Ryan White (1971-1990) contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion when he was 13 and worked to educate people about the disease until his death at age 18. As a result of his efforts, and those of his mother Jeanne, Congress passed the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Care (CARE) Act, which provides health care resources to Americans with HIV/AIDS who have no insurance or not enough insurance to get proper care.

Ryan White was born on December 6, 1971 in Kokomo, Indiana. When he was three days old, doctors informed his parents that he had hemophilia, an inherited disease in which the blood does not clot. People who have this disease are vulnerable, since an injury as simple as a paper cut can lead to dangerous bleeding. Fortunately for White and his parents, a new treatment, called Factor VII, recently had been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug...