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But so much has happened in four years, in both AIDS research and AIDS education. One of the players who opposed Magic's return three years ago, Karl Malone of the Utah Jazz, said last week, "I have no problem playing against him, absolutely not. We're more knowledgeable now." Charles Barkley of the Phoenix Suns echoed Malone, though somewhat more earthily: "It's not like we're going out to have unprotected sex with Magic on the floor." (According to the Centers for Disease Control, a basketball player's chance of contracting AIDS from incidental touching is 1 in 85 million.) There are still a few holdouts on the side of ignorance, such as troublemaking guard Vernon Maxwell of the Philadelphia 76ers, who said last week, "You get scratched on your hand, and then he might get an open wound. I don't want to be there with that. I have a wife and kids." But as Johnson said, when told of Maxwell's concern, "The guy has never cared about anyone but himself, and now he's worried about the whole world?"
It's not clear that the rest of society has come even as far as the N.B.A. The push for AIDS awareness among schoolchildren inspired by Ryan White has run into stiff resistance from conservative parents who don't want any discussion of sex, safe or otherwise, in the schools. The blatant discrimination that AIDS sufferers faced in the 1980s may have eased somewhat, but the stigma has not gone away. Witness the meanspirited provision Congress passed last week requiring armed-services personnel with HIV to be discharged from the military, even if they are otherwise in perfect health. President Clinton is expected to sign the defense authorization bill despite this rider, but has made it clear he finds it offensive. As a Pentagon spokesman put it last week, "We've all seen recently, in watching Magic Johnson's decision to return to basketball, that people who have tested HIV-positive are fully capable of carrying on near normal lives."
Gone too is the notion that a regimen of N.B.A. basketball would weaken Johnson and accelerate the onset of AIDS. Says Dr. Michael Mellman, Johnson's primary physician and the man who originally informed him of his condition: "We still do not know how much a body can take. But for Earvin, we're talking about returning to what used to be normal for him."
Citing doctor-patient confidentiality, Mellman will not discuss Johnson's treatment or current condition. But in an interview with TIME last week, Johnson acknowledged that he has in the past taken AZT, the antiviral drug typically administered when a person's helper T-cell count drops to 500. (See following story.) Johnson said that he is no longer taking AZT and that his T-cell count is above 500, "but I don't tell exactly what it is because then I'll have everybody talking about it." His health, he says, "has been wonderful. My doctor told me to watch out for things like deteriorating skills. Nothing so far." Johnson's added weight is due not to drug treatments, as some have speculated, but to a healthier diet and to muscle mass from his regular exercise sessions.