You Can Test Negative Once You’ve Tested HIV-Positive

Successful antiretroviral treatment, often in the form of HAART, can render HIV undetectable, meaning that the amount of HIV in the blood is so low that viral load tests cannot detect it. This does not mean that an HIV-positive person becomes HIV-negative. The HIV is still present in the body. A procedure like "blood washing", in which a person's HIV-infected blood is replaced with uninfected blood, could never be successful because the virus "hides" in the lymph nodes, gastrointestinal tract, testes, brain, liver and every other organ in the body and would simply use "new" HIV-negative blood to replicate itself once again. There is a myth that American basketball star Magic Johnson tested HIV-negative after he tested positive in 1991. This is simply not true. He is doing well on treatment and his viral load is undetectable, but he is still HIV-positive.