Celia Farber contributed four articles, and editor Peggy O'Mara devoted her editorial to supporting the AIDS reappraisal movement. The woman secretly breastfeeds and throws out the AZT, while she and her baby flourish. The secrecy extends even to an older daughter, whom officials occasionally question about her mother's activities. Farber in this article also critiques the new push to discourage breastfeeding and distribute AZT in the Third World. While there are a very few reported cases of HIV transmission through breast milk, it has never been absolutely proven.
Formula feeding has terrible consequences for most children.
Farber describes the story of Kris Chmiel, a Denver woman profiled in the July 1998 issue of RA . Chmiel was tested for the first time while pregnant in 1995. Doctors traced her positive result to a blood transfusion 21 years earlier. She's now been free of AZT and AIDS for two years, and her daughter is HIV-negative and healthy. Mothers will never tell their doctors, but they'll tell me.