Friday, May 20, 2011

Families Underground



                  
If you didn’t know better, the idea of parents seeking medical freedom having to “go underground” may sound, well, paranoid. 


But during interviews for the documentary, This Child of Mine, HIV+ mother and AIDS activist, Christine Maggiore, remembered meeting dozens of parents who were in danger of losing custody of their children simply for being skeptical.

She told me about one mother who had sought out a second opinion about HIV treatment for her child when the drugs had made him ill.  Shortly after, at 10:30 at night, seven police officers arrived on her doorstep. They took the boy from his home and placed him in foster care.

In many of these cases Christine helped parents find legal defense, expert witnesses to testify at hearings, and in a few cases, a place to hide out when custody was at stake. She often advised parents to refuse HIV testing, change doctors, move. Her critics – and she had a lot of them – claimed she was in complete and total denial about her own HIV diagnosis, potentially responsible for the deaths of countless children whose parents had been misled by her kindly quackery. Her fans – there were a lot of those too – believed she had saved their kids’ lives.

Christine’s Story

Christine Maggiore was diagnosed HIV+ in 1992. Rather than lying down, waiting to die, Christine became an activist. She was a volunteer and public speaker for AIDS Project Los Angeles, LA Shanti Foundation, and Women at Risk, where she was a founding board member.

Several years into her diagnosis a doctor suggested she re-test. The results were inconclusive leading Christine to do her own research. She discovered the AIDS “dissidents”, a loosely connected network of scientists, doctors, and citizens from around the world who do not believe that HIV is the cause of AIDS.  Christine went on to write a book, What if Everything You Thought You Knew About AIDS Was Wrong? in which she  criticized the HIV/AIDS paradigm, the use of unreliable tests, and the efficacy and safety of treatments.

She also went on to get married and have children. She and her husband, Robin, chose not to have their children tested for HIV because “testing them can only confirm or contradict what we already know: our kids are perfectly healthy. So testing them is a bit of a roll of the dice that would lead to nothing but pain, heartache, problems, our house being sold and us on the run.”  Christine knew this - she had seen it happen many times. 

Paranoid or Prepared?

While I was making my documentary, Christine put me in touch with many families who had rejected medical recommendations for HIV and got into some seriously hot water. Not all of them appear in the movie, but I remember them well. Their stories are hard to forget. 

There was Sophie Brassard, a Montreal mother who lost custody of her children after stopping their treatment. Sophie “kidnapped” her children and fled to Morocco where she hid out for two years until her own failing health forced her to return to Canada. She used to email me as "Trixie" with "on the beach" in the subject line.  She used this code just in case someone was monitoring my email. Or hers. I'm not sure. But she was scared. 

I met “Diana”, an HIV+ mother who was stopped by police and taken to a grocery store to buy formula when doctors were concerned that she planned to breastfeed and turned her in. Her story was surreally comical, like a scene from Brazil, or Monty Python.

I met David and Kathleen Tyson who were turned into DHS for choosing to breast feed their newborn son.  Kathleen had tested HIV+ during her seventh of month of pregnancy.  After seeing security guards posted at Kathleen's room in the maternity ward, David, in a moment of panic, considered tying bed sheets together to climb down to the street with his family and flee. Four days later they lost legal custody of their son. 

I met Valerie Emerson who wound up in court fighting the state of Maine for custody of her son when she didn’t want to enroll him in a drug trial for aggressive HIV treatment. Two weeks before the hearing she had already packed suitcases for her family, just in case.

And I met Christine Maggiore, HIV+,  who was anonymously reported to Child Protective Services for breastfeeding her son, Charlie. 

In the documentary, Christine recalls that in forty-five minutes before the social worker’s arrival, she and Robin made a quick exit plan that they would execute “upon a certain signal” if necessary.  Following the visit from CPS, we see Christine’s panic escalate as she desperately reaches out to friends in far away places that could hide her family if the investigation goes further.

A Thick, Black Line in the Sand

It would be easy to say that parents should have the unconditional right to make choices for their children. That doctors are arrogant. That social workers are too overwrought with caseloads to make careful, thoughtful decisions.  It would be easy, perhaps, if the story ended with parents getting their day in court and going home victorious, children in tow. Often this happened. But the story didn’t always stop there.

During the time that I made this movie at least four of the people I interviewed died, reportedly of AIDS related conditions. Two of them were children. One of them was Christine. Another was her daughter.  Some might nod their heads smugly and say these parents – especially Christine- got what they deserved.  In fact a lot of people did say that and much, much worse.

But before you jump on one side or the other, look closer. 

Right or wrong about AIDS, Christine’s fight for families, including her own, illustrates a deep division between parents and doctors that continues to widen across a vast terrain, extending far beyond AIDS borders.  When doctors feel a child’s life is in danger they must intervene. With their actions they bring years of study, clinical practice, and experience. 

But when parents feel bullied within a system that fails to address their concerns they may draw their own line, and, like Christine once said, simply walk away. It seems to me that there should be - there must be - a middle ground on this terrain. A neutral place where parents can express concern and make decisions, doctors can provide care, and children can stay safe in their homes. Families together. Above ground.

What’s your story?

Have you ever disagreed with your doctor regarding your child’s care? Or are you a doctor who disagreed with your patient's choice? How did you handle it? Please respond here or email me privately at mychildmychoice@gmail.com. Or just share your thoughts. I welcome controversy and I don’t delete comments. 

Coming up next:  Some thoughts on Denial in the story of EJ.






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6 comments:

  1. Most people who support the idea that parents should be allowed to withhold life-saving treatments from their children and let them die a "natural" death, would probably feel differently about the flip side. How would they feel about parents who thought it was beneficial to give their child arsenic, or some other poison? If there was a chance for child protective services to step in and rescue some children from Jonestown before they drank the coolaid, for example, would you support that?

    There is a whole lot more to the stories above, as you will see if you watch the film, than protective services storming in and stealing children away. In most cases, the doctors and child protective services workers at least tried to reason with the parents for weeks or more. And in the end, in most cases, the state will decide that the children are better off in a loving home with their families, than in foster care, even if the family refuses to follow
    doctor's recommendations.

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  2. In some cultures, children are viewed as the "owned property" of their parents. Even in the USA attitutdes about "ownership" of children and animals have changed over the years, we have not always felt that children had rights or their own.

    In some cultures it is acceptable to buy and sell children, and to kill a child if he or she brings dishonor to the family or does not obey the parents orders.

    The current dominant culture in the USA does not want the state to make every decision about how to raise children. We only are trying to bring an end to many types of child abuse. Many or most of the groups who work to convince parents not to treat HIV infections are also involved in convincing parents not to vaccinate their children. Some of them are anti-science in general, others are just anti-medical. Some just do not believe that pathogens exist.

    It is my opinion that we should not just stand by and watch children be killed by easily preventable medical conditions, and more than we should stand by and watch a child being beaten to death for disobeying a parent. Children need good parenting, and discipline, but physical beating or verbal abuse is not constructive parenting.

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