Editing Ryan White (section)

==Early life and illness==
Ryan White was born at St. Joseph Memorial Hospital in [[Kokomo, Indiana]], to Hubert Wayne and Jeanne Elaine (Hale) 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.<ref name="BallState">{{cite book |last=Brannon |first=Haylee |url=http://www.bsudailynews.com/mother-of-aids-martyr-ryan-white-speaks-at-pruis-hall-1.2736885 |title=Mother of AIDS martyr Ryan White Speaks at Priuis Hall |publisher=the Ball State Daily News |year=2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120503095402/http://www.bsudailynews.com/mother-of-aids-martyr-ryan-white-speaks-at-pruis-hall-1.2736885 |archive-date=May 3, 2012 |url-status=bot: unknown}}</ref><ref name=AutoBio/> For treatment, he received weekly infusions of [[factor VIII (medication)|factor VIII]], a [[blood product]] created from pooled [[blood plasma|plasma]] of non-hemophiliacs, an increasingly common treatment for hemophiliacs at the time.<ref name="Blood saga">{{cite book |last=Resnik |first=Susan |url=https://archive.org/details/bloodsagahemophi00resn |title=Blood Saga: Hemophilia, AIDS, and the Survival of a Community |publisher=University of California Press |year=1999 |isbn=978-0-520-21195-7}}.</ref>

Healthy for most of his childhood, White became extremely ill with [[pneumonia]] in December 1984. On December 17, 1984, during a lung biopsy, White was diagnosed with [[AIDS]]. By this time, the scientific community had studied the epidemic in great detail. Earlier that year, HTLV-III was identified and isolated by American research scientists, confirming the work done by French research scientists who called it LAV. A lengthy public battle to determine who should be recognized as the discoverer of the human retrovirus delayed development of a test for what would later be called HIV. White had apparently received a contaminated treatment of factor&nbsp;VIII that was infected with HIV, as did thousands of other Americans with hemophilia and hemophiliacs around the world. At that time, because the virus had only recently been identified and there was no screening of blood products, much of the pooled factor VIII concentrate was tainted. Blood banks and pharmaceutical companies dismissed calls by the CDC to use a [[hepatitis B]] test as a surrogate until an HIV test could be developed. Later plasma products were screened and heat-treated to deactivate both HIV and hepatitis. Among hemophiliacs treated with blood-clotting factors between 1979 and 1984, nearly 90% became infected with HIV and/or [[hepatitis C]].<ref name="Blood saga"/> At the time of his diagnosis, White's [[T helper cell|T-cell count]] had dropped to 25 per cubic millimeter (a healthy individual without HIV will have around 500–1,200; below 200 is AIDS-defining in the U.S.).<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/about-hiv-and-aids/what-are-hiv-and-aids |title=What Are HIV and AIDS? |publisher=[[United States Department of Health and Human Services]] |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210604225152/https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/about-hiv-and-aids/what-are-hiv-and-aids |date=April 8, 2021 |archive-date=June 4, 2021 |access-date=June 19, 2021 }}</ref> Doctors predicted Ryan White had only six months to live.<ref name=AutoBio/>

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 an administrative appeal process that lasted for over nine months.<ref name="Wash test"/>