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AIDS research traces influences of Ryan White
February 21, 2003 | |||||
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KOKOMO, Ind.—President Bush’s recent State of the Union pledge to fund more AIDS treatment programs provided a psychological, as well as a financial boost, for the fight against the virus, according to Nancy Schlapman, Ph.D., associate professor of nursing at IU Kokomo. During a fall sabbatical, Schlapman researched how society’s responses to AIDS have changed over the past two decades. Bush’s proposal reflects that gradual change, she said. “I think the fact that the President’s Emergency Relief Plan for AIDS was international greatly helps with the idea that AIDS is a disease, not a lifestyle, which has broadly been the view in the United States. His point about a comprehensive system for diagnosing, preventing and treating AIDS also moves toward seeing the disease in its entirety and gives hope for the eventual eradication of the disease.” Taking systematic steps to treat AIDS and prevent its transmission seems common sense today. But universal health care practices and precautions regarding AIDS—things like screening donated blood for HIV and using disposable needles—are all less than 20 years old. And, according Schlapman’s research, they may have come about, in part, because of Kokomo teenager Ryan White. Twenty Bachelor of Science in Nursing students helped Schlapman sort the fact from fiction of Ryan White’s life and death last fall, as part of the elective course “Evidence-Based Nursing Practice.” In 1985, the 13-year-old White learned that he had contracted AIDS through tainted blood products used to treat his hemophilia. He died 5 years later, but not before he became a reluctant celebrity and activist for better understanding of the AIDS virus and its transmission. The students “carefully searched through old newspaper articles, magazines, the World Wide Web and Center for Disease Control publications, and interviewed health care providers who were directly involved with Ryan White’s care in the 1980s,” Schlapman said. The researchers read books about White, including an autobiography, and “worked through a variety of value clarification exercises to try to unwrap the prejudice that followed the Ryan White case for so many years,” she said. In PowerPoint presentations delivered December 2, the students described how public fear that White could spread AIDS to classmates lead to stringent isolation of the boy in school and ostracism of his family. Publicity over the case prompted medical investigation that later concluded that HIV/AIDS is sexually transmitted and is not transmitted by casual contact. White helped turn public opinion regarding the adoption of universal precautions and expanded access to treatment and legal protections for those with AIDS. Student researchers included Natalie Baden of Sharpsville; Kristine Ferguson of Van Buren; Stephanie Hanson of Galveston; Megan Howell of Greentown; Sara Mercer of Twelve Mile, Michele Meredith of Wabash; Josie Motes of Michigantown; Heather Rood, Kempton; Heather Endsley and Rebekah Hawley, both of Peru; and Danielle Barnes, Amy Black, Kristen Graham, Michelle Green, Carolyn Harlan, Sarah Hodapp, Amber Jordan, Amber Pollard and Sara Sampson, all of Kokomo. Schlapman said a couple of facts from Ryan White’s history speak to today’s continued fight against AIDS. “One is that education is still the best defense. Second, there is still a need for money to fight the disease, whether that money is channeled into the county health departments or into national research. We still do not have a vaccine to prevent the disease, or enough education to overcome the stigma of the disease.”
Schlapman hopes to publish her and the students’ findings as a book.
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