Rest in Peace, Christine Maggiore
Christine Maggiore died on December 27, 2008. She was 52.
She’s an example of a sad and destructive movement based on a misunderstanding of how science works. Maggiore believed that HIV does not cause AIDS. She spoke out repeatedly and in public on the issue, writing a book and founding a non-profit devoted to contradicting existing ideas about HIV. She practiced what she preached; she refused to take anti-retroviral drugs for her HIV infection. She had two kids, breastfed them, and refused to allow them to be tested for HIV. In a way, you have to respect the way she stuck to her convictions in the face of public criticism. She was trying to protect people from what she saw as a dangerous medical establishment, and she took an awful lot of heat for it.
But Christine Maggiore was wrong.
Horribly, tragically, painfully wrong. Her four-year-old daughter died of AIDS. Maggiore herself died of complications, most likely from AIDS. (no autopsy was performed) And the movement she championed has done terrible damage to human health.
HIV causes AIDS. The evidence for this causality is overwhelming. Things like malnutrition and other infections may weaken the body so that HIV spreads faster, but HIV causes AIDS, and untreated AIDS destroys the immune system and then kills the person infected.
Believing otherwise has tragic consequences. Former President of South Africa, Thabo Mbkei, does not believe that HIV causes AIDS. While president, he pushed the Ministry of Health to focus on quack treatments and palliative care measures. 365,000 people died because of that decision. They would have lived if they had been on anti-retroviral (HIV-fighting) drugs. Good nutrition, clean water, and a safe place to live can do a lot to extend the lives of people with AIDS. It’s an infection made worse by poverty. But these are supplements to treatment, not a treatment itself. To treat AIDS, you need ARVs.
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