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.
Oh I get it. So this means we are supposed to believe quacks and witch doctors who have no credibility in the scientific community.
WAKE UP! The HIV virus causes AIDS.
Show me a scientific paper that proves this and explains how it causes AIDS.
There is no such paper.
Back during the War on Cancer, when cancer was believed to viral,Bob Gallo was the only man so arrogant as to declare he had discovered a retroviral cause of cancer: H.T.L.V. I, a harmless retrovirus.
This is the same man who who whipped off his wraparound sunglasses and announced to the world press, "Gentlemen, we have found the cause of AIDS!"
No peer review, no scientific paper, just a media blitz.
Show me a scientific paper that proves this and explains how it causes AIDS.
There is no such paper.
Say what? There are THOUSANDS of such papers explaining how HIV causes AIDS....and many more explaining how the HIV drugs prevent AIDS.
What planet are you living on?
Do you have HIV?
No there are tons of studies of CD-4 helper cells that raise more questions than they answer and suggest further funding is required. Repeat as needed until your BMW is paid off.
Do you have HIV?
Never been tested, never engaged in any high risk behavior. If I did, I sure as hell wouldn't take any DNA chain terminators like AZT. I believe Magic Johnson stopped taking his meds quite some time ago and is just fine.
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