Dick Durbin: “a generation ago, an AIDS diagnosis meant a sure and agonizing death. It was 23 years ago, when I was in the House of…”

“a generation ago, an AIDS diagnosis meant a sure and agonizing death. It was 23 years ago, when I was in the House of Representatives, when I was walking to the Chamber for a vote when I saw a colleague and friend, Tom McMillen, a Congressman from Maryland, coming my way. You would not miss Tom McMillen. He played in the NBA. He was tall. As he passed by on the sidewalk, he stopped and said: Magic has AIDS. It was a stunning announcement that Magic Johnson had been diagnosed with AIDS. The reality is that was 23 years ago. At the time we felt this was a death verdict, there was no way to escape it. Last month American researchers revealed that a second American baby born with HIV has apparently been cured of the virus with drugs delivered just minutes after birth. How far we have come in 23 years--from an AIDS diagnosis meaning certain death to being able to cure for the second time a baby born with HIV with drugs delivered minutes after birth. These babies were treated as part of a research program at the National Institutes of Health. Their apparent cures offer real hope for a quarter of a million babies who were born into the world this year with HIV--many of them in desperately poor nations. It is not the only happening when it comes to medical research, by a long shot. In my home State of Illinois, Dr. Jose Oberholzer from the University of Illinois-Chicago and Dr.…”