Page "Ryan White" Paragraph 3

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 had only been recently identified as the AIDS virus, 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.