December 16, 2009--Christine Maggiore received some of the first calls from New York families as the city was coming to get their kids. On Wednesday, December 9, 2009, defenders of the kidnapping of New York City children for experimental drug trials suffered a setback with the release of an autopsy report on Maggiore’s death nearly a year ago--a report revealing that she did not, in fact, “die of AIDS,” as these defenders had claimed. (The report is available in PDF format under “December 9, 2009,” here.)
Activists, journalists and pharma-funded AIDS researchers have tastelessly rejoiced over the passing of the Los Angeles wife and mother, 52, nearly one year ago. They have even said she “died of AIDS” as they tried to prove that “denialism” was behind Maggiore’s intervention on behalf of families facing removal of their children and enrollment of them in experimental HIV drug trials.
The autopsy report, by court-qualified forensic pathologist Dr. Mohammad Al-Bayati, concludes that Maggiore died, not of AIDS, but of kidney failure brought on by five drugs prescribed by her doctor.
Maggiore took phone calls from terrified families in New York who were hiding from the city’s Administration for Children’s Services in early 2003. She referred the case to investigative reporter Liam Scheff. She further helped at least one family regain its children.
Her own daughter, Eliza Jane “EJ” Scovill, died in May 2005 at the age of three. Despite the findings of an autopsy (available in PDF format here) by Dr. Al-Bayati that EJ died after an allergic reaction to an antibiotic, Maggiore’s critics said she caused her own daughter’s death by being “in denial.” Such attacks included the "Retro" episode of NBC’s “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” that fictionalized and distorted her story, and a report on the New York drug-testing scandal in The Village Voice.
Maggiore died on December 27, 2008, about one month before the Vera Institute of Justice released its report on the Incarnation Children’s Center orphanage scandal.
She had also been scheduled, within a few days, to depose Los Angeles County Coroner James K. Ribe on his office’s alleged falsifying of EJ’s autopsy conclusions, following a pattern of similar lies against others. Because of the coroner’s conclusion, the family was threatened with removal of their healthy son--similar to the experience of the New York families. The case was settled out of court in February 2009.
Maggiore’s own HIV testing results were contradictory--but public--as she explained in a book and an interview for the documentary film House of Numbers. Despite having been in a relationship with her since 1996, her husband, Robin Scovill, tested HIV negative. As Maggiore herself wrote, because of her family’s good health, “none of our pediatricians ever recommended that EJ or her brother Charlie take a so-called HIV test.”
Does this story inspire outrage? Please contact us to help the ICC kids get justice. New York City Public Advocate-elect Bill de Blasio says this matter is over -- but we don’t.
FURTHER COMMENTS:
Clark Baker, private investigator, retired from Los Angeles Police Department, former U.S. Marine: “Requiem for a Loving Mother”
Celia Farber, investigative journalist, New York: “Christine Maggiore’s Cause of Death”
David Crowe, president, Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society: “Christine Maggiore Die of Pharmaceutically Induced Kidney Failure”
