HIV Patient Zero Confirmed Not The Source Of HIV/AIDS Outbreak

For years, the spread of HIV/Aids virus was linked to a homosexual flight attendant, Gaetan Dugas, or known as Patient Zero. After decades of bearing the label, he is finally cleared of being the person to spread HIV/Aids virus to the United States.

According to BBC, a study that was published in the journal Nature, presented that he was just one of thousands of people infected with the virus in the 1970s. It was also stated in the report that New York was the central hub for the spread of the virus. Aids was only recognised in 1981, when research confirmed that there were unusual symptoms appearing specifically in gay men. Researchers looked further back by analysing stored blood samples with HIV in 1970s.

According to CNN, University of Arizona has a team that developed a method to recreate the genetic code of the virus in those patients. They screened about 2,000 samples from New York and San Francisco and got eight complete HIV genetic codes which gave scientists the necessary information to make a family tree for HIV and trace when it got into the US.

"The samples contain so much genetic diversity that they could not have originated in the late 1970s,” one of the researchers, Dr. Michael Worobey, said. He added that "We can place the most precise dates on the origins of the US epidemic at about 1970 or 1971."

Researchers also examined the blood from Dugas. The results confirmed that the virus in his blood was not "father”. In short, he is not responsible for the US epidemic.

A science historian at the University of Cambridge, Dr Richard McKay said that "Gaetan Dugas is one of the most demonised patients in history and one of a long line of individuals and groups vilified in the belief that they somehow fuelled epidemics with malicious intent."

Scientists say that HIV might have been transmitted to humans after a chimpanzee infected a person in the early 20th century. The latest general consensus among scientists is that HIV somehow crossed the Atlantic, rapidly spreading through the Caribbean before it ever arrived in the United States, most probably from Haiti.

The research team expects and hopes that this breakthrough and its findings would create better comprehension of how HIV spread, that a single person should not be blamed for any outbreak.
Dugas died in 1984, identified and labelled as Patient Zero.