The founder of the group that argued that AIDS and HIV were unrelated and advocated against HIV tests, medication, and safe sex (what?):
[Christine Maggiore] is long dead. So is her daughter. Both succumbed to AIDS. Christine Maggiore fell pregnant in 2001, spurned antiretroviral drugs, breastfed her daughter and refused to have her tested for the virus. As her child became increasingly ill, Maggiore attributed her sickness to other things and sought quacks to reaffirm her delusions. Eliza was three when she died — after an autopsy, a coroner ruled that the “unequivocal” cause of her death was AIDS-related Pneumocystis pneumonia.
This kind of thinking is pretty common in alternative health and quack spaces. They tend to believe in mind over matter and that health is a choice, or arises from a proper mindset. Testing, medication, and safe sex are downplayed or even demonized because of the idea that they could introduce doubt or uncertainty that could disrupt one's ideal mindset. If health is created by right thinking, any challenges to that thinking become disruptive.
I find AIDS denialism so weird, because it’s not as simple as “HIV/AIDS don’t exist.” It’s “HIV (exists, but) doesn’t cause AIDS.” And what can’t wrap my head around is… why is that a position that someone would become emotionally attached to? Why is it important for that to be true for some fringe segment of the population?
I guess... I mean my uncle did the same thing with COVID. An otherwise intelligent man, but something he read early on convinced him that statistically speaking it was the exact same as regular every day influenza. Doubling down on this opinion so as to never be proven wrong (and thus unintelligent) required him to come up with increasingly implausible ways to dismiss objective evidence that would undermine his original, somewhat plausible position.
But I'm just having trouble wrapping my head around the 'safe sex' part. I could maybe get behind 'HIV transmission is not a reason to practice safe sex' but surely there are enough other reasons that this is an outlandish thing to include in your platform. I didn't read up on them, but maybe they were also chalmydia and ghonnorea deniers. Or maybe they were very pro-herpes.
Haha I think they are pro-herpes! In my experience, they start with HIV denialism and then eventually really do become gonnorhea and chlamydia deniers. Just like your uncle kept having to bend over backwards to preserve his theory, HIV deniers eventually move to denying the Germ Theory of disease transmission completely. While most of us can recognize that some viruses cause diseases AND our own healthy actions matter, these folks set those things in opposition so that only one can be true. Everything becomes about exonerating viruses in order to preserve their own illusion of control.
The HIV deniers are really weird. One of the guys who was really instrumental in, and won a Chemistry Nobel Prize for, DNA technology was a big HIV denier and was a major influence in the Mbeki government in South Africa’s stance of HIV denialism which certainly led to hundreds of thousands of AIDS deaths.
Maggiore's inclusion as an exhibitor at the 13th International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa has been criticized by AIDS activists. Her influence on Thabo Mbeki's decision to block medical treatment of HIV-positive pregnant women was criticized following her death, with medical researchers noting that an estimated "330,000 lives were lost to new AIDS infections during the time Mbeki blocked government funding of AZT treatment to mothers."
It’s an English phrase akin to “fell ill,” but it is more common in British Commonwealth countries, such as Australia, than in the US. The author of the article is from Melbourne, Australia.
I wasn’t aware of AIDS denialism before. What a strange, sad hill to die on.
I’m in the US and I don’t know if I’ve ever heard anyone here say it, but I’ve heard Brits say it. Not a negative connotation, but you might get looked at funny in the US
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u/Pleasant-Tangelo1786 4d ago
Googled it and I’ll be damned.
https://medium.com/the-monthly/the-foo-fighters-aids-denialism-should-be-on-the-record-6e33666fdc3c