A Mother's Denial, a Daughter's Death (Woman w/ HIV stupidly has child)

[brentspeak]

By Charles Ornstein and Daniel Costello Times Staff Writers Sat Sep 24, 7:55 AM ET

Christine Maggiore was in prime form, engaging and articulate, when she explained to a Phoenix radio host in late March why she didn't believe HIV caused AIDS.


The HIV-positive mother of two laid out matter-of-factly why, even while pregnant, she hadn't taken HIV medications, and why she had never tested her children for the virus.

"Our children have excellent records of health," Maggiore said on the Air America program when asked about 7-year-old Charlie and 3-year-old Eliza Jane Scovill. "They've never had respiratory problems, flus, intractable colds, ear infections, nothing. So, our choices, however radical they may seem, are extremely well-founded."

Seven weeks later, Eliza Jane was dead.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/latimests/20050924/ts_latimes/amothersdenialadaughtersdeath

[awoke_in_2003]

1. Let me get this straight...

if you purposely infect someone with aids, either by not notifying them or raping them, you can be charged with murder. But purposely not taking meds that might help your fetus is okay? :crazy:

Of course, they probably never thought of the other option (starts with an A). Sound like good wholesome christian to me :sarcasm:

[RC]

2. I'll get some chairs, also...

"Sound like good wholesome christian to me"

[fasttense]

3. There were three doctors involved in this and not one of them

did anything? Now social services is looking into her for neglect and they found Mom hadn't been giving her children their immunizations either. Why didn't one of her doctors report her? Her neighbors did.

[Codeine]

4. Anti-science forces at work again!

Everyone's idiotic 'alternative' theories, paranoid fears about vaccinations, and a credulous mind-set that encourages people to buy into whatever clap-trap is spewed across the pages of this week's New Age nonsense bestseller are what causes crap like this.

Critical thinking skills and a solid science education are the keys to prevent this sort of thing.

[bleedingheart]

5. As a mother I think she is mentally ill

let her kill herself with her denial of her disease, but to let her children go untreated...that is just plain nuts.

I have two children with asthma.

All their lives they have had to take inhaled steriods and other treatments. It pains me to see my children be dependent upon drugs for their good health but I do it because I love my children.
I have seen my two babies suffer through pneumonia with lungs that aren't just healthy enough. I have bought a swimming pool, I have encouraged them to run and jump and play to expand lung capacity...but I know that it is not enough...I know that they need those inhalers....so to read about this situation....god it makes me sick.

That little girl was a beautiful little sprite and that goofy mother killed her with her denial.

[Raster]

6. I lost 85% of my gay close friends and peers in the late 80's and 90's

to AIDS. I was one of the first persons in the state of Texas to get tested, even when gay leaders advocated not getting tested. I have been involved with numerous awareness projects and have been associated with the L.A. AIDS project. For over twenty years I've studied and researched. I am a HIV- gay man. Every time I hear someone spout the bullshit that HIV does not cause AIDS, I want to slap the snot out of them. The plain, simple irrefutable fact is that EACH AND EVERY diagnosis of AIDS is always precursed by HIV infection. Always. There are no exceptions. That does not mean that everyone that is infected with HIV and is considered HIV+ will go on to develop AIDS. But I say again, every time a diagnosis of AIDS is returned, the person is ALWAYS HIV+. If HIV does not cause AIDS, it is so intrinsic in its pathology that the relationship between the two cannot be discounted.

By the way, I knew several "activists" years ago in my Dallas days that vehemently rejected HIV as the cause of AIDS. They're ALL dead.

[fortyfeetunder]

7. A class spin on this

I think another form of denial is this woman, was clueless about the studies asking HIV-positive women not to breastfeed their children. Or using the anti-virals during pregnancy can sometime prevent HIV infection in the newborn On top of that, she says:

"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?"

As if only impoverished and lower than middle class kids should be getting HIV/AIDS.... :puke:

[lolly]

8. Yes, I recoiled at that part too

And that's when I got a better picture of what was going on here.

Contrary to what some above have suggested, I don't think it was the Christian version of anti-science that was her problem.

Hers was sort of a new-agey, if I just get the right all-natural stuff and never let my kids watch tv and spend all my waking hours exposing them to the right things then they will be perfect and no harm will ever come to them type of nuttiness. It's also a form of control-freakism: if I just control everything that happens to my child, they will be safe and perfect.

I've met a few moms like that--perhaps not quite as extreme, but heading in that direction.

She says she doesn't believe she has HIV because she hasn't done anything to get it, IIRC.

One of the doctors who spoke on her behalf when Social Services tried to investigate was Fleiss--Heidi Fleiss's father.

[Codeine]

9. Airy-fairy New age BS

is just as scary as the Jesus-freak apocalyptic holy-roller BS. Two sides of the same coin of ignorance.

[freestyle]

10. Preventing mother to child transmission is fairly simple.

This woman did not take the proper precautions. Plenty of HIV positive women give birth to HIV negative children. A short course of AZT beginning in the last months of the pregnancy and continuing to delivery can almost eliminate mother to child transmission. Breast feeding is, of course, out of the question.

But, please don't get the idea that HIV positive women should not have children and could not have perfectly healthy children.