announcer: building a better bay area -- moving forward, finding solutions. this is abc 7 news. answers on abc seven. every day, we talk with experts about issues important to the bay area and get answers in real time. another win in the battle against hiv-aids. scientists confirm a fifth person has been cured of hiv. ucf infectious disease expert will join us to discuss what this means and whether we are close to being able to n just repressed but eradicate the virus. also on this presidents' day, a community space in san francisco is bringing together impact makers from all walks of life. for a marathon 16 our reading of the final january 6 report. it's happening right now and we

will talk to the organizer about what they are trying to accomplish. first, president's day is a time to reflect on america's most and least admired presidents. we can't do it without an update on this weekend's breaking news regarding the man commonly regarded as the greatest ex-president, jimmy carter. the 98-year-old who served as america's 39th president has entered hospice care at home. surrounded by his loved ones. joining us now to talk about carter and other presidential topics on this holiday is the presidential historian and author of new york times bestseller you never forget your first -- a biography of george washington. happy presidents' day and tanks for your time. >> i'm happy to be here. kumasi: you were one of the historians asked two years ago to rank the 44 men who had been president. before our viewers go what are you talking about,hy are you --y

exai>> we have grover cleveland skipped. he was president twice, he had nonconsecutive terms and is our only nonconsecutive president. otherwise, today is george washington's birthday. that is what the law reads, it is federal law, but we often call it presidents' day and it is meant to observe our presidents and think about the executive office, but it's not like the fourth of july. we are not celebrating. i think that's because the rankings you mentioned are may be less obvious. we don't just sit around and go i really like george washington. we think about different criteria and one of them is charisma. kumasi: i was just

was just going to ask what the criteria were. >> charisma is one of relationship the president has with congress is another. their ability to legislate effectively, and so i love the criteria because as a histo particularly a presidential historian, you are trying to look at things objectively, but you are human. when you ask name charismatic presidents, i'm going to say george washington, john f. kennedy, and you have to put donald trump in that group. it's not a personal opinion, it is the effect the president had on the electorate. so it makes it a really challenging and fun and interesting exercise. kristen: i know you enjoy that process. you are one of several historians in the composite results are in.

the latest findings from 2000 21 -- the top five. tell me about these top five president and whether you agree with that. guest: george washington, the subject of my last book, he's always in the top five, which makes sense. he was the first, and the man who founded the union is almost always joined by the man who saved it, abraham lincoln. then we have franklin d roosevelt who arguably -- i was at hyde park this weekend, his historic home and library, and it is hard not to walk through and see the events he lived through and managed so many things on a personal and geopolitical level. we are talking about three terms and a world war and of course, he had been stricken by polio and lost the use of his legs. the ability to get us out of the great depression was his greatest feet.

we have his number model, theodore roosevelt, his cousin. he married eleanor roosevelt in part because eleanor was theodore roosevelt's favorite. eleanor kept roosevelt when she married roosevelt and theodore roosevelt is fun and this sort of vigorous executive, but also quite stubborn and famously joined a different party in order to run against his former vice president. kristen: i know you could talk about each of these four half an hour, but with about four minutes and so much to discuss, i want to run through the bottom five in the five living. the bottom five president in history. guest: here's the thing -- it does take a wild to rate presidents, so we have to wait a little bit longer. donald trump was easier to rank than perhaps other most recent presidents because we were in

the middle of the pandemic. william henry harrison, poor guy, he was only president for 30 days. he didn't wear a jacket when he was inaugurated and got sick when he was was inaugurated. andrew johnson was the vice president after abraham lincoln. he ascended to the presidency and did a really terrible job at reconstruction. it was a disaster because of him. james buchanan come our bachelor president, always going to come in very low. last is not unusual for him. kristen: let's take a look at the five living ex-president and where they rank in the 44 presidents -- barack obama coming in on top of this list at number 10. >> the it's the economy. you can write quite a lot about obama, you can talk about obama care, we could have all sorts of

discussions but, in the end, the economy. it was a phenomenal feet and very fast. kristen: clinton did pretty well at 19. george w. bush, 29 and we covered donald trump already. anything notable in the criterion of those presidents that struck you? guest: i think they will bounce around a little bit. we know we have impending news about jimmy carter. i think that will ranking and that was already changing. carter did not have a lot of books on him, sweeping wider fees. and in the last few years, we have had quite a few. and that changes the conversation. we need things to read and discuss in order to understand someone better. but, in particular, carter's legacy will be interesting for presidential historians because while part of the official

criteria c-span gives us, we have to think about his post-presidential life. he is the longest living opposed president and has accomplished great things. we're used to seeing him with a hammer. kristen: with habitat humanity and building homes. guest: but that's just a part. he spends the rest of the time at the carter center in atlanta which i had the privilege of visiting. kristen: that must have been like disneyland for you. guest: it was a twofer because i got to go to the carter center and hear about how they eradicated 90 -- 99.9 percent of guinea worms in africa and oversaw fair elections and hundreds of companies -- in hundreds of countries. but then i got to ride two planes, georgia, where carter is from. he teaches sunday school at his baptist church and i joined the

people who lined up at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning and went to go see him and it was something to be so close to a living president and hear him giving a sermon. kristen: and he's so approachable-seeming. no matter which political ilk you are from, you've got to respect his latter years. before we go, i want to ask you really quickly because you just wrote a piece published today asking who will be our first female president and you forward as a guide. guest: i found this video years ago and forgot about it, but gerald ford, in the 80's, was at a pbs-themed event and a little girl asked him what does a girl have to do to prepare to be president? ford, if you remember, was unelected and unpopular, so he did well not to answer the question but pivot to something

he had clearly given some thought which was a woman would be president when she was vice president and the president died , she ascended to the presidency and then ran again. from there, he saw it as a difficult task for a man to even get the nomination. but we had never had that scenario. when ford said that, geraldine ferraro had been the first woman to run on a major party ticket with walter mondale. decades later, that was not a video i could use. kristen: i wish we had more time but i think there are a lot of women lining up to prove that they could be elected into the top office outright and not have to wait for an opportunity from the vice presidential approach, but we will see. thank you so much. fascinating conversation. coming up, a new case of an hiv patient cured after stem cell treatment. when will this become the norm

instead of the exception?

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kristen: major medical days today -- studies found a man in germany has been cured of hei -- of hiv, the virus that causes eight. this is the fifth known case were someone has been cured. joining us to talk about this case and the battle against aids is dr. peterson hong. hap president's day. thank you for joining us. do we know about this patient and what it -- what does being cured mean? guest: what we know about this patient is he is a 53-year-old

male from germany, and about 10 years ago, he got a bone marrow transplant or stem cell transplant because he had leukemia. he also has hiv and was taking anti-retro viral therapy. but it turns out the donor -- what we do stem cell transplants and bone marrow transplant is you give the patient somebody else's immune system. hiv affects the immune system, so if you give somebody else's immune system that is resistant to getting infected with hiv, the patient can be cured because none of the cells that normally get infected could be infected. what happens is you can eliminate hiv from the blood you measure with antiretroviral therapy, but it hides out in areas like the lymph nodes and the gut so eventually it comes back. but because the cells were resistant to infection from the donor, this patient was cured

when they looked at him nine years after the transplant. kristen: how many years do you have to go before you consider it cured? guest: lots of people were thought of as being cured, but sometimes, when you eliminate the virus from the outside, it eventually comes back and it might come back sooner, but there have been cases where people have viral rebound in more than two years. i think most people think after two years, nine years in this case does represent cure and they did a lot of other tests like taking his blood and infecting animals, looking very closely at techniques. they couldn't find anything. kristen: so he is the fifth one to be cured. did the other forget the same type of stem cell transplant and is it still very uncommon for people to get them? guest: it is still very

uncommon. two of them were in the united states, one in new york city. about 17 and 19 months out, so it's not technically cured, although some people assume they are on the way. everybody got the same treatment. they all had leukemi a bone marrow transplant, so somebody else's immune system. the person's immune system they got happened to be very resistant. kristen: short of having leukemia and getting a bone marrow transplant etting stel have that kind of resistance and strengthen you, how can we as a whole move toward a cure as opposed to just hiv management and suppression of the virus? guest: it's not as far as we would think. there's a lot of ethics about gene editing, but the future would be you can take a stem

cell, put that you tatian in it and infuse the patient with the stem cell and mutation. in 2018, you might remember there was an infamous chinese researcher who used to edit genes in the embryos and he introduced this particular you tatian in the babies and the babies are still alive. he was jailed for three years because he did not go through any institutional review and ethics committees. but the technology is there. kristen: because we have had good treatment keeping the virus at bay, aids has been pushed out of the headlines a bit. but globally, how big of an issue is it? how many cases are there and how is it spreading? guest: it is still a big issue. about 38 million people around

the world have hiv. in the united states, we have a million people. even though the number of new cases is going down overall, there are cases in student populations that are -- in certain populations that are troubling. in the old days, it was 90% men who have sex with men, now it is about 70% with some of these other groups increasing in proportion. kristen: it has been some 40 years since it came on the scene in the u.s. and initially it was a painful death sentence. from that to where we are now,eu think we need to do somethingnc? guest: like this case suggests, the search is for the cure because once you stop the amtrak -- antiretroviral therapy which has saved a lot of people's

lives, it comes back. it's not something you have to take every day but it has revolutionized the way we think about chronic disease like hypertension and there is hiv prep which people can take which has revolutionized how people navigate life. kristen: thank you so much for joining us on this holiday to discuss this milestone. really appreciate it. coming up next, a unique way arc president's day in san francisco. it requires an 845 page document and a whole lot of water. we will take you there i'm jonathan lawson here to tell you about life insurance through the colonial penn program. if you're age 50 to 85, and looking to buy life insurance on a fixed budget, remember the three ps. the three what? the three ps? what are the three ps? the three ps of life insurance

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they have been at it for nine hours, since 6:00 this moring. here's a live look inside the venue -- minis, a committee space in the district. joining us now is the owner. inks for your time. -- thanks for your time. guest: thanks for doing this and taking into our number nine o 16krte i hope you have a lot of water on tap for the readers. guest: we have water, coffee, bagels, we have everything you need. kristen: why did you want to do this? guest: howard team brainstormed when the final report came out what we would do to honor all of that work post january 6 we thought it would make sense to take today, george washington's birthday, presidents' day, to read the entire report because it is a reminder the fight against here and he and the fight for our democracy is not

over. it continues. as we see what happened january 6 and all the reports afterwards, we have to protect our democracy and this is something the founders created for us, so we thought it would be poetic and necessary to take this day and read every single word of the final report. kristen: the report that former president trump was responsible for that insurrection -- are you reading every single word out loud? guest: we are reading every word with the exception of footnotes and appendices. it will end up being about 16 hours without stop. six in the morning until 10 at night. kristen: who is reading right now and how many people do you have total reading today? guest: we have about 30 people -- we just had senator scott wiener leave. i'm trying to walk backwards and not hurt myself. i'm going to be little quiet when i bring you in because there are folks listening online. kristen: how long are the reading shifts?

guest: 30 minutes. kristen: let's be quiet and we will go in and take a look at the reading room. this is being live-streamed so people can see from anywhere. let's go ahead and show portion of the reading from earlier today. take a listen. >> the participants in the january 6 attack have been convicted or await trial. >> from the 28,000 spectators who did pass through, 242 knives or blades, 18 brass knuckles, 18 tasers, three scissors, needles or screwdrivers. thousands of others purposefully remain outside of the magnetic meters or left their packs outside.

>> something happening in the d.c. area. or communicated it in some way. >> much, my general functions as my job, i would have a conversation with all the groups coming in. kristen: readers today. how did your shift go? guest: i had shift. i started at six in the morning. i will have the final shift of the night, ending at 10:00. i have been taking things as people show up and i will tell you, i'm learning things, horrifying things, disturbing things. but my shift went very well. i like reading out loud. these are documents committees are things. this is the giant book most

americans will probably never read. they probably won't have the time to sit and sift through. but we have h officials and professors, reverends, so it has been a very diverse group. kristen: how is your online viewing? i know you are streaming this. are you getting the idea people are picking up a little here and there and that's what you are hoping for? guest: yes. the last time we did this was the first year owning manny's, we did a live reading of the mueller report. we had about 40,000 people tune in. folks are tuning in for a little bit and then leaving and coming back in and we will upload it to our youtube page as well. if you would like to take a day and a half and fit and listen to it, you can do it in the comfort of your own home. kristen: the live reading

continues for how hours? six more hours? guest: it's 3:30, so another six and half hours. when you are done with your shift at abc 7, you can pop over and read some if you like. kristen: i'm going to let you go so you can get more water for the readers coming up. thank yo a reminder, you can newscast, breaking news, weather and more with our streaming tv app available on apple tv, google tv, fire tv -- search abc 7 bay area and download it now.

kristen: thank you so much for joining us for getting answers today. we will be here every weekday at three tonight inside the secret trip into ukraine president biden's historic visit how they pulled this off and who they warned just before they went in nearly one year since the russian invasion of ukraine, president biden and president zelinsky on the streets of kiev air raid sirens wailing in the background president biden taking a 10 hour train ride from poland to kiev. promising 500 million in new military aid. the president now on the eve of a major speech in europe and all eyes on vladimir putin to and his own speech. how will putin respond in panel live in ukraine tonight? mary bruce, traveling with the president? also tonight another deadly earthquake hitting turkey. several killed, hundreds more injured the 6.3