Posted on 09/10/2003 2:24:33 PM PDT by KantianBurke
GRANITE CITY, Ill. - Jason Robertson, whose battle to attend school as a boy with AIDS (news - web sites) in the 1980s helped other children with the virus overcome its stigma, has died. He was 23.
Robertson died this past Thursday in his mother's home in Granite City.
"Until the end, he was more concerned for our feelings than for himself," said Tammie Robertson. "He told me, 'Mom, I'm sorry I made you cry so many times and that I was such a burden.' ... But he was never a burden."
Robertson was diagnosed with the virus that causes AIDS when he was 5 years old. He contracted the virus through blood products used to treat his hemophilia.
At his mother's suggestion, the Granite City School District designated a special classroom in a trailer to shield him from controversy.
But he was lonely without contact with other children, so she asked the district to let him attend regular classes. The district refused, siding with parents who feared, contrary to medical fact, that their children could become infected through casual contact.
A federal judge ordered the district in 1988 to admit the child to regular class.
Tammie Robertson said on the first day of classes, her son had to walk past angry parents shouting "Back to the trailer!"
"Jason forgave them, and I forgive them," she said. "They didn't know any better. It was the early days of AIDS."
When Robertson was 8, his family moved to South Roxana, Ill. There, he once again faced placard-waving demonstrators on his first day of school.
"He was a tough little fella. He showed a lot of courage," said the school's then principal, Dorothy Stickels.
Robertson's struggle made him a symbol of the fight against AIDS discrimination. But to his family, he was a boy who dreamed of living a normal life, who loved baseball, comic book superheroes and wrestling.
Robertson became close friends with Ryan White, an Indiana boy with AIDS whose legal struggle to attend a grade school in his state became a national story in 1985.
When White died in 1990, Robertson "ran off and locked himself in his room and cried," his mother said. "To him, it was like losing his big brother."
With money from a suit filed against the companies that supplied the tainted blood products that made him sick, Robertson bought a car and house of his own.
As the drugs that kept full-blown AIDS at bay began to aggravate his hemophilia, Robertson stopped taking medication.
"He wanted to live at least a couple of years without pain," his mother said.
Not true. AIDS will eventually attack the major organs including the brain. Most folks do however contract other illnesses before the AIDS damage becomes life-threatening.
I've never heard of this.
All information I've read states that AIDS attacks the immune system and people die of opportunistic infections.
Can you provide some documentation to back up your claims?
This is absolute nonsense.
The only people who deny that HIV causes AIDS are quack witch-doctors and frauds who are considered total kooks by general consensus in the scientific community.
There is no debate whatsoever among any credible members of the medical community that HIV clearly causes AIDS.
You don't know this.
HIV+ gays or heteros who are HIV+ are not allowed to donate anymore than IV drug users...but many get in under the radar.
By the way, there are more heteros who are HIV+ worldwide than homos. So blaming gays for contaminating the blood supply has more to do with personal prejudice than any knowledge of the facts.
Not in the US where this kid lives
Our children need the blood products of a society that cares more for society as a whole than their own carnal desires!
Aids may be spread by the queers, but it is suffered most by the innocent.
Not in the US where this kid lives
So what. You still have no clue whether the blood donor who infected this kid was gay or straight.
AIDS is spread by all kinds of people. World wide, more heteros contract and spread AIDS than gays.
Educate yourself.
During the time the kid was infected, AIDS was known as "Gay Cancer". I was there. Irresponsible behavior killed these kids just like Ryan White. We need to face the facts or we will repeat the same mistakes.
That's true. But it didn't remain this way for long.
And I don't see where blaming one group or another for a particular person's infection does much good.
It would be more accurate blaming a behavior, such as sexual promiscuity..which spreads AIDS among both gays and heteros.
So we don't repeat the same mistakes.
My feelings?
Your post wasn't even addressed to me.
In fact I don't even know the poster you were attacking.
I was just giving you some friendly advice.
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