And so it goes with Gaétan Dugas, an Air Canada flight attendant who died in 1984 and soon thereafter was identified by the media as “Patient Zero” in the North American HIV/AIDS epidemic. Modern versions of the virus may have emerged as early as the 1920s, reaching the Caribbean in 1967, New York in 1971, and San Francisco in 1976. The authors, led by Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, identified degraded HIV in samples from preserved Hepatitis B tests in 1978 and 1979. A decade ago, the discovery of viral samples from 1960 allowed him to place its origin to about 1908. In the CDC’s historical docket of the US outbreak, Dugas was Case 57.

Source: Mint October 27, 2016 06:42 UTC