I recently came across several articles commemorating the 20th anniversary of Magic Johnson's HIV diagnosis. I still remember the screaming headlines in 1991, the abrupt termination of his NBA career at the height of his powers, and his subsequent and short-lived come back.

One would have expected pictures of Magic, taken 20 years after this life-sentence diagnosis, to be a withered, shriveled version of his former self, his life force eaten away by this killer virus.

But pictures of Magic show him to be as healthy as the proverbial horse. He's considerably bulkier than he was in his playing days, and as the saying goes, seems quite comfortable in his own expanded skin.

So why is Magic the picture of health 20 years after this supposedly terminal diagnosis? Easy: the HIV virus does NOT cause AIDS. Since, as one of the world's leading virologists, Peter Duesberg of U.C. Berkeley, says, HIV is a "harmless passenger virus," Magic is likely to carry HIV with him to the end of a long and healthy life.