She also wanted to give birth with the assistance of a midwife. But when her sister found out that Sophie was not planning to have a doctor present, she called Youth Protective Services. Brassard was in the middle of labor when five men -- a social worker, a Youth Protective Services administrator, a doctor and two police -- entered her apartment and forced her to go to the hospital.

Immediately after the birth, a pediatrician came into the room and took the baby away from Brassard for its first formula feeding. When Brassard said she wanted to breastfeed, her physician protested; but Brassard was permitted to nurse the baby for a year and a half.

Brassard avoided the first battle -- over breastfeeding -- primarily because her child was already HIV positive. It is generally believed that HIV can be transmitted to an infant through breastfeeding, and mothers who are HIV positive are advised not to nurse. But not all studies have supported this notion. Brassard and her supporters point to the results of a recent South African study, published in the Lancet in August, which concluded that HIV was not necessarily passed through breast milk. Researchers from the Department of Pediatrics and Child Health at the University of Natal hypothesized that the immune factors inherent in breast milk can work to "neutralize" HIV.

When Brassard’s first child began losing weight at 18 months, her social worker insisted that she take him to a doctor who would prescribe treatment with AZT. But Brassard, who favors homeopathic treatment and believes in self-healing, said no. Ultimately, she compromised with the social worker by taking her son to a homeopathic doctor.

That doctor saw her son once a month for close to a year, but when the child developed a fungus in his mouth, the doctor gave her an ultimatum: Take the child to a specialist or get reported to Youth Protective Services. Brassard panicked. Firm in her belief that people who are HIV positive can live long, healthy lives without drugs, she was terrified that a doctor's intervention would harm her child. If she stayed in Canada, the doctors would give her son AZT, a drug she believed would kill him. So Brassard bought two tickets to Italy and, without telling anyone where she was going, left the following morning. She went underground.

Despite its widespread use and apparent efficacy against the symptoms of AIDS, AZT has remained a controversial treatment that is routinely rejected by those who choose alternative treatments for AIDS. They cite a 1993 Concorde study, the results of which were subsequently printed in the Lancet, in which patients who took AZT died sooner than those who took a placebo. They also point out that AZT is acknowledged, even by doctors who prescribe it, as having side effects that include anemia, muscle wasting, hair loss, neuropathy, dementia, nausea, diarrhea and other digestive problems.

Perhaps the strongest statement against AZT comes from Dr. David Rasnick, a developer of protease inhibitors at the University of California at Berkeley and the president of the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis.

Asked about the Brassard case he said, "AZT is a DNA-chain terminator. That means it terminates a person's DNA, which stops cell division, which stops growth and, eventually, all life. If her children are forced to take the drug," he says, "they won’t last two years."

But proponents of AZT say the drug has become more effective in "cocktails" mixed with protease inhibitors. David Winslow, who represented the Maine Department of Human Services in the case of Valerie Emerson, told the court that AZT had reduced AIDS deaths nationwide by 47 percent last year.

And in Toronto, Dr. Philip Berger unequivocally recommends antiretroviral drug treatment for patients who are HIV positive, especially the young. "If the drugs are given to a baby within hours of birth, the odds of it developing HIV can be significantly reduced," he says. "The odds are even better if the mother also takes the drugs during pregnancy."

Doctors have to be the absolute custodians of children's care, he says. "Once the child is born," he says, "I think the state has a duty to protect the child from any disease for which a parent is refusing treatment where the benefits are clear."

Brassard says she was aware of all the arguments when she left the country. Using the Internet for much of her research, she found organizations like H.E.A.L. and Alive and Well, two support groups dedicated to sharing information about living healthy, HIV positive lifestyles. She also read articles by Dr. Kary Mullis, a Nobel Prize winner, for his discovery of the polymerase chain reaction, and Dr. Peter Duesberg, who was the first man to map the genetic structure of retroviruses. Both men actively challenge the common thinking that drugs are the best way to treat HIV and AIDS.

"I thought I was the only sane person in an insane world," she says. "But then I found people with Ph.D.s who believed in the same things I did."

Brassard and her son lived outside Rome for two years. She worked odd jobs and says that her 2-year-old boy was happy and healthy. She took him to a doctor only once during that time, for a routine check-up; Brassard herself visited a homeopath as needed. She fell in love and became pregnant again, this time buoyed by the fact that she and her son were both maintaining good health. Eventually, however, her relationship became violent, and she moved back to Canada in 1996.

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