Ryan White, a teenager who helped change public perception around AIDS, passed away at 18 years old on this day in 1990. White had hemophilia, and contracted the disease six years earlier when he received a blood transfusion that turned out to be contaminated. Doctors gave him half a year to live at the time. He was then expelled from his middle school in Kokomo, Ind., after his family vigorously resisted the school system's attempts to separate him from other students.
White's family challenged the expulsion in court, drawing national attention to his situation. They won the case and he was readmitted, but the bullying and threats he received were so intense that they had to move to another nearby town, Cicero. Meanwhile, he became a national figure through his appearances on TV shows and congressional testimony. In Cicero, he received much better treatment even though everyone knew his name. He even had the chance to attend school dances and get a job repairing skateboards.
He died just one month before his high school graduation. A few months later, Congress passed the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resource Emergency (CARE) Act. The law has supported the provision of care services to hundreds of thousands of patients.
You can learn more about White in this article from EBSCO.
