Between the Baby and the Breast

Extract

In Re C (A Child ) (HIV Test) [1999] 2 F.L.R. 1004, a local authority applied for a specific issue order to test a four-month-old baby girl for HIV. The mother of the child first tested positive for HIV in 1990, but adopted a highly sceptical stance towards generally accepted theories about HIV and AIDS, and refused conventional therapy for herself, preferring to rely on a healthy lifestyle as a prophylactic. The case arose when the baby's physician became aware not only that the mother was breast-feeding the child (despite the risk of transmission of HIV), but that the parents refused even to have their daughter tested for the virus in the belief that a healthy lifestyle was the optimal treatment even if she were HIV-positive.