Bioethics is the study of the moral and ethical choices faced in medical research and in the treatment of patients. Dr. Nancy Dubler is the Director of the Division of Bioethics at the Montefiore Medical Center in Bronx, New York. As part of the ABC Prime Time segment on Christine Maggiore that aired December 8, 2005, Dubler made the following statements regarding Maggiore’s decision to not subject her children to HIV testing:

“I would say that the next time a child is born to an HIV-positive woman and that woman refuses to have the child tested and treated if positive, that the state has a moral obligation to proceed immediately…There are only three choices in this kind of situation: Take the child, take the child, take the child.”

Read about the lack of citations to back these comments up…

The article clearly favors the LA County Coroner James Ribe, quoting him saying “The findings are clear-cut, I’m afraid, and the findings are unequivocal…The body shows what it shows. The organs show what they show. That hasn’t changed before, since or ever.” They did not appear to have challenged him to provide additional evidence. They asked an establishment AIDS doctor, Dr. Harry Vinters, chief of neuropathology at UCLA Medical Center, for his opinion and, not surprisingly, he supported the coroner saying that the diagnosis “is really quite straightforward. It’s not a subtle or tricky diagnosis.” They did not provide any evidence for readers beyond this statement of opinion.

Christine Maggiore is not, and does not present herself as, “HIV-positive.”  She tested positive for HIV in 1992 but has received mixed test results since then.  According to her published testimonial, available on her group’s Web site and at the front of her book, some subsequent HIV tests revealed negative and inconclusive results.  This is the very reversal that led her, a mainstream AIDS activist at the time, to question the HIV-positive diagnosis itself and the accuracy of the test.

To describe Christine Maggiore as “HIV-positive,” without qualification and background, is therefore not correct.

If, however, Christine is “HIV-positive,” her healthy survival for 13 years while taking none of the recommended drugs for this condition is certainly worthy of investigation.

Christine found that her questions about her mysterious sero-conversion were not welcome at the organization for which she was a spokesperson, so she looked elsewhere for research.  What she came up with led to the research in her book.  She did not, as you imply, go from “HIV-positive” to “radical” with barely a step in between.  To leave this out is to distort her work and to leave the public dangerously in the dark as to a public health matter, namely, the questionable accuracy of the HIV test.

I was, however, unaware that the pathologist hired by Christine and her husband to review EJ’s cause of death was on the board of her organization.  Please confirm that this is correct and verified by ABC.  Please also reveal the affiliations of ABC’s independent pathologist, as this is just as relevant to the credibility of those results.  Is this pathologist saying specifically that EJ showed signs of pneumonia?

I would say that the consequences to the Maggiore-Scovill family are severe if this story about them is allowed to stand without rebuttal.  Not only have Christine and her husband, Robin Scovill, been exposed to a police investigation; they have also been found guilty without trial on the front page of the Los Angeles Times.  Christine has tried unsuccessfully (as far as I know so far) to correct the record at the Times, or even to publish a letter to the editor.

Response from Christine Maggiore: Thanks for writing in to ABC. I appreciate your support and your interest  in following this story.

As I stated on a radio interview on KPFK recently, yes, Al-Bayati is on the Alive & Well advisory board. To me that means I can count on him to give an honest and factual accounting from an expert perspective. As a parent, I want to know why my child died, so I turned to someone I could trust to go strictly by the facts. I was not and am not seeking exoneration or to appear right. I am seeking the truth. As any attorney in criminal law will tell you, there are great numbers of pathologists and other experts for hire who, if you go through enough of them, will tell you what you need or want to hear. We wanted one who would tell us the truth.

We had no idea what happened to our daughter when we sent the autopsy report to Al-Bayati for review and had no idea what Al-Bayati’s conclusion would be. It didn’t even occur to me that I should not allow an expert I know and trust to analyze the case because it might appear inappropriate on a TV show. We wanted to know why our daughter died and Al-Bayati is uniquely qualified in his field.

From what I understand, there are very few dual board certified toxicologists with a degree in comparative human pathology with the experience he has in unexplained death in children and fewer still with the record he has for taking unpopular positions when the facts lead him there. Several pathologists who concluded the same as Al-Bayati would not put their name on a report or speak for the record. They wanted no part of the controversy.

Despite the risks of being associated with me, Al-Bayati’s report has been accepted for publication in a medical journal with 11 medical doctors and a dozen scientists on their review board who don’t know me, and I have no idea who they are either.

Please note we have not paid Al-Bayati for his autopsy analysis and his board position with Alive & Well always has been that of an unpaid advisor.

Ultimately, the facts are the facts and the facts are what must stand up to challenge.

Thanks again for writing,

Christine