THE DISBELIEVER
By Connie Chung

ABC News 20/20 24 Aug. 2001

Announcer: From ABC News, around the world and into your home, this is 20/20 with Barbara Walters.

Announcer [over film clips of Maggiore and family]: Tonight, a woman out on a limb. HIV-positive, and having unprotected sex with her husband. HIV-positive, she breastfed her child. HIV-positive, and pregnant again.

Christine Maggiore: I'm a healthy person. Charlie's a healthy boy.

Dr. 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 [to Maggiore]: 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.' And now, from Times Square in New York, sitting in for Barbara Walters, John Stossel.

John Stossel: 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 could 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.'

Maggiore [in yard of home at Charlie's birthday party]: Present time! Present time!

Chung: It's a picture-perfect day in the San Fernando Valley, and Charlie Scovill is celebrating his third birthday.

Maggiore [to Charlie with present]: You get to open it and see what's inside.

Chung: With presents on the lawn, burgers on the grill, and a Happy Jump in the backyard, it looks like the American dream.

Chung [voice over footage of Maggiore blowing bubbles to Charlie and friends]: 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.

Maggiore: The idea that HIV causes AIDS is an idea that has not been proven to be correct or true.

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?

Maggiore: I'm saying that there are many valid, vital reasons to go back and rethink what we've been told.

Angry man in audience to Maggiore on stage at panel: Let's see your proof! Let's see your proof!

Chung [voice over footage of Maggiore at panel signing books]: Activists attack her. Dissidents 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. [Image of book cover]

Chung [to Maggiore]: 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?

Maggiore: I don't think it takes a medical degree or a scientific degree when your life is on the line.

Krim [to Chung]: I think she's deluded. And because the reality was too painful for her to accept.

Chung [voice over footage of Krim receiving medal from former US president Bill Clinton]: Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Dr. Mathilde Krim is the co-founder of the American Foundation for AIDS Research, AmFAR, which has raised more than $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.

Krim [to Chung]: The problem here is she's spreading the delusion to others, without any doubt that she's maybe wrong, you know. And this is terrible. This is what makes me angry.

Maggiore [to Chung]: 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.

Chung [voice over photos of Maggiore]: Maggiore never dreamed that 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.

Chung [to Maggiore]: Did you ever use intravenous drugs?

Maggiore: No.

Chung: Were you sexually promiscuous.

Maggiore: No. I would describe myself as a pretty average single adult person. I had been involved in a long-term relationship, what I believed was a monogamous relationship, at least from my end.

Chung [voice over images of Maggiore]: In 1992, two years after the relationship ended, Maggiore took an HIV test during a routine medical exam..

Chung [to Maggiore]: Do you remember the moment that you were told you were HIV-positive?

Maggiore: Oh, yeah, very clearly. It was a very long moment. I saw the typical photographs 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.

[Black and white photos of skeletal men covered with sores in hospital beds]

Chung [voice over images of pensive Maggiore on beach at sunset]: 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.

Maggiore [to Chung]: Yes, 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.

Chung: 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.

Maggiore [to Chung]: I truly believed, based on the day and the result, I was either living or dying.

Chung [over footage of Maggiore] 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.

Chung[over footage of Duesberg in lab and Maggiore at home reading Duesberg's book 'Inventing the AIDS Virus']: Then she came across the writings of Dr. Peter Duesberg, a controversial virologist at the University of California at Berkeley who had been saying for years that HIV could not cause AIDS.

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.

Chung [voice over graphic of immune suppressing risk factors]: 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.

Maggiore [to Chung]: The diseases 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.

Chung [to Krim]: Does HIV cause AIDS?

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.

Chung [voice over footage of Maggiore on stage at concert]: At this sold-out benefit concert by the platinum-selling band Foo Fighters, thousands of teenaged fans cheered this rebel with a cause.

Voice of audience member: Everybody give her a hand!

Maggiore [on stage to audience]: I encourage all of you to question what you've been told about HIV and AIDS!

Chung [voice over footage of Maggiore working at exhibit booth and over photo of Maggiore with President Thabo Mbeki]: Last summer, Maggiore stepped onto the world stage at the 13th International AIDS Conference in Durban where she met with South Africa's president, Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki reportedly became intrigued by the dissidents' views while surfing the Net. [Voice over footage of protestors] 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. [Image of AmFAR ad with highlighted headline 'HIV Causes AIDS. To say otherwise costs lives']

Chung [to Krim:] Is Christine Maggiore putting lives in jeopardy?

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.

Chung [over footage of lab images]: 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.

Krim: To see others, on spurious, disingenuous arguments, fight us and undermine what we're doing is very, very difficult to accept. And frankly offensive.

Chung: Offensive?

Dr. Krim: Yes.

Chung: 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 that Maggiore was HIV-positive when they became involved.

Scovill: I just never really bought into the premise that if you have sex with the wrong person, you're going to be infected and your life as you knew it is over. I just never really bought that.

Chung [over photo of Maggiore pregnant and husband Scovill]: Shortly after they became intimate, Maggiore discovered she was pregnant.

Maggiore [to Chung and with husband Scovill]: Well, first we laughed, and then we cried, and then we laughed.

Scovill: Yeah, we yeah, exactly.

Chung [over footage of Scovill and Maggiore at baby shower]: 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 that Maggiore would transmit the deadly virus to her unborn child unless she took powerful anti-HIV drugs like AZT. Maggiore refused.

Maggiore [to Chung]: I did not want to expose my growing child to toxins during pregnancy.

Krim [to Chung]: I can't believe a mother would put her child at risk. This is where I say good luck to her, because she is taking a terrible chance.

Chung [voice over footage of Charlie's birth]: 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. [Over footage of newborn Charlie breastfeeding] 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.

Maggiore [in footage of meeting with San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown]: I'm Christine Maggiore, from HEAL, Los Angeles.

Chung [over footage of meeting]: She even breast-fed Charlie, then more than a year old, during this meeting with San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.

Maggiore [to Brown in footage]: And antibodies can't cause disease, and they don't predict future illness.

Chung [voice over footage of Maggiore at home] Maggiore didn't know it then, but her public display of her private convictions would backfire. When Charlie was 2 1/2, an anonymous call was made to the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services. The caller complained that Charlie was malnourished and was being breast-fed by his HIV-positive mother.

Maggiore [in footage at home talking on phone]: Right as we speak, a representative from Child Protective Services is approaching our front door..

Chung [voice over footage of woman approaching door]: The woman coming to the door was a county social worker with the power to take Charlie away.

Maggiore [in footage holding sleeping Charlie following CPS visit]: 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 then it matters a lot.

Chung: Charlie's pediatrician, Dr. Paul Fleiss, came to Maggiore's defense. [footage of Fleiss working in office wearing stethoscope]

Fleiss: Charlie is a very healthy boy. He has never been sick. I think his mother takes very good care of him.

Chung: Charlie was allowed to remain at home.

Chung [to Maggiore]: If you are wrong, aren't you afraid what you're saying could profoundly affect not only your own health, but the lives of thousands of people?

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.

Chung [interrupting]: I know, but you could affect their lives.

Maggiore: I hope to affect their lives.

Chung: But in a detrimental way. If you're wrong.

Maggiore: I'm not in a position to be right or wrong. I'm providing people with information that they can use to make informed choices about their life and their health.

Chung [voice over footage of Charlie and family playing at an arcade]: Yet when it comes to her son, Maggiore has chosen to remain uninformed. Like his father, he's never been tested.

Chung [to Maggiore:] A lot of people would think that it was irresponsible of you to not test him. Doesn't he have a right to know?

Maggiore: I don't need to risk introducing into his life a label that will wrongly describe him as ill when he's not.

Krim: She's afraid of testing him, she's afraid of testing her husband, because she's in denial and she is afraid.

Maggiore [to Charlie in footage]: What are you looking for?

Chung: Experts say that the incubation period between HIV infection and full-blown AIDS is 10 years.

Krim: She is in fact a rather common occurrence of somebody who is a slow non-progressor.

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 somebody who's HIV-positive.

Krim: She is still in, within, you know, the asymptomatic period. That may last a few more years.

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.

Chung [to Maggiore]: There are people who think that you are just like those that did not believe that the Holocaust existed, flat-earth theorists. That's what you are!

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.

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 how to face reality and deal with it.

Chung [over image of Maggiore on cover of current issue of Mothering magazine with 'No AZT' symbol painted on her stomach, and footage of Maggiore and Charlie at playground]: 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 pregnancy. As with her first child, Maggiore is rolling the dice against a dreaded disease. And it's winner-take-all.

Maggiore [to Charlie in footage of the two sitting on grass at park, Charlie's hand on her stomach]: Well, did you? Want to say hello to your sister?

Charlie: No, I already said hello in my brain.

Stossel: If you'd like to talk on-line with Christine Maggiore, go to abcnews.com for more information.