You don't hear as much about them as you used to, but there still are advocates who deny that HIV is the virus that causes AIDS. One of the most prominent, Christine Maggiore, died late last month at age 52. The Los Angeles Times reported that Maggiore had been treated for pneumonia in the months before her December 27 death, but no official cause has been released. Because she died under the care of a doctor, the paper reported, no autopsy will be performed unless requested by her family, which seems unlikely.
In 2005, Maggiore's 3-year-old daughter died of AIDS-related pneumonia, according to the Los Angeles County Coroner's office. Subsequently, Maggiore and her husband Robin Scovill sued the county after their own autopsy claimed that the girl died of an allergic reaction to an antibiotic. The case is pending.
But Maggiore is hardly the only denialist to have died at a young age. Three well-known San Francisco denialists (they prefer to call themselves dissidents) died in the last several years: David Pasquarelli, Ronnie Burke, and Michael Bellefountaine. All were instrumental in turning ACT UP/San Francisco from a respected AIDS activist group into a national laughing stock – to the point that ACT UP/Golden Gate (the real ACT UP group in San Francisco) had to change its name to Survive AIDS in order to avoid confusion. Pasquarelli developed PCP, anemia, thrush, meningitis, mycobacterium, and disseminated CMV before he died in March 2004 at age 37, according to www.AIDSTruth.org. Burke died of AIDS in 2003 at age 47. Bellefountaine died of a systemic infection in 2007 at age 41. There are five pages of decedents on the AIDSTruth Web site. It's a shame because many were in the prime of life. Compounding the senseless loss is the fact that for more than a decade, AIDS medications have been available and have helped millions manage the disease. But you can't start taking medication when you're on the brink of death, you need to start the regimens while under a doctor's care in a relatively healthy state.
The crucial problem with the AIDS denialists is that their deadly misinformation campaign targets those who don't know better. Young people in the United States who became adults in the last 12 years or so may think that being HIV-positive is akin to having some other controllable chronic disease; it is not. There are, for some cases, severe side effects from the medications and the regimens have not been effective for everyone. HIV is not a picnic, as an earlier public service campaign espoused.
But if you do not seek treatment, the HIV will eventually increase and your body will succumb to opportunistic infections that can often be the cause of death.
Having access to medication is, of course, imperative. And it's in that area of public policy where the denialists have caused the most harm.
For years, former South African President Thabo Mbeki was influenced by AIDS denialists. His country's health policies prohibited the antiretroviral medicines, even as neighboring countries Botswana and Namibia, both of which had AIDS epidemics of similar scale, took action, according to a Harvard study that was released last November. Those Harvard researchers concluded that the South African government would have prevented the premature deaths of 365,000 people earlier this decade had the antiretrovirals been available, a front-page article in the New York Times recently reported.
Thankfully, Mbeki is no longer in power in South Africa. His successor, Kgalema Motlanthe, acted on his first day of office several months ago to remove the health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who the Times called "a polarizing figure who had proposed garlic, lemon juice, and beetroot as AIDS remedies."
The new health minister, Barbara Hogan, has brought South Africa back to modern medicine.
"I feel ashamed that we have to own up to what Harvard is saying," Hogan told the Times, "The era of denialism is over completely in South Africa."
"We contend that the South African government acted as a major obstacle in the provision of medication to patients with AIDS," the Harvard study states. It also notes that "except among very few scientists, such as Peter Duesberg, the scientific community has accepted HIV as the cause of AIDS for more than 20 years."
It was Duesberg and others who so influenced Mbeki that he turned his back on his own country's AIDS crisis and his own countrymen. Maggiore had her sphere of influence, too, setting up a hotline and Web site that catered to HIV-positive pregnant women in the U.S. who shunned AIDS medications and wanted to breast-feed their children. Never mind that perinatal AIDS is almost non-existent in this country, thanks to medical advances.
The denialists are free to make personal decisions about their medical care, but Maggiore's recent death should serve as a wake-up call to those still prattling the dissident misinformation. More importantly, those who may be considering rejecting HIV medications should think again, and talk to a medical professional.