HIV and AIDSIn middle school, when we were in sex education class, they told us about AIDS and HIV. We learned that being HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) positive eventually led to AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), which ultimately led to death. We were taught this and never really doubted it. The AIDS pandemic is global and an estimated 40 million people are infected. None of them were healed. The amount of funding for AIDS research is not small. A large amount of drugs are available for patients diagnosed with AIDS or HIV. Some AIDS patients take "cocktails" of pills, which often lead to serious physical side effects. Some "cocktails" may mean taking 25 pills a day. There has been a lot of talk about the search for an AIDS vaccine, but so far there have been no definitive results. She caused a media sensation when she appeared on ABC News 20/20(1). Her persona has been called an unfit mother, a heretic, and has been compared to those who believe the Holocaust never happened. The reason for all the fuss is because she is HIV positive, doesn't take any medications, wonders if HIV causes AIDS, has published a book called What if everything you thought you knew about AIDS was wrong?, has non-sexual intercourse protected with her. husband, has an untested 3-year-old son who she breastfed at birth (the virus can be transmitted in the womb, during birth, or through breastfeeding), and is pregnant with her second child. Her name is Christine Maggiore and she as well as other dissidents have aroused anger and support from communities affected by AIDS and HIV. The difference between being HIV positive and having AIDS is that having AIDS means a person must be HIV positive and have a T cell count under 200 or have one of the CDC (Center for Disease Control) 28 opportunistic infections. Christine Maggiore began to question the connection between HIV and AIDS and the HIV and AIDS testing process when some things she had been told about AIDS and HIV didn't fit her situation. He talks about how he "started to really think about what doctors and AIDS educators told me instead of just accepting everything as true and correct." Doctors told her that, from the T-cell count, she had a recent new infection.