Mothering Magazine is at it again

Surprise, surprise.

Mothering is all over the Al-Bayati "rebuttal" of the L.A. County Coroner's report concluding that Eliza Jane Scovill died of HIV, and not in a good way:
Still, Christine has long been politicized by the mainstream as an AIDS dissident. Earlier this year, when daughter Eliza Jane died suddenly at age 3 1/2, critics were quick to assert that the Maggiore-Scovill family's longstanding, informed, AIDS drug-free approach to their health was "irresponsible" and ultimately to blame for their tragic and stunning loss. Despite the fact that none of the Maggiore-Scovills but Christine have ever tested positive for HIV, a September story in the LA Times reported that the official cause of the girl's death was "AIDS related pneumonia." The story garnered much attention, and hype quickly overshadowed fact. It also prompted in-depth discussions on many discussion boards, including Mothering's own MotheringDotCommune. To those familiar with the family, the AIDS related pneumonia conclusion just didn't make sense, given Eliza Jane's general health, medical history, presentation of illness, and rapid demise (she was diagnosed with a garden variety acute ear infection and died within days). A new review of the case by pathologist Dr. Mohammed Al-Bayati concludes that in fact, Eliza Jane died of an allergic reaction to the amoxicillin prescribed to treat her ear infection. Further, evidence has been gathered attesting to the unreliability of one of the two signatories to the original LA County Coroner's Report, Dr. James Ribe. More general information about this case and its evolution is available here.
Excuse me while I vomit again.

Fortunately, I know that my two rebuttals are being discussed on the Mothering discussion boards, because I've seen some referrals from them in my logs. I wonder what they're saying. (Registration was required, which is why I didn't follow the links.)

Comments

  1. I'm a member (they're all a bunch of whackjobs, but the breastfeeding section provides excellent advice), so I checked it out. Mostly positive comments on your entry - you appear to have persuaded a few people - and one negative comment on your anti anti-vaccination entries. No one has even attempted a rebuttal as of yet.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ugh. Mothering is irresponsible to the point of being disgusting.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm not the same anonymous poster as above, and I occasionally lurk on the sMothering boards. Not often mind you, too bad for the ol' BP. Yes, they're whackjobs (even the breastfeeding advice is fanatical and often "off", sorry). But even so, you seem to have penetrated more than a few of those thick skulls there. If this gets some of the regular posters on the path of critical thinking, who knows what may happen?

    ReplyDelete
  4. I`m actually the one that posted your link to the mothering boards. I had just read your rebuttal and thought it had to be seen by people who were being persuaded by the magazines new statement on the whole thing. Only one person really agrees with Ms. Maggiore, the rest were thankful for the link to your info.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The Mothering gals scare the bejesus out of me. Hey, I'm all for living organic and breastfeeding - more power to you girls. But to equate the benefits of a natural lifestyle with a negligent mother who used her only daughter as a guinea pig for her ridiculous fantasy that HIV is harmless is just plain nuts!

    A 3 year old child is dead with evidence of PCP, HIV-encephalitis and P24 protein (something non-existent in HIV negative people) found during autopsy. A whacked out veterinary pathologist friendly with Christine Maggiore and known for his HIV denialism gathered the autopsy report and what Christine was on record saying and the child's medical reports and found something unrelated to HIV that the child could possibly have died of (shy of all the evidence that supports the AIDS death of course) - anaphylactic shock. For anyone who's done a minute of homework on anaphylactic shock, you'll learn that it's a severe allergic reaction to an allergen. So the kid was fed Amoxicillin for 2 days and multiple doses and developed anaphylaxis that didn't present with hives and a rash and built slowly and then "suddenly" and massively killed the child.

    Get a brain people, please!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. As it turns out, they seem to have enabled parts of the forum to lurkers, like the vaccination forum (perhaps to bring more followers).

    A medical student on JREF posted that he was trying to bring in some valid information... and he tried. The JREF thread is here:
    http://206.225.95.123/forumlive/showthread.php?t=48811

    The end result was this:
    12-10-2005, 12:05 AM
    #3 medstudent25 vbmenu_register("postmenu_4255866", true);
    Banned

    Join Date: Dec 2005
    Posts: 27

    This was not exactly unexpected, the JREF posters did mention that the sMothering has a habit of banning people if they don't like the message. It seems that their beliefs are too fragile for any kind of dissent.

    ReplyDelete

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