Not 'patient zero': the origins of US AIDS epidemic

A labelling error and reckless media hype in the 1980s led to unjustly branding a gay airline employee as "Patient Zero" in the US AIDS epidemic, scientific and historical sleuthing detailed Wednesday. The deadly virus, which has claimed more than 650,000 lives in the United States in over four decades, jumped from the Caribbean to New York City around 1970, researchers reported in the journal Nature. A 33-year old blood sample analysed with new techniques proves once-and-for-all that the man posthumously vilified as the American HIV epicentre, Gaetan Dugas, was simply one of the disease's many victims.