Aggregated News
The alleged “Patient Zero” of the American AIDS epidemic — a French Canadian flight attendant named Gaétan Dugas, who died of AIDS in 1984 — was exonerated last week.
Genetic sequencing of blood samples stored since the 1970s showed that the strain infecting him had circulated among gay men in New York for several years before he arrived here in 1974. Therefore, although he had hundreds of sexual partners in several cities, he did not introduce the virus to North America; he was a victim before he was a vector.
The revelation, some AIDS experts said, proved that the epidemic’s early days had been overshadowed by a witch hunt. Terrified Americans wanted someone to blame.
Federal health officials said homosexuals, Haitians, hemophiliacs and heroin users were all victims — thus effectively calling them all carriers. Many individuals felt the sting of suspicion, including Ryan White, a 13-year-old hemophiliac bullied and barred from middle school after he contracted H.I.V. from a blood-clotting factor.
Mr. Dugas’s name emerged when Randy Shilts, a journalist who himself later died of AIDS, published his best-selling...