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‘Patient Zero’ not responsible for start of HIV epidemic in U.S.

Mr. Dugas, a homosexual flight attendant, has been demonized as being responsible for bringing HIV/AIDS to America’s shores and starting the 1981 AIDS epidemic here, and it has now been convincingly proven that this is not true.

In a study published in the journal Nature on October 26, 2016, a team of scientists from the University of Arizona pieced together the entire genetic sequence of the HIV virus. They found that in 1970s samples, a full-genome ‘snapshot’ revealed that the US HIV-1 epidemic exhibited extensive genetic diversity in the 1970s.

After serologically screening over 2,000 blood samples, scientists were able to recreate complete genetic codes from eight of the archived blood samples taken in the 1970s. Scientists can now present genetic proof that the AIDS virus was circulating in the U.S. a decade before the first few AIDS cases were identified in California in 1981.

The research team also discovered that based on the genetic signature of the virus, it had jumped from a “pre-existing epidemic in Haiti in the 1970s.” The study places the ancestral U.S. virus in New York City, strongly suggesting that the city became a “crucial hub of early U.S. HIV/AIDS diversification.”

Lead author of the study, Dr. Michael Worobey, said: “The samples contain so much genetic diversity that they could not have originated in the late 1970s. We can place the most precise dates on the origins of the U.S. epidemic at about 1970 or 1971.”

The team used the same genetic sequencing in extracting the full HIV genetic code from Mr. Dugas, “Patient Zero” in the Randy Shilts 1987 bestseller “And the Band Played On.”

Shilts wrote the book after Dugas died, and identified him as playing a key role in spreading the virus. The news media at the time painted him as a villain. However, based on the genetic fingerprint from a Dugas blood sample and compared to the genetic fingerprints of the older blood samples, there is no biological evidence to suggest Dugas was the cause of the epidemic.

From Patient O to Patient Zero
Dugas became associated with the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. after a study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) connected AIDS to sexual transmission of the disease in a cluster of 40 homosexual men. In the study, Dugas was identified as “Patient O” because he was from “outside” of California, where the epidemic was believed to have started.

Somehow, the capital letter “O” became a zero, perhaps because of an inadvertent typo by the media and Dugas will forever be known as “Patient Zero,” meaning he was the first patient infected in the AIDS epidemic.

“This individual was simply one of thousands infected before HIV was recognized,” study co-author Richard McKay, a medical historian at the University of Cambridge, told reporters in a telephone briefing, according to Reuters.

“Our analysis shows that the outbreaks in California that first caused people to ring the alarm bells and led to the discovery of AIDS were really just offshoots of the earlier outbreak in New York City,” Worobey said.

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We are deeply saddened to announce the passing of our dear friend Karen Graham, who served as Editor-at-Large at Digital Journal. She was 78 years old. Karen's view of what is happening in our world was colored by her love of history and how the past influences events taking place today. Her belief in humankind's part in the care of the planet and our environment has led her to focus on the need for action in dealing with climate change. It was said by Geoffrey C. Ward, "Journalism is merely history's first draft." Everyone who writes about what is happening today is indeed, writing a small part of our history.

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