Ryan White's mother seeks meeting with GOP presidential candidate

Ryan White, Aids Memorial Quilt

Huckabee AIDS comment alarms victim's mom

AIDS patients should have been isolated.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - The mother of Ryan White, an Indiana teenager whose life-ending battle with AIDS in the 1980s engrossed the nation, wants to meet with Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee to discuss his comments 15 years ago that AIDS patients should have been isolated.

The former Arkansas governor and GOP front-runner in the important Iowa caucuses said Sunday that he stood by the comments.
That has infuriated Jeanne White-Ginder, who said: "It's so alarming to me."
In a telephone interview Monday with The Associated Press from her home in Leesburg, Fla., she said: "It's very important to me that we don't live in the darkness" when people thought AIDS was transmitted through casual contact, such as by "kissing, tears, sweat and saliva."
"We have to treat this disease like a disease, and like Ryan always said, not like a dirty word," she said.
White was 13 when he was diagnosed with AIDS in December 1984, having contracted the disease from the blood-clotting agent used to treat his hemophilia. He was barred from school the following year out of fear the disease was spread casually. He died in 1990 at age 18.

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