoxicillin, citing that the cause of death was an allergic reaction to the antibiotic. However, Maggiore conveniently neglected to tell the hospital staff of her HIV infection and Eliza Jane's possible infection. She stated "I wanted an unprejudiced evaluation of my daughter".

Four months later, the coroner's report stated that Eliza Jane had died from pneumonia due to AIDS. Crying foul and government conspiracy; Maggiore fought back by enlisting an AIDS dissident and toxicologist named Mohammed Al-Bayati to do an independent report on Eliza Jane's death. Not surprisingly, he found a different cause of death: allergic reaction to amoxicillin.

ABC's Primetime Live interviewed Christine Maggiore in December 2005. They enlisted their own independent medical examiner which refuted the Al-Bayati's conclusion that Eliza Jane died from an allergic reaction to amoxicillin and agreed with the coroner's autopsy report that Maggiore's daughter had died from AIDS.

Other doctors, such as Nicholas J Bennett MB/BChir, PhD, a Clinician and Researcher in the Department of Pediatrics at SUNY Upstate Medical University, have reviewed the coroner's findings and have come to the same conclusion; death from pneumonia due to AIDS. Yet Maggiore clings to her belief that HIV does not cause AIDS. Regarding her daughter's death she stated, ""I want to know the truth" inferring that the coroner's conclusion was somehow misguided.

AIDS Dissident Movement Support

The AIDS dissident movement has a community of doctors, pathologists, virologists and other scientists backing the theory that HIV does not cause AIDS. Some statements from these well-respected doctors and scientists in the medical and public health community include:

"If there is evidence that HIV causes AIDS, there should be scientific documents which either singly or collectively demonstrate that fact, at least with a high probability. There is no such document." - Dr. Kary Mullis, Biochemist, 1993 Nobel Prize for Chemistry(Sunday Times (London) 28 Nov. 1993)

"In the old days it was required that a scientist address the possibilities of proving his hypothesis wrong as well as right. Now there's none of that in standard HIV-AIDS program with all its billions of dollars." - Dr. Richard Strohman, Emeritus Professor of Cell Biology at the University of California at Berkeley(Penthouse April 1994)

However, one problem lies with these statements that many still hold to be truth: they were stated in the mid-nineties. Perhaps these were medical truths in the 1990's, but as of 2007, they have been refuted time and time again.
The Mainstream Medical Community Speaks

In November 2004, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) collaborated with the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to conclude that HIV does, in fact, cause AIDS. The report titled, "How HIV Causes AIDS" takes an in-depth look at the transmission and evolution of HIV in an infected person. NIAID states that "HIV causes AIDS by directly inducing the death of CD4+ T cells or interfering with their normal function and by triggering other events that weaken a person's immune function".

However, the AIDS dissident movement is still moving along, though at a slower rate and with fewer numbers than before. Many HIV infected patients who belonged to the movement have come to the conclusion that the movement has been misleading.

Dissension Amongst the Dissidents

An article written by Bruce Mirken which was published in the San Francisco Bay Gaurdian in February 2002, titled "Bad science: They once thought HIV was harmless. Now, they say, AIDS has forced them to reconsider" reports that many followers have now developed AIDS as the 10 to 12 year mark of their diagnosis has expired. Many are dying and finding that they inadvertently infected their partners while believing that was not a worry.

One such person is Sean Current, who was a passionate member of the dissident movement. He toured with the "HIV does not cause AIDS" circuit professing to HIV patients the world over that there was hope. HIV was not a death sentence. Though there is a partial truth to that, one of the very reasons HIV is not a death sentence was being overlooked; treatment.

Members in Current's dissident organization began to die before his very eyes. When Current fell ill in 1998, as well as finding out that he had infected his life partner, he ran to the nearest clinic. Suddenly he could breathe again, the lesions were disappearing and he found a new philosophy on HIV; it does, in fact, cause AIDS. It just takes time to create the situation in your body for AIDS to spring up.

In 2000, Sean Current began discussing what had happened with his fellow dissenters and was met with hostility. After sending out emails trying to get feedback on what should change within the circle of dissidents, Mirken states that Current received an email from "Alex Russell, an assistant editor of the British dissident journal Continuum, advising him that "you are not 'HIV positive,' nor is your partner; nor is anyone worldwide. Give up your 'HIV' status-identity and get a life."

Maggiore also blasted dissidents who began to question the movement after falling ill and losing friends to AIDS. Many dissidents within the movement started to equate the movement with a cult, including Bill McCormick; an HIV positive patient who ignored any sort of treatment because of his affiliation with Alive and Well, all the while his health was in a steady state of decline.

When Mr. McCormick finally called the dissidents out, according to Mirken, he received a letter from Maggiore which stated he was, "an ill and cranky ex-Scientologist, ... a troubled ex-straight guy who thought he found salvation in our literature, who desperately sought any scheme or treatment he believed might undo his positive diagnosis, who suffered with constant infections brought on by unprotected sex, who ignored his mounting health problems."

Though the AIDS dissident movement is still strong, many members are turning to mainstream medical theories and treatments as their condition worsens. HIV does cause AIDS. Make no mistake. NIAID states in their report that "numerous studies show that people with high levels of HIV in their bloodstream are more likely to develop new AIDS-related symptoms or die than those with lower levels of virus". This is all the more reason to start treatments as soon as a person is diagnosed.

The drugs used throughout the 1980s and 1990s were harsh and carried horrible side effects. NIAID reports that progress is being made in anti-HIV treatments. "Potent combinations of three or more anti-HIV drugs known as highly active antiretroviral therapy, or HAART, can reduce a person's "viral burden" (amount of virus in the circulating blood) to very low levels and in many cases delay the progression of HIV disease for prolonged periods."

There is no known cure for HIV or AIDS, but there are treatments available. If you or a loved one receives a positive diagnosis of either, be proactive and seek out reliable information about these illnesses and begin treatment.