I credit him with putting a human face on the word "gay" and for being proud of who he was, something ayoung man in West Virginia truly needed to see.

Pedro’s life, already so well documented by news andreality television, was immortalized again earlier this year with a movie byOscar winning writer Dustin Lance Black and produced by our parent company, MTV.

It was odd seeing a life we had watched reenacted, but it was important.

HIV/AIDS has taken ahuge toll on the world, from Hollywood to orphanages full of children in Africa.Over the next few pages, we’ll take a look at eight more men we miss besidesPedro that the disease has taken from the world, some gay, some straight, butall missed.

Ryan White made huge strides in humanizing people living with HIV.

Ryan White was nobody famous. A regular teenager from Kokomo,Indiana, he required a blood transfusion in 1984 that left him HIV+ . Thedisease, then poorly understood, caused rampant fear in his community, and led to huge legalbattles over whether the quiet young man could continue to attend his school.