About this user
Christine Joy Maggiore (July 25, 1956 December 27, 2008) was an HIV-positive activist who promoted the view that HIV was not the cause of AIDS. She was the founder of Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives (since renamed Dead & Dumb, Darwin in Action), an organization which questions the link between HIV and AIDS in the face of all available scientific evidence, and supports HIV-positive pregnant women who want to avoid taking anti-HIV medication (the same way Maggiore did, resulting in the death of her 3 year old daughter of untreated AIDS at age 3) Maggiore authored and self-published the book What If Everything You Thought You Knew about AIDS Was Wrong? And then died of disease consistent with AIDS on December 27, 2008. The only shame is she didn't die in time to save Eliza Jane's life.
Maggiore's promotion of AIDS denialism had long been controversial, particularly after the death of her 3-year-old daughter, Eliza Jane Scovill, in May 2005. The Los Angeles County coroner concluded that Eliza Jane had died of Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia resulting from untreated AIDS. Consistent with her belief that HIV was harmless, Maggiore had not taken medication to reduce the risk of transmission of HIV to her daughter during pregnancy, and she did not have Eliza Jane tested for HIV during her daughter's lifetime. Maggiore hired a veterinary toxicologist (and AIDS denialist) to produce an "alternative" autopsy report to support her delusion that her daughter did not die of AIDS. Of course the 2nd "autopsy" report is a naked fabrication that serves only to document the incompetence of the toxicologist.
