White, Ryan. My Story: Ryan

White, Ryan. My Story: Ryan White. As told to Michael Cunningham. New York: Signet Books, 1992. The story of Ryan White unfolds as both an extraordinary and very ordinary tale. The book is about the character of an apparently, relatively ordinary boy who became a national spokesperson -- or so the boy would like the reader to think. For this ordinary boy showed amazing courage and fortitude in the face of a debilitating illness.

His strength was manifested not simply in his willingness to endure pain, but also his willingness to share his pain with the world and to use his own struggle to advance the cause of civil rights. Ryan White had AIDS. He contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion. Ryan needed a blood transfusion because he was born with hemophilia. Hemophilia is a disease that makes it easy for its sufferers to bruise and bleed. Hemophilia is a hereditary disease.

But AIDS is not a hereditary disease rather it is a viral infection. Ryan contracted the virus when he received a contaminated supply of AIDS-infected blood, hence his affliction at a very young age, even though AIDS is often thought of as a sexually transmitted disease. In fact, during the early stages of the AIDS epidemic, many hemophiliacs contracted the virus.

Because hemophiliacs need blood transfusions more than many other groups of people with chronic, hereditary illnesses, they were one of the first groups to suffer the full brunt of the AIDS epidemic. Now, blood transfusions are screened for such communicable illnesses as AIDS, but when Ryan received his transfusion, AIDS was still relatively little known as an ailment. Another group who suffered AIDS in disproportionate, early numbers were gay men and IV drug users, such as people who abused heroin.

The affliction of these populations caused many people to fear individuals who had AIDS, because these groups were so despised in so-called mainstream society. AIDS was seen as a voluntary illness or a plague that was inflicted upon suffering groups as punishment, rather than by accident.

Many people, such as in Ryan's small Indiana community, feared individuals who had the full-blown AIDS or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome virus, or even who were merely HIV infected, meaning that they had the virus but did not yet have all of the symptoms of AIDS that inhibited their daily health. AIDS, no matter who has it, states Ryan in the book, is not a judgment, merely an illness. He did not see himself as an innocent sufferer.

Rather he believed that all people who suffer from AIDS are innocent victims. Ryan White understood this well, given the fact he had suffered from hemophilia from birth, another illness that indiscriminately affects its sufferers and takes away their health and often their lives. Ryan had never allowed his hereditary illness to limit his life before. Thus he was determined that AIDS would not slow him down either, nor prevent him from enjoying a normal life, or at least as normal as he could manage to live it.

He saw no problem with his decision. AIDS, like hemophilia, could not be transmitted by casual contact between people. Thus Ryan saw no difficulty in his resolve to go to school like a normal adolescent. However, Ryan's high school was not as understanding. Like many communities, the town he lived in was motivated by fear and even by hate towards AIDS sufferers. This fear inhibited their generosity and willingness to open their minds and hearts to Ryan.

In addition to the tremendous suffering Ryan experienced because of his medical battles, Ryan was also forced to suffer the prejudices of the people around him, who he wished would befriend him. His worst blow came when he was barred from attending his high school. He had to battle in the courts of the United States to win what for most teens is an ordinary act, the daily right to go to school in his town district. What for some teens is a chore was for Ryan a privilege.

People from all over the country rallied to Ryan's defense in support of his civil rights. The book ends with loving tributes from celebrities and activists who supported Ryan and his cause. Ryan met with Elton John and other notable people over the course of his physical, personal and legal battles with prejudice and with the illnesses that afflicted his body but not his soul. Ryan's strength of spirit was not stymied by the prejudices he experienced any more than he was psychologically limited by his illness.

He became a spokesperson for the civil rights of AIDS sufferers across the nation and across the world. He put a face on the illness, and was willing to sacrifice his own privacy to do so. His struggle.