Elizabeth Glaser

Elizabeth Glaser ( Meyer; – ) was an American AIDS activist and child advocate married to actor and director Paul Michael Glaser. She contracted HIV very early in the modern AIDS epidemic after receiving an HIV-contaminated blood transfusion in 1981 while giving birth. Like other HIV-infected mothers, Glaser unknowingly passed the virus to her infant daughter, Ariel, who died in 1988. Life Elizabeth Glaser was born November 11, 1947 in New York City and raised in Hewlett Harbor, New York. She became the exhibit director of the Los Angeles Children's Museum. Glaser graduated in 1965 from what is now the Lawrence Woodmere Academy. Illness In 1981, very early in the modern AIDS epidemic Elizabeth Glaser contracted HIV after receiving an HIV-contaminated blood transfusion while giving birth. Like other HIV-infected mothers, Glaser unknowingly passed the virus to her infant daughter, Ariel, through breastfeeding. Ariel developed advanced AIDS at a time when the medical community knew very little about the disease, and there were no available treatment options. Members of the public reacted with fear, and Los Angeles preschools would not allow Glaser's then-4-year-old daughter to attend.