The Buzz Over Magic’s ‘Miracle’

The questions started soon after the April issue of Ebony magazine hit the newsstands with an article titled “The Magic ‘Miracle’: ‘The Lord has healed Earvin.’ ”

HIV-positive women in Dr. Alexandra Levine’s research group wanted to know why they had to take pills with nasty side effects when Earvin “Magic” Johnson had chased away his AIDS virus with prayer.

In the article, Johnson’s wife, Cookie, says recent tests have shown there “is no virus left in his blood.” While she notes that Johnson remains on medication, she looks to God as the source of her husband’s good health.

“The Lord has definitely healed Earvin,” she told the Ebony writer, adding that she and Magic believe the test results are the miracle they have been praying for since the star basketball player learned he had the AIDS virus in 1991.

The magazine piece has generated a buzz in some parts of Los Angeles’ minority AIDS community, according to physicians and counselors who have spent the last few weeks emphasizing to patients that Magic continues to take medication and so should they.

“There’s been a lot of discussion in the community,” said Sylvia Drew Ivie, executive director of the T.H.E. health clinic in South-Central. “People are talking about it and if a cure is possible. And if Cookie says it is because they have prayed into remission. People believe [that].”

Ivie is one of 13 Los Angeles health care providers, including the director of the UCLA AIDS Institute, who have written a letter to Ebony stressing that there is no cure for AIDS and that even when the virus cannot be found in the blood, that does not mean the virus is not present somewhere in the body.

Earlier this month, Magic’s physicians, David Ho and Michael Mellman, also issued a statement that, while drug therapy had reduced HIV in his blood to undetectable levels, “it would be premature and incorrect to say Earvin is virus-free.”

Lon Rosen, Magic’s agent, said the Johnsons stand by Cookie’s remarks but also want people to follow their doctors’ advice, as does Magic.

“He’s still taking his medicine and he still believes the Lord is curing him,” Rosen said. “ . . . And I think it’s fair for them to believe in that.” Indeed, Ivie and others have been careful not to dismiss prayer when they have talked about the Ebony piece.

“Most of our patients are religious women, and that is a source of strength for them,” observed Ivie. “I think it does improve their health. But they have to supplement it with Western medicine.”

One of the reasons the article resonated is because it tapped into long-standing suspicions in some facets of the HIV community, Levine said. “There’s always been a belief out there that somehow this whole illness was conjured up by the forces that be, that someone has invented the HIV virus for the purpose of genocide, that the pills are in fact poison,” said Levine, a USC professor of medicine.

She said the distrust of medicatieon has eased with the recent success of a new generation of AIDS drugs that have led to remarkable recoveries for some with HIV.