AIDS OVERVIEW

(Download AIDS overview as a PDF)

In November 1991, Magic Johnson

stunned the nation with this announcement:

Because of the HIV virus I have obtained, I will have to announce my retirement from the Lakers today. Before I was married, I truly lived a bachelor’s life...as I traveled around NBA cities...I did my best to accommodate as many women as I could—most of them through unprotected sex...

Diver Greg Louganis was found to be HIV-positive in March 1988, five months before the Olympic Games in Seoul. He went on to win two more Olympic gold medals. "I’m more afraid of getting sick than dying," he says now. Louganis, who suffered a colon infection in 1993 and lost 35 pounds, adds, "The pain, discomfort, deterioration—that scares me more than anything."

Inner city youth were shocked when Eric Wright entered Cedars-Sinai Hospital with AIDS in the spring of 1995 and died ten days later. Easy-E, as Wright was known, started N.W.A (Niggaz With Attitude), was 31, and fathered seven children by six women. From his hospital bed, he warned young people that AIDS "doesn’t discriminate." Like Magic, he emphasized that anyone can get the virus. More urban youth seemed to identify with Easy-E and hear his message. Seventeen-year-old Mark Jeeter said Easy’s death "blew my mind away. It made me really realize that if you go around having sex with different people, you’re going to end up like him." Mike Johnson, fourteen, added, "I was like, damn, I’d better chill out," and promised to cut back on the number of his sexual partners. (Newsweek, 10 April 1995)