New HIV Genetic Evidence Dispels "Patient Zero" Myth - Scientific American

New HIV Genetic Evidence Dispels "Patient Zero" Myth - Scientific American



HIV probably arrived in the U.S. around 1971—a decade before AIDS was recognized as a disease and a dozen years before scientists discovered the virus that causes it—according to a new analysis of viral genomes from New York City and San Francisco. The genetic evidence upends a longstanding myth that a French-Canadian flight attendant started the U.S. epidemic when he slept with men in California and New York in the early 1980s.