Working on a Miracle

In 1993, while performing a routine autopsy on an AIDS patient, neuropathologist Dr. Mahlon Johnson punctured his hand and contracted the AIDS virus. As an academic physician at a major medical research hospital, he was uniquely aware of the terrors that he faced--but he was also uniquely qualified to try to save his own life. Guided by data and advice from the top AIDS researchers in the country, he made himself a guinea pig, experimenting with an aggressive treatment regimen combining different kinds of drugs--the few antivirals available at the time and the immune system-boosting but potentially toxic cancer treatment IL-2. Today, more than four and a half years later, there is no detectable virus in his blood.

Working on a Miracle chronicles Dr. Johnson's life as a young academician and the dramatic story of his personal transformation from self-proclaimed single-minded "lab rat" to a multifaceted doctor and patient searching for an HIV-positive woman with whom to share his life, and also for the first time, a sense of belonging to a community united to find a cure.