Paul Renfro

Jan 10, 2025 | newrepublic.com | Paul Renfro

Over 35 years ago now, as the Soviet Union teetered on the brink of collapse and President George H.W. Bush worked to secure a peaceful conclusion to the Cold War, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama infamously declared the “end of history.” “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War,” Fukuyama writes in the pages of The National Interest, “but the end of history as such: That is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western...

Oct 30, 2024 | counterpunch.org | Paul Renfro

A nation that had ignored so many AIDS-related deaths could not ignore Ryan White’s funeral. Held on April 11, 1990, in “the gothic expanse of Second Presbyterian Church” in Meridian Hills, an affluent community just north of downtown Indianapolis, the funeral was a somber yet spectacular affair.The youngster from Kokomo, Indiana, had become one of the most visible faces of the HIV/AIDS epidemic after he had contracted HIV through contaminated blood products when he was 13.

Oct 30, 2024 | counterpunch.org | Paul Renfro

A nation that had ignored so many AIDS-related deaths could not ignore Ryan White’s funeral. Held on April 11, 1990, in “the gothic expanse of Second Presbyterian Church” in Meridian Hills, an affluent community just north of downtown Indianapolis, the funeral was a somber yet spectacular affair.The youngster from Kokomo, Indiana, had become one of the most visible faces of the HIV/AIDS epidemic after he had contracted HIV through contaminated blood products when he was 13.

Oct 22, 2024 | publicbooks.org | Paul Renfro |Charlotte Rosen

A nation that had ignored so many AIDS-related deaths could not ignore Ryan White’s funeral. Held on April 11, 1990, in “the gothic expanse of Second Presbyterian Church” in Meridian Hills, an affluent community just north of downtown Indianapolis, the funeral was a somber yet spectacular affair. The youngster from Kokomo, Indiana, had become one of the most visible faces of the HIV/AIDS epidemic after he had contracted HIV through contaminated blood products when he was 13.

Oct 21, 2024 | us6.campaign-archive.com | Paul Renfro

Shortly after he was born in 1971, Ryan White was diagnosed with severe hemophilia. Ryan was able to reduce his hospitalizations from the disease through the use of in-home injections of Factor VIII concentrate, something he and other people with hemophilia saw as a lifeline. The downside of this lifeline was that it pooled blood and plasma from thousands of donors, increasing the user’s risk of exposure to diseases like HIV. In 1984, Ryan was diagnosed with AIDS.