Ryan White and His Fight To Be Accepted

Ryan White was born in Kokomo, Indiana to his parents, Jeanne and Hubert White. Ryan as a sister named, Andrea.

In 1984, when Ryan was 13 years old, he was infected with HIV when he received a blood transfusion due to hemophilia, a hereditary blood coagulation disorder associated with the X chromosome, which causes even minor injuries to result in severe bleeding. Ryan was born with this and had endured countless transfusions since he was a baby. The doctors had given him 6 months to live.

Ryan was told that the disease wasn’t going to be passed on to other people since it’s not an airborne disease. During that time, Aids and HIV was still new and little information about the disease was poorly understood and because of misinformation, Ryan wasn’t welcome in his own school due to teachers and parents worrying about their children contacting HIV from Ryan. He was no longer allowed to attend school. No matter how much education and research went into learning about the disease people were still afraid of catching it from someone.

Elton John became a friend to the White family. He gave Ryan’s mom, Jeanne, $16,500 to put toward a down payment on a home in Cicero, and, rather than accept repayment, placed the repaid money into a college fund for Ryan's sister.

Ryan lived with HIV for 5 years before passing away at the age of 18. He was one month short from graduating high school. Elton John attended his funeral and performed the song “Skyline Pigeon”

White was one of a handful of highly visible people with AIDS in the 1980s and early 1990s who helped change the public perception of the disease. White, along with actor Rock Hudson, was one of the earliest public faces of AIDS. Other public figures who were infected with HIV included Keith Haring, Holly Johnson, Freddie Mercury, the Ray brothers, Magic Johnson, Greg Louganis, Arthur Ashe, Liberace, Eazy-E, Tim Richmond, Anthony Perkins, Randy Shilts, Ricky Wilson, Robert Reed, and Jerry Smith. White helped to increase public awareness that HIV/AIDS was a significant epidemic.

People associated HIV/Aids with the gay community since it was something that happened within that community, but with how the disease is contacted, you can get it from things like, blood transfusions, drugs and most commonly sex. People were scared since they assumed that it was like a cold and if you got to close, you were able to catch it.

Ryan wanted to be treated like everyone else, but with rumors about HIV, it was hard for him to connect with people. He wanted to belong in a world that didn’t understand. He did what he could to make people learn and accept. It was during a time where it was hard to be different. Ryan just wanted to go to school, hang out with friends and do things that every kid his age wanted to do, but due to HIV, people didn't want to go near him. He felt alone, isolated and he probably felt scared because he didn't know how people were going to treat him.

Researching and education about HIV/Aids was still in the early stages and people were learning about it along with the doctors. They knew just has much as we did, but as time went on, doctors and researchers were able to create a drug that was able to keep the disease under control to the point where it becomes undetectable.

HIV/Aids is no longer a death sentence.