YouTube Friday: Ryan White 1971-1990

I saw this video on the late Ryan White as I was looking around YouTube. Ryan was an inspirational young man. He was born in 1971, and had hemophillia, a disease of the blood, since he was a few days old. He acquired AIDS in the mid '80s from a blood transfusion, and was put out of school because of it. This was back in the days when AIDS was not well-understood in public,, and people didn't understand how someone acquired the disease. Ryan and his parents had to go to court to fight the school board about his re-admittance to school. He passed away at the age 18 in April 1990 from AIDS, right before he graduated from High School. Looking at the Wikipedia page about his life, it says that 1,500 people were at his funeral in '90, and that many celebrities came to visit him over time. I remember seeing a replay of a made-for-TV movie about Ryan's life when I was in Middle School. I hope that people can find courage and strength from what he went through, and that opinions on AIDS and HIV change from what they are now.