Posted on 10/29/2007 8:04:41 PM PDT by blam
Aids study shows it arrived in US in 1960s
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 5:01pm GMT 29/10/2007
A widely-held theory of how Aids arrived in the west - as an infection carried by a promiscuous gay Canadian flight attendant - is overturned by a study published today that shows the American epidemic was born two decades earlier, during the sixties.
The western epidemic was first recognised in 1981 with an outbreak of a rare form of cancer among gay men in New York and California, along with a rash of seemingly healthy young men presenting with fevers, flu-like symptoms, and a rare pneumonia.
In his book, And the Band Played On, American journalist Randy Shilts identified "Patient Zero" as a gay Canadian flight attendant named Gaëtan Dugas, who died in 1984 after spreading the virus out of Africa to a number of homosexual partners in the west.
This theory, which made Gaetan a notorious benchmark for the spread of an epidemic that now affects 40 million people worldwide, is overturned today by a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which concludes the virus was incubating in the American population for much longer.
The path the strain took from its central African origins has long been debated, but the new study suggest that the simplest explanation is that the virus entered Haiti first, and then was transmitted to the United States, in or around 1969. Then HIV-1 circulated in the US for around a dozen years before the formal recognition of AIDS by doctors in 1981.
"Our results show that the strain of virus that spawned the U.S. AIDS epidemic probably arrived in or around 1969. That is earlier than a lot of people had imagined," said senior author Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, Tuscon.
The research is the first to definitively pinpoint when and from where HIV-1 entered the United States. "Patient Zero", ever since Shilts's book, has taken on an importance greater than perhaps deserved," Worobey told the Daily Telegraph.
"He was originally designated "patient O" as in "OUT of California" but that evolved into Patient Zero. He was certainly an early victim, and one linked to many other early cases," he said, though he added there is "no reason to mark him out as the likely index case for the US epidemic."
In fact "Haiti was the stepping stone the virus took when it left central Africa," said Worobey. "Once the virus got to the US then it just moved explosively around the world."
The strain that migrated to America in 1969 is the first human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) discovered and the dominant strain of the AIDS virus in most countries outside sub-Saharan Africa. Almost all the viruses in those countries descended from the one that emerged from Haiti, he said.
The team, which includes Andrew Rambaut at the University of Edinburgh, based on the conclusion on genetic analyses. The team analysed blood from five of the first Aids patients identified in the US, all of whom were recent immigrants from Haiti. The team also analysed genetic sequences from another 117 AIDS patients from around the world.
The team used statistical methods to investigate all the family trees that were consistent with the genetic data. For the hypothesis that, from Africa, HIV went to the US first, the probability is 0.003 percent -- virtually nil. For the hypothesis that HIV went from Africa first to Haiti in around 1966 and then on to the US, the probability is 99.8 percent, almost 100 percent.
"I am not sure the Gaetan idea is given much credence these days - our paper really more generally rules out the idea of specific individuals causing these epidemics," said Rambaut. "It is not the entry into the USA that is relevant here but the crossing of the virus into US risk groups."
Learning more about the genetic make-up of the various strains of HIV could help vaccine development, Worobey added. "The main challenge of developing a vaccine against HIV is its tremendous genetic diversity," he said. Knowing the gamut of diversity could be important.
So it wasn’t Reagans fault?
Nope... despite what the libs would have you believe.
There is some thought (and scientific evidence to support same) that AIDS actually showed up in the US in 1954, though it was not recognized until June 5, 1981.
HIV has been detected in preserved historical blood samples as far back as *1959*.
Sounds like Johnson’s fault.
It’s not an epidemic unless lots of people get it.
Saying that it was epidemic in 1969, except that very few people had it, makes no sense. Some trigger event pushed the virus from endemic to epidemic in a few years. Even then, many fewer caught AIDS than got the flu, so is it really an epidemic, or sudden media focus?
Patient 0? Mariel Boat Lift? Disco? Something got the ball rolling.
Somebody's "Johnson" in the wrong place.
It was those darn Village People, even if they weren’t all gay.
Seriously, who knows how many people died of “fever of unknown origin” etc. over the years before enough public health officials decided the mysterious deaths had something in common.
I gather medicine has had all manner of imaginative terms for WTF? over the centuries.
*groan*
I thought Reagan caused AIDS because of his hatred of the gay community.
But then, I thought we are all at risk of AIDS, and that AIDS is not a gay disease.
I guess Reagan forced certain people into risky behaviors so he could use them for political gain. IV drug users are another big group of AIDS victims. Remember “just say no” to drugs? Obviously Reagan hated drug users too.
There is some thought (and scientific evidence to support same) that AIDS actually showed up in the US in 1954, though it was not recognized until June 5, 1981.
HIV has been detected in preserved historical blood samples as far back as *1959*.
I remeber reading years ago that AIDS was known to exist back in the 1950's. However, in order to become an epidemic, all it needed was for one infected promiscuous gay man to enter a bathouse, and it was "game over".
When your immune system is compromised, there is always something else it can get classified as.
They probably weren’t dying of WTF, but one or more diseases that had been diagnosed with little defense.
The legacy of the sexual revolution lives on. Revolutionaries take their toll on the populace and stack up the bodies.
They claim that Reagan didn’t do enough. Even with decades of well funded research, there still hasn’t been a cure.
Meanwhile there are still hedonists engaging in barebacking and bug chasing parties.
It sounds like the liberals are trying to re-write history again, they can’t have the AIDs epidemic being traced back to a homosexual. The epidemic took off in this country thanks to patient Zero.
Wasn't there a British sailor in the late 1950's who contracted a mysterious disease that had AIDS like symptoms? I remember reading that blood samples taken from him tested positive for HIV.
Well, 1969 was the year Arafat became chairman of the PLO. Kind of rolls patient zero, out of Africa, and strange cancer all into one. Arafat could easily be described as a pox on the planet.
Roy Cohn would be an obvious one.
I remember a newspaper article about a black teenager, I think in the 1960s, in St. Louis (?), who died of a mysterious disease...the doctors were totally mystified and the patient had been uncommunicative, so they saved a blood sample, and after the AIDS epidemic gained publicity the blood was tested and turned out the boy had had AIDS.
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