What follows is the complete transcript of the segment.
ABC News 20/20 ANNOUNCER: From ABC News, around the world and into your home, this is 20/20 with Barbara Walters. Tonight, a woman out on a limb, HIV positive and having unprotected sex with her husband. HIV positive, she breast-fed her child from day one. HIV positive and pregnant again. CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: I'm a healthy person. Charlie's a healthy boy. MATHILDE KRIM: I think she's deluded. ANNOUNCER: The story of a mother hell bent on defying the conventional wisdom that HIV causes AIDS. CONNIE CHUNG, ABC NEWS: There are people who think that you are just like those who did not believe that the Holocaust existed. That's what you are. ANNOUNCER: Connie Chung with "The Disbeliever." ===== ANNOUNCER: And now, from Times Square in New York, sitting in for Barbara Walters, John Stossel. JOHN STOSSEL, ABC NEWS: Good evening and welcome to 20/20. Barbara Walters has the night off. Our first story may make you angry. You're about to meet a woman who's infected with HIV, but she refuses to take any of the drugs which might fight the virus. Now you can say that's her choice, it's her body, but what about her husband, with whom she has unprotected sex, and what about the kids they're having together? What she's doing seems cruelly irresponsible, yet some people cheer it. And she's now made converts around the world. Connie Chung has some hard questions for a mother we call "The Disbeliever." CONNIE CHUNG, ABC NEWS (voice-over): It's a picture perfect day in the San Fernando Valley and Charlie Scovill is celebrating his third birthday. With presents on the lawn, burgers on the grill, and a happy jump in the backyard, it looks like the American dream. But this little boy's future may be as fragile as bubbles on a summer breeze. Christine Maggiore, Charlie's mother, is HIV positive and experts say there's at least a one in four chance that Charlie is infected with the virus that causes AIDS. But don't feel sorry for this little boy or his mother. She says HIV can't harm them. CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: The idea that HIV causes AIDS is an idea that has not been proven to be correct or true. CONNIE CHUNG: Wait a minute. The medical community has been telling us for two decades that HIV causes AIDS. Are you saying that HIV does not cause AIDS? CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: I'm saying that there are many valid, vital reasons to go back and rethink what we've been told. CONNIE CHUNG (voice-over): Activists attack her, visitants admire her. AIDS experts wish she would just go away. But Christine Maggiore's influence is growing. Her controversial book, "What if everything you thought you knew about AIDS was wrong?" questions even the most basic medical and scientific findings about AIDS. You don't even have a college degree. How could all of them with their years and years of training and research be so wrong and you be so right? CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: I don't think it takes a medical degree or a scientific degree when your life is on the line. MATHILDE KRIM: I think she's deluded and because the reality was too painful for her to accept. CONNIE CHUNG (voice-over): Presidential Medal of Freedom winner, Dr. Mathilde Krim, is the cofounder of the American Foundation for AIDS Research, AmFAR, which has raised more than a $100 million to research and find a cure for AIDS. A scientist herself, with a Ph.D. in biology, Dr. Krim fears that Maggiore is doing incalculable harm in the fight against AIDS. MATHILDE KRIM: The problem here is she's spreading a delusion to others without any doubt that she may be wrong, you know. And this is terrible. This is what makes me angry. CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: I could be angry with Mathilde Krim. After all, it's her paradigm that says I should have started AIDS drug therapies, I should have been living as though I were dying. I should not have had a child. And I should be quietly succumbing somewhere to illness. CONNIE CHUNG (voice-over): Maggiore never dreamed she was at risk for AIDS. By the time she was 30, she was a successful entrepreneur, running a million dollar clothing company in Florence, Italy. Did you use intravenous drugs? CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: No. CONNIE CHUNG: Were you sexually promiscuous? CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: No. I would describe myself as a pretty average single adult person. I had been involved in a long-term, what I believed was a monogamous relationship, at least from my end. CONNIE CHUNG (voice-over): In 1992, two years after the relationship ended, Maggiore took an HIV test during a routine medical exam. Do you remember the moment you were told that you were HIV positive? CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: Oh, yes. Very clearly. It was a very long moment. I saw the typical photographs that you see of somebody who has AIDS and thought that would be my future, that I would lead a miserable, isolated life of illness and an untimely death. CONNIE CHUNG (voice-over): Maggiore soon learned that her Italian ex-boyfriend had also tested HIV positive. Believing she was terminally ill, she threw herself into warning others about the dangers of AIDS. CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: I encouraged people to take tests. I called them accurate and specific. And I told people that everything added up in the world of AIDS science, and I believed that with my heart. CONNIE CHUNG (voice-over): Maggiore's conviction was shaken to the core when a year later, another HIV test came back indeterminate. Her next test was positive, and the next one negative. CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: I truly believed that based on the day and the result, I was either living or dying. CONNIE CHUNG (voice-over): Frustrated and angry, Maggiore desperately searched for answers. But the more she read, the more questions she had. She was shocked to learn that HIV tests measure antibodies, not the virus itself, and that no scientist could explain exactly how HIV causes AIDS. Then she came across the writings of Dr. Peter Duesberg, a controversial virologist at the University of California Berkeley, who had been saying for years that HIV could not cause AIDS. CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: I realized that what I had been taught and what I was teaching other people did not add up. Many times it was simply wrong. CONNIE CHUNG (voice-over): Maggiore became convinced that AIDS is caused, not by HIV, but by known immune suppressing risk factors, such as recreational drug use, toxic AIDS treatments, even poverty and malnutrition. CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: The disease that we call AIDS can range from chronic yeast infections, to certain forms of cancer, to certain kinds of pneumonias. These happen to people who don't test HIV positive. CONNIE CHUNG: Does HIV cause AIDS? MATHILDE KRIM: Absolutely. Absolutely. The evidence that HIV causes AIDS is as good as the evidence that exists that polio is caused by a polio virus and measles by a measles virus. CONNIE CHUNG (voice-over): At this sold-out benefit concert by the platinum selling band the Foo Fighters, thousands of teen-age fans cheered this rebel with a cause. CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: I urge all of you to question what you've been told about HIV and AIDS. CONNIE CHUNG (voice-over): Last summer, Maggiore stepped onto the world stage at the thirteenth international AIDS conference in Durban where she met with South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki reportedly became intrigued by the dissident's views while surfing the Net. Protests erupted when Mbeki stunned the world by questioning whether HIV was, in fact, the cause of the AIDS epidemic devastating his country. AmFAR shot back with this full page ad in The New York Times. CONNIE CHUNG (to Mathilde Krim): Is Christine Maggiore putting lives in jeopardy? MATHILDE KRIM: I believe she is putting lives in jeopardy. And what she says she has learned draws people to the conclusion that they can throw away their condoms and stop taking medications. CONNIE CHUNG (voice-over): Mainstream scientists say the evidence is irrefutable. HIV can be found in the blood of almost 100 percent of those diagnosed with epidemic AIDS and virtually no one without HIV will develop AIDS. MATHILDE KRIM: To see others with spurious, disingenuous arguments fight us and undermine what we're doing is very, very difficult to accept, and frankly offensive. CONNIE CHUNG: Offensive? MATHILDE KRIM: Yes.
CONNIE CHUNG (voice-over): Maggiore knows that according to statistics, she
has a 95 percent chance of dying from AIDS within the next six years unless
she is treated. But not only has she refused to take anti-HIV drugs, she has
consistently broken all the rules, including the warnings about unprotected
sex. Her husband, documentary filmmaker, Robin Scovill, who provided
additional video footage for this report, knew Maggiore was HIV positive when
they became involved.
ROBIN SCOVILL: I just never really bought the premise that if you have sex with the wrong person you would be infected and life as you know it is over. I just never really bought that. CONNIE CHUNG (voice-over): Shortly after they became intimate, Maggiore discovered she was pregnant. CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: Well, first we laughed and then we cried. Then we laughed. ROBIN SCOVILL: Yes, exactly. CONNIE CHUNG (voice-over): They had made a decision to play Russian roulette with their own lives, but would they be willing to gamble with their baby's life as well? Doctors warned that there was a 25 percent chance Maggiore would transmit the deadly virus to her unborn child unless she took powerful anti-HIV drugs, like AZT. Maggiore refused. CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: I did not want to expose my growing child to toxins during pregnancy. MATHILDE KRIM: I can't believe a mother that would put the child at risk. This is where I say good luck to her because she has taken a terrible chance. CONNIE CHUNG (voice-over): Because she refused to take AZT, no hospital or clinic would accept Maggiore as a maternity patient. A midwife finally agreed to help her with a natural birth at home. Charles Dexter Scovill entered the world in an inflatable swimming pool in Maggiore's living room. And true to her beliefs, Maggiore made yet another radical decision. She began breast-feeding her child, even though experts say HIV can be transmitted through breast milk. She even breast-fed Charlie, then more than a year old, during this meeting with San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown. CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: Antibodies can't cause disease and they don't produce future illness. CONNIE CHUNG (voice-over): Maggiore didn't know it then, but her public display of her private convictions would backfire. When Charlie was two and a half, an anonymous call was made to the LA County Department of Children and Family Services. The caller complained that Charlie was malnourished and was being breast-fed by his HIV positive mother. CHRISTINE MAGGIORE (video footage): As we speak, a representative from Child Protective Services is approaching our front door. CONNIE CHUNG (voice-over): The woman coming to the door was a county social worker with the power to take Charlie away. CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: It's insane. It's just completely insane. It's like the world is upside down. But when you're inside of it and it's your life and your child and your everything, it matters a lot. CONNIE CHUNG (voice-over): Charlie's pediatrician, Dr. Paul Fleiss, came to Maggiore's defense. DR. PAUL FLEISS: Charlie is a very healthy boy and he's never been sick. I think his mother takes very good care of him. CONNIE CHUNG (voice-over): Charlie was allowed to remain at home. If you are wrong, aren't you afraid that what you are saying could profoundly affect not only your own health, but the lives of thousands of people? CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: I think I'm successful when I get people to think and that's all I'm asking is for people to think about these issues. What I do is not about a philosophy. CONNIE CHUNG: I know, but you could affect their lives. CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: I hope to affect their lives. CONNIE CHUNG: I mean in a detrimental way, if you are wrong. CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: I'm not in a position to be right or wrong, I'm providing information that people can use to make informed choices about their life and their health. CONNIE CHUNG (voice-over): Yet when it comes to her son, Maggiore has chosen to remain uninformed. Like his father, he's never been tested. A lot of people would think that it was irresponsible of you to not test him. Doesn't he have a right to know? CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: I don't need to risk introducing into his life a label that will wrongly describe him as ill when he's not. MATHILDE KRIM: She's afraid of testing him, she's afraid of testing her husband because she's in denial and she's afraid. CONNIE CHUNG (voice-over): Experts say that the incubation period between HIV infection and full blown AIDS is 10 years. MATHILDE KRIM: She is infected. It is a common occurrence of somebody who is a slow, non-progressor. CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: Mathilde Krim would describe me as a slow progressor, as if to make progress I need to become ill, then I'll be fulfilling my obligation as someone who's HIV positive. MATHILDE KRIM: She is still in -- within, you know, the asymptomatic period. That may last a few more years. CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: What kind of system is that? What kind of language is that to use to put on me, to describe me? I mean, there are so many people, I'm not an exception. We progress every day in our lives by staying healthy and productive and off of toxic drugs. CONNIE CHUNG: There are people who think that you are just like those who did not believe that the Holocaust existed, flat earth theorists, that's what you are. CHRISTINE MAGGIORE: Well, what I recall of history is that the flat-earthers were in the majority and the people who questioned the idea of the flat earth were in the minority, and finally they were listened to. MATHILDE KRIM: I wish she were right, but she's not. It would be nice, you know, if it was not -- if we didn't have an HIV virus in this world. But we have it, and we have to learn to face reality and deal with it. CONNIE CHUNG (voice-over): Right or wrong, Maggiore remains convinced that she's beaten the odds. Today, she's five months pregnant with her second child, a daughter. She's not taking AZT or other anti-HIV medications during her pregnancy. As with her first child, Maggiore is rolling the dice against a dreaded disease and it's winner take all. ----- Go here to read the transcript of the 20/20 live chat with Maggiore. ===== Ms. Maggiore can be reached at Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives, 11684 Ventura Boulevard, Studio City, CA 91604. Telephone: (877) 92-ALIVE. E-mail: christine@aliveandwell.org. Her book questioning the cause, identification, and treatment of AIDS is available through www.amazon.com or the Alive & Well website at www.aliveandwell.org.
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