A man
frequently blamed for spreading HIV to the US was not responsible for the
initial outbreak, a study has confirmed.
During the
early AIDS crisis, gay French-Canadian airline steward Gaëtan Dugas was
frequently named-and-shamed in the press as ‘Patient Zero’, blamed for
spreading an HIV outbreak in the Caribbean to New York.
However, a
study this week concluded that he was not responsible – and a simple
misunderstanding was responsible for years of blame.
Mr Dugas was
originally designated as ‘Patient O’ in 1984 Los Angeles research, denoting
‘Outside of California’.
This was
misinterpreted as ‘Patient 0’ – incorrectly identifying him as the source of
the AIDS epidemic – and widely disseminated in the press alongside reports of
his promiscuity.
Analysis from a
blood sample confirmed the air steward was definitively not responsible for the
transmission of HIV from the Caribbean, due to the HIV strain present.
Richard McKay,
author of the new study, said: “The current study provides further evidence
that patient 57, the individual identified both by the letter O and the number
0, was not patient zero of the North American epidemic.
“Gaétan 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.
“In many ways
the historical evidence has been pointing to the fallacy of this particular
notion of patient zero for decades.
“This
individual was simply one of thousands infected before HIV/Aids was recognised.
The study
notes: “Media coverage insinuated that this individual was the source of the
North American epidemic and an exemplar of dangerous disease transmission —
ideas which found a global audience.
“However, we
found that the HIV-1 genome from this individual appeared typical of US strains
of the time [and not linked to] the deeper Caribbean subtype B diversity, in a
manner that might be suggestive of a special role.
“In short, we
found no evidence that Patient 0 was the first person infected by this lineage
of HIV-1.”
Dugas died in
March 1984 aged 31, as a result of AIDS-related kidney failure.
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