Magic Johnson accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Joe Biden Saturday. Perhaps, probably, Johnson and the rest of the NBA, indeed all athletes on all levels, from amateur to professional, in all sports, owe my wife Gilda a resounding, “Thank You.”
For it was Gilda who devised and conducted a study between July 1987 and May 1989 proving the HIV virus was not transmitted through eccrine sweat, thus enabling Johnson to resume his Hall of Fame basketball career. He and athletes from all sports could compete without fear of transmitting or contracting AIDS through contact with another person’s eccrine sweat, the type of moisture found on epidermal skin meant to cool down overheated bodies.
Serving as the research coordinator for the division of Infectious Diseases and Departments of Medicine, Pathology and Microbiology, New York Medical College, Valhalla, under Dr. Gary P. Wormser, Gilda was tasked with undertaking a study on whether sweat contributed to HIV transmission. She recruited HIV positive and control subjects.
Her challenge was to formulate a way to make them sweat so she could collect their droplets in a sterile fashion.
Serendipitously, one of the bathrooms used by her colleagues had a shower. By running extreme hot water that raised the bathroom temperature and humidity, subjects standing outside the shower were induced to sweat. Each subject wore long sterile plastic gloves up to their upper arms. Sweat dripped into the gloves, collecting in the fingertips not touched by each subject. Gilda extracted the sweat with a sterile syringe.
No HIV virus was found in any of the samples. Results of the study were published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases in January 1992. Dr. Wormser was the lead author.
Magic Johnson had retired in the fall of 1991 after announcing he had tested positive for HIV. After Gilda’s study was published, Johnson played in the February 1992 NBA All-Star game, even being named MVP of the game, before taking several years off to undergo treatment. He resumed his playing career in 1996 for 32 games before his final retirement.
Fear of HIV/AIDS persisted, even to this day among parts of the population, but Gilda’s involvement in the groundbreaking study debunking the role of sweat in the transmission of the disease has kept athletes on their respective playing fields and surfaces.
