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Ryan Wayne White (December 6, 1971 – April 8, 1990) was an American teenager from Kokomo, Indiana, who became a national poster child for HIV/AIDS in the United States after being expelled from middle school because of his infection. As a hemophiliac, he became infected with HIV from a contaminated blood treatment and, when diagnosed in December 1984, was given six months to live. Doctors said he posed no risk to other students, but AIDS was poorly understood at the time. When White tried to return to school, many parents and teachers in Kokomo rallied against his attendance due to concerns of the disease spreading through bodily fluid transfer. Western School was actually located in Russiaville outside of Kokomo and was not part of the local Kokomo school system.〔 A lengthy legal battle with the school system ensued, and media coverage of the case made White into a national celebrity and spokesman for AIDS research and public education. Surprising his doctors, White lived five years longer than predicted but died in April 1990, one month before his high school graduation. Before White, AIDS was a disease widely associated with the male gay community, because it was first diagnosed among gay men. That perception shifted as White and other prominent HIV-infected people such as Magic Johnson, Arthur Ashe, the Ray brothers, and Kimberly Bergalis appeared in the media to advocate for more AIDS research and public education to address the epidemic. The U.S. Congress passed a major piece of AIDS legislation, the Ryan White Care Act, shortly after White's death. The Act has been reauthorized twice; Ryan White Programs are the largest provider of services for people living with HIV/AIDS in the United States. ==Early life and illness== Ryan White was born at St. Joseph Memorial Hospital in Kokomo, Indiana, to Jeanne Elaine Hale and Hubert Wayne White. When he was circumcised, the bleeding would not stop. When he was three days old,〔 doctors diagnosed him with severe hemophilia A, a hereditary blood coagulation disorder associated with the X chromosome, which causes even minor injuries to result in severe bleeding. For treatment, he received weekly transfusions of Factor VIII, a blood product created from pooled plasma of non-hemophiliacs, an increasingly common treatment for hemophiliacs at the time.〔.〕 Healthy for most of his childhood, he became extremely ill with pneumonia in December 1984. On December 17, 1984, during a partial-lung removal procedure, White was diagnosed with AIDS. The scientific community knew little about AIDS at the time: scientists had only realized earlier that year that HTLV-III, now called HIV, was the cause of AIDS. White had apparently received a contaminated treatment of Factor VIII that was infected with HTLV-III, although exactly when he was infected remains unknown to this day. At that time, because the retrovirus that causes AIDS had been recently identified, much of the pooled factor VIII concentrate supply in hospitals was tainted because doctors did not know how to test for the disease, and donors often did not know they were infected or that blood was a factor in the transmission of the virus. Among hemophiliacs treated with blood-clotting factors between 1979 and 1984, nearly 90% became infected with HIV.〔 At the time of his diagnosis, his T-cell count had dropped to 25 (a healthy individual without HIV will have around 500-1200). Doctors predicted White had only six months to live.〔 After the diagnosis, White was too ill to return to school, but by early 1985 he began to feel better. His mother asked if he could return to school, but was told by school officials that he could not. On June 30, 1985, a formal request to permit re-admittance to school was denied by Western School Corporation superintendent James O. Smith, sparking a legal battle that lasted for eight months.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ryan White」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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