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Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives (formerly HEAL, Health Education AIDS Liaison) is a 501(c) non-profit organization of AIDS denialists. [1] The organization's stated mission is to "present information that raises questions about the accuracy of HIV tests, the safety and effectiveness of AIDS drug treatments, and the validity of most common assumptions about HIV and AIDS." [2] The organization's founder, Christine Maggiore (who died from AIDS-related complications in 2008) estimated in 2005 that the organization had assisted about 50 HIV-positive mothers in developing legal strategies to avoid having their children tested or treated for HIV. [3]
Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives was founded in 1995 by Christine Maggiore, who tested HIV-positive in 1992. Although Maggiore was initially active in the AIDS community, providing AIDS and HIV education through AIDS Project Los Angeles, she later came to question her diagnosis. Ultimately, she came to believe that HIV was not the cause of AIDS, and formed Alive & Well to expound her views.
Maggiore became a controversial figure following the death of her 3-year-old daughter, Eliza Jane Scovill. Eliza Jane was never tested for HIV and died on May 16, 2005, of Pneumocystis pneumonia in the setting of advanced AIDS. [4] Maggiore did not believe that Eliza Jane had AIDS and instead attributed her death to an allergic reaction to amoxicillin. [5] Mohammed Al-Bayati, a board member of Alive & Well and a veterinary toxicologist, issued his own report arguing that a drug reaction, not AIDS, was responsible for Eliza Jane's death. [6] Eliza Jane's death was the subject of reports by ABC Primetime Live [7] and the Los Angeles Times ; [3] several independent medical experts contacted by these programs agreed unequivocally that Eliza Jane had died of complications of AIDS.
On December 29, 2008, Maggiore died at the age of 52. She was under a doctor's care and was being treated for pneumonia. A doctor familiar with the family suggests that anti-HIV drugs could have prevented her death, but Maggiore's fellow AIDS denialists state that her pneumonia was not related to AIDS and that she died as a result of an alternative medicine treatment. [8]
The advisory board of Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives includes many prominent AIDS denialists, such as Harvey Bialy, Peter Duesberg, Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos, Gavin de Becker, [9] Peggy O'Mara of Mothering (magazine), [9] and David Rasnick, [2] and Nobel prize winner Kary Mullis.
The organization's membership has been subject to attrition as members die from HIV/AIDS, or leave after noticing the heightened rate at which fellow members do so. [10]
Although there is extensive scientific evidence to the contrary, [11] [12] Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives promotes the viewpoint that HIV is not the cause of AIDS. The organization also espouses the viewpoints that: [2]
Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives encourages the use of alternative therapies for HIV-positive people in place of mainstream treatments. Examples of treatments advanced by Alive & Well as substitutes for antiretroviral therapy include herbal and nutritional therapy, naturopathic medicine, homeopathy, therapeutic enemas, acupuncture, and "imagery". [2]
Scientists and AIDS activists have decried the activities of Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives and other AIDS denialist organizations, arguing that by persuading people to forgo proven treatments they are causing unnecessary and preventable deaths. Speaking at the XVI International AIDS Conference, leading HIV/AIDS researcher John Moore stated:
...infants whose HIV infected mothers listen to AIDS denialists never got the chance to make their own decisions. The Maggiore case received wide publicity. Christine Maggiore is a person who’s proselytized against the use of antiretrovirals to prevent HIV/AIDS. She’s a classic AIDS denialist, and she gave birth to a child who died at age three late last year of an AIDS-related infection... that was another unnecessary death. [13]
Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives encourages people to "get involved" by passing out literature, donating copies of Christine Maggiore's book What If Everything You Knew About AIDS Was Wrong?, contacting radio and television shows, writing to newspapers and magazines, and starting their own discussion groups. [2]
Peter H. Duesberg is a German-American molecular biologist and a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for his early research into the genetic aspects of cancer. He is a proponent of AIDS denialism, the claim that HIV does not cause AIDS.
The management of HIV/AIDS normally includes the use of multiple antiretroviral drugs as a strategy to control HIV infection. There are several classes of antiretroviral agents that act on different stages of the HIV life-cycle. The use of multiple drugs that act on different viral targets is known as highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). HAART decreases the patient's total burden of HIV, maintains function of the immune system, and prevents opportunistic infections that often lead to death. HAART also prevents the transmission of HIV between serodiscordant same-sex and opposite-sex partners so long as the HIV-positive partner maintains an undetectable viral load.
Paul Murray Fleiss was an American pediatrician and author known for his unconventional medical views. Fleiss was a popular and sought-after pediatrician in the Greater Los Angeles area, both among poor and middle-class patients living near his Los Feliz office and among Southern California celebrities. Fleiss was a breastfeeding and anti-circumcision advocate. He recommended but did not insist upon childhood vaccinations, and stated he could be "convinced either way" as to whether HIV causes AIDS. In 1995, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy and bank fraud in relation to his daughter Heidi's prostitution ring.
HIV/AIDS denialism is the belief, despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) does not cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Some of its proponents reject the existence of HIV, while others accept that HIV exists but argue that it is a harmless passenger virus and not the cause of AIDS. Insofar as they acknowledge AIDS as a real disease, they attribute it to some combination of sexual behavior, recreational drugs, malnutrition, poor sanitation, haemophilia, or the effects of the medications used to treat HIV infection (antiretrovirals).
The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) is a South African HIV/AIDS activist organisation which was co-founded by the HIV-positive activist Zackie Achmat in 1998. TAC is rooted in the experiences, direct action tactics and anti-apartheid background of its founder. TAC has been credited with forcing the reluctant government of former South African President Thabo Mbeki to begin making antiretroviral drugs available to South Africans.
David William Rasnick is an American biochemist known for his association with the AIDS denialist movement, which denies the fact that HIV is the cause of AIDS, and for his involvement with clinical trials in South Africa promoting vitamins for the treatment of AIDS, which were later ruled illegal by the South African judiciary.
The global epidemic of HIV/AIDS began in 1981, and is an ongoing worldwide public health issue. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), by 2023, HIV/AIDS had killed approximately 40.4 million people, and approximately 39 million people were infected with HIV globally. Of these, 29.8 million people (75%) are receiving antiretroviral treatment. There were about 630,000 deaths from HIV/AIDS in 2022. The 2015 Global Burden of Disease Study estimated that the global incidence of HIV infection peaked in 1997 at 3.3 million per year. Global incidence fell rapidly from 1997 to 2005, to about 2.6 million per year. Incidence of HIV has continued to fall, decreasing by 23% from 2010 to 2020, with progress dominated by decreases in Eastern Africa and Southern Africa. As of 2020, there are approximately 1.5 million new infections of HIV per year globally.
Mark Arnold Wainberg, was a Canadian HIV/AIDS researcher and HIV/AIDS activist. He was the Director of the McGill University AIDS Centre at the Montreal Jewish General Hospital and Professor of Medicine and of Microbiology at McGill University. His laboratory primarily studies HIV reverse transcriptase, the molecular basis for drug resistance, and gene therapy. He received a B.Sc. from McGill University in 1966, a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1972, and did his post-doctoral research at Hadassah Medical School of the Hebrew University.
Christine Joy Maggiore was an HIV-positive activist and promoter of HIV/AIDS denialism. She was the founder of Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives, an organization which disputes the link between HIV and AIDS and urges HIV-positive pregnant women to avoid anti-HIV medication. Maggiore authored and self-published the book What If Everything You Thought You Knew about AIDS Was Wrong?
The Durban Declaration is a statement signed by over 5,000 physicians and scientists in 2000, affirming that HIV is the cause of AIDS, seventeen years after the discovery of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. The declaration was drafted in response to HIV/AIDS denialism, and particularly to address South African president Thabo Mbeki's support for AIDS denialists. It was written several weeks before the 2000 International AIDS Conference, held in Durban, South Africa from July 9 to 14, 2000, and was published in the journal Nature to coincide with the Durban conference. The declaration called the evidence that HIV causes AIDS "clear-cut, exhaustive and unambiguous".
Celia Ingrid Farber is an American print journalist and author who has covered a range of topics for magazines including Spin, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Harper's, Interview, Salon, Gear, New York Press, Media Post, The New York Post and Sunday Herald, and is best known for her controversial beliefs about HIV and AIDS, and a 1998 report on O. J. Simpson's post-trial life. Farber is the daughter of radio talk pioneer Barry Farber and a graduate of New York University.
Infection with HIV, a retrovirus, can be managed with treatment but without treatment can lead to a spectrum of conditions including AIDS.
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The Other Side of AIDS is a 2004 pseudoscience film by Robin Scovill. Through interviews with prominent AIDS denialists and HIV-positive people who have refused anti-HIV medication, the film makes the claim that HIV is not the cause of AIDS and that HIV treatments are harmful, conclusions which are rejected by medical and scientific consensus. The film was reviewed in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter in 2004, and received additional attention in 2005, when Scovill's three-year-old daughter died of untreated AIDS.
House of Numbers: Anatomy of an Epidemic is a 2009 film directed, produced, and hosted by Brent Leung and described by him as an objective examination of the idea that HIV causes AIDS. The film argues that human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is harmless and does not cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), a position known as AIDS denialism. The film's claims of impartiality have been widely rejected by scientists, and the film's claims about HIV and AIDS have been dismissed as pseudoscience and conspiracy theory masquerading as even-handed examination.
Eliza Jane Scovill was the daughter of AIDS denialist Christine Maggiore, an HIV-positive activist who publicly questioned the link between HIV and AIDS, and supported HIV-positive pregnant women who want to avoid taking anti-HIV medication. Eliza Jane's May 16, 2005 death from AIDS, at the age of three and a half, sparked a social and legal controversy over her mother's decision not to take precautions during pregnancy and breastfeeding to prevent transmission of the virus, and her parents' decision to not have her treated for HIV infection during her life.
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Julio S. G. Montaner, is an Argentine-Canadian physician, professor and researcher. He is the director of the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, the chair in AIDS Research and head of the Division of AIDS in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia and the past-president of the International AIDS Society. He is also the director of the John Ruedy Immunodeficiency Clinic, and the Physician Program Director for HIV/AIDS PHC. He is known for his work on HAART, a role in the discovery of triple therapy as an effective treatment for HIV in the late 1990s, and a role in advocating the "Treatment as Prevention" Strategy in the mid-2000s, led by Myron Cohen of the HPTN 052 trial.
In South Africa, HIV/AIDS denialism had a significant impact on public health policy from 1999 to 2008, during the presidency of Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki criticized the scientific consensus that HIV is the cause of AIDS beginning shortly after his election to the presidency. In 2000, he organized a Presidential Advisory Panel regarding HIV/AIDS including several scientists who denied that HIV caused AIDS.
One of the prominent HIV denial groups currently is Christine Maggiore's "Alive and Well" (formerly "HEAL," Health Education AIDS Liaison).