AIDS ‘Patient Zero’: Gaetan Dugas’ Name Cleared As HIV Origins Traced In New Study

The so-called AIDS “Patient Zero” blamed for introducing HIV to the United States wasn’t responsible for spreading the virus after all, according to a new study published earlier in the week. The study also suggests that AIDS may have been around much earlier in North America than once thought, and in a different part of the country.

For the past three-plus decades, Canadian man Gaetan Dugas had been blamed for America’s AIDS epidemic. Speaking to researchers in the early-1980s, the flight attendant admitted to having sexual intercourse with about 250 men a year between 1979 and 1981. He was initially identified as “Patient O,” meaning someone who resided outside of California, but not necessarily the first documented case of AIDS. The “Patient Zero” moniker, however, spread through a misinterpretation of the “O” as a zero, and according to CNN, media and public interpretation led people to think Dugas was the man who brought AIDS to America, resulting in Dugas and his family being ostracized for years, even after he died in 1984.

Moving back to the present, the new study clears Gaetan Dugas as the alleged “Patient Zero,” instead maintaining that no one could be accurately pinpointed as the person who brought HIV to North America and facilitated its spread from Africa via the Caribbean.

#PatientZero Gaëtan Dugas did NOT bring HIV to the US as previously believed, new research finds: https://t.co/MiXiDWU1lB http://pic.twitter.com/triWX65RZR

— Winq Magazine (@WinqMagazine) October 27, 2016

“No one should be blamed for the spread of a virus that no one even knew about, and how the virus moved from the Caribbean to the US in New York City in the 1970s is an open question,” said University of Arizona biologist Dr. Michael Worobey, co-author of the study. “It could have been a person of any nationality. It could have even been blood products. A lot of blood products used in the United States in the 1970s actually came from Haiti.”

In order to more accurately determine the origin of AIDS and look into the “Patient Zero” mystery, the researchers used genome sequencing to analyze frozen blood samples dating back to the 1970s, including Dugas’ own blood sample. Based on what they discovered, the HIV and AIDS epidemic may have begun in 1970 in New York, more than a decade before Gaetan Dugas became a household name. It had then moved from New York to San Francisco circa 1976, with New York City serving as a “hub” for its spread to the West Coast.

As for Dugas, the genome sequencing revealed that there was no biological proof he had first transmitted HIV in America and thereby brought on the spread of AIDS. As such, the “Patient Zero” myth is incorrect, with Dugas’ genome appearing to be similar to those of patients with pre-existing strains of HIV at the time.

Dismantling the #PatientZero myth : Via @NPR: Researchers Clear 'Patient Zero' From AIDS Origin Story https://t.co/7d6C4GlnDQ

— JusticeWILLPrevail (@WaaJahK) October 27, 2016

Before New York, HIV was believed to have spread from apes to humans early in the 20^th century in Africa. According to Emory University Center for AIDS Research co-director Dr. James Curran, who was not involved in the study, scientists theorized that a chimpanzee may have infected one person in sub-Saharan Africa in the early 20^th century, before spreading to the Caribbean. The virus may have then hit the United States via Haiti, he added.

Dr. Curran also oversaw the CDC’s AIDS task force in 1981, and it was around that time when Dugas was found to be around the center of a network of HIV-positive gay men across America. Still, Dr. Curran maintains that the public was too quick to assume Dugas was the man who brought AIDS to the U.S.

“The CDC never said that he was Patient Zero and that he was the first person,” Dr. Curran told CNN. “In addition to the potential damage to his reputation, it was also a damage to scientific plausibility. That there would be a single-point source to start the epidemic in the United States is not very likely. It’s more likely that several people were infected.”

As noted on a report from NBC News, more than 1.2 million U.S. residents are HIV-positive, with about 50,000 new cases reported per year. And AIDS is a disease that still has no vaccine and no cure. And as medical researchers continue to work overtime in dealing with the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the debunking of the AIDS “Patient Zero” story, the posthumous clearing of Gaetan Dugas’ name, and the new findings on the disease’s origins are truly a step in the right direction.

[Featured Image by Chris Jackson/Getty Images]

AIDS ‘Patient Zero’: Gaetan Dugas’ Name Cleared As HIV Origins Traced In New Study is an article from: The Inquisitr News