Ryan White & the CARE Act of 1990

Unsung History

Shortly after he was born in 1971, Ryan White was diagnosed with severe hemophilia. Ryan was able to reduce his hospitalizations from the disease through the use of in-home injections of Factor VIII concentrate, something he and other people with hemophilia saw as a lifeline. The downside of this lifeline was that it pooled blood and plasma from thousands of donors, increasing the user’s risk of exposure to diseases like HIV. In 1984, Ryan was diagnosed with AIDS. His fight to be allowed to attend school and live as normal a life as possible made him a household name and helped humanize the HIV/AIDS epidemic for many Americans, culminating in the passage of the Ryan White CARE Act months after Ryan’s death in 1990. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Paul Renfro, Associate Professor of History at Florida State University and author of The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode audio is a clip from “Episode 259: Alyssa Milano,” Two Broads Talking Politics, July 23, 2019, used with permission of the original podcast. The mid-episode music is “The Beat of Nature” by folk_acoustic; the audio is free for use under the Pixabay Content License. The episode image is a photo of Ryan White taken at a fundraising event in the spring of 1989 in INdianapolis, Indiana; it is available via Wikimedia Commons and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Additional sources:

• “Who Was Ryan White?” The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, Health Resources & Services Administration.
• “Remembering Ryan White, the teen who fought against the stigma of AIDS,” by Dr. Howard Markel, PBS Health, April 8, 2016.
• “Ryan White, Teen Who Contracted AIDS, Shifted Narrative Around the Disease,” By Paul Renfro, Teen Vogue, December 6, 2021.
• “Elton John credits Ryan White’s family with saving his life,” by Associated Press, PBS, April 3, 2022.
• “S.2240 - Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act of 1990,” 101st Congress (1989-1990), Congress.gov.
• “Celebrating 30 Years of the Ryan White CARE Act,” HIV.gov, August 18, 2020.
• “U.S. Statistics,” HIV.gov.

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