Some Good News on HIV and AIDS
Twenty years after Magic Johnson's shocking announcement that he would retire from the NBA after testing positive for HIV, the former basketball superstar is still going strong. Unfortunately, so is the disease he helped bring to the world's attention. But this year, there was finally some good news about the disease. In May, New York magazine ran a story about Timothy Brown, who had contracted HIV in 1995. After a series of stem cell treatments in 2007 and 2008 to combat his leukemia, Brown's cancer went away — and so, apparently, did the HIV virus. He stopped taking anti-retrovirals and, four years later, seems to be free of the disease — the closest anyone has yet come to curing AIDS entirely. Good news was reported on other fronts as well: according to UNAIDS director Michael Sidibe, the number of people dying of AIDS fell in 2011 to 1.8 million, from 2.2 million at the height of the epidemic. And perhaps most importantly, the organization reported a 20% increase in the availability of antiretroviral drugs in sub-Saharan Africa.