Magic Johnson

Magic Johnson’s public announcement of his HIV-positive status in 1991 helps begin to dispel the stereotype, still widely held in the US and elsewhere, of HIV as a ‘gay’ disease that heterosexuals need not worry about. He retires from basketball immediately, although he later makes a number of comebacks. He briefly serves on the US National Commission on AIDS before resigning in 1992 in protest at its recommendations being “utterly ignored” by the Bush administration.