A photo of basketball legend and HIV-positive Earvin “Magic” Johnson with a venipuncture in his arm appeared on social media. Some users claim that the photo shows Johnson ‘donating blood to the Red Cross’ to ‘help people in underprivileged communities deal with COVID-19’. This statement is false. The image is incorrectly marked: it is a screen of a 2012 documentary about AIDS and shows a doctor taking his blood sample.
An Instagram post with the claim held at least 6,190 times can be seen here. Other posts are visible here.
Most iterations seem to repeat the wording or contain a screenshot of a tweet that has now been deleted (archived version: archive.vn/cbtba) of February 11, 2020, which reads: Red Cross to help people in underprivileged communities to COVID-19. (book emoji) (via @RedCross) ”
In a subsequent tweet, user @Ultraweedhater said his message was a ‘joke’ (bit.ly/3deMeqD)
A reverse search for the image shows that the screen was shot from Frontline’s documentary “Endgame: Aids in Black America”, released on July 10, 2012 (here, here), which investigated why the HIV epidemic is so much more in vogue the African-American community occurs. .
The rift circulating on social media can be seen here around time stamp 1:07:14. It shows HIV researcher and Johnson’s doctor David Ho (here, here ) takes his blood sample.
The Red Cross and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) say (here and here) that individuals who have ever tested positive for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the virus that causes AIDS, should not donate blood. The Red Cross also says that you should not donate blood “if you have done something that puts you at risk of becoming infected with HIV”.
Johnson, former weightlifter of the Los Angeles Lakers, stunned the sports world in 1991 when he announced he had contracted HIV and was retiring at the height of his NBA career. (here, here)
This is not the first time this picture has been falsely tagged. In 2015, Snopes made a similar claim here.
VERDICT
Untrue. A doctor released in 2012 shows how a doctor takes Magic Johnson’s blood sample, not Johnson’s donating blood.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.