The defendant who brought HIV into the United States was unjustified

New genetic research has shown that the HIV virus has appeared in the United States long before the first case was found to be detected.

A group of international geneticists vindicated Gaetan Dugas , a Canadian flight attendant nicknamed "zero patient" , accused of bringing HIV to the United States, Independent reported. Dugas may not be the first person to be infected with the virus that caused the HIV epidemic in the United States, according to research published in Nature magazine yesterday.

Through complex genetic analysis, the researchers concluded that the HIV virus invaded the United States from the Caribbean in 1970 and was limited to New York City for about five years before spreading to the west and across the country, leading to a pandemic that claimed the lives of 700,000 Americans.

Gaetan Dugas is considered to be the person who transmits HIV to the United States.(Photo: AP).

Dugas was just one of thousands of people infected with the virus in the 1970s, the team concluded after examining blood samples taken from men in New York in 1978-1979 during the process of understanding common hepatitis B. in the gay community at that time.

Geneticists believe that HIV is transmitted to humans for the first time from a chimpanzee in sub-Saharan Africa, in the early 20th century. The disease spread in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo before It was discovered in the Caribbean in the 1960s. The new study shows a disease transmitted from Haiti to New York City in 1970-1971.

"There is really nothing to worry about in the direction of geography," said Michael Worobey, evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, Tucson, who led the study. "New York City acts as a gateway for viruses to spread to the West Bank, to Western Europe, Australia, Japan, South America and elsewhere."

HIV was officially recognized by the medical community in 1981. Dugas died of AIDS (immunodeficiency syndrome) in Quebec, Canada, in 1984. He was accused by the media of transmitting AIDS. U.S.

HIV virus causes immunodeficiency in humans.(Photo: Medical Daily).

In 1987, reporter Randy Shilts called Dugas "a zero patient" to refer to the first case of a virus in the book on HIV / AIDS crisis called And the Band Played On. The book and the film later describe Dugas continuing to have sex with many other people even though the doctor advised him to spread the disease.

In a California study of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dugas is part of a network of 40 men in 10 HIV-infected cities that are linked through sexual intercourse .

In the same study, Dugas was named "O" patient, meaning "people living outside California". The latter was misread as "zero" and was used to refer to Dugas as the source of HIV in the United States. In fact, Dugas did not show symptoms of AIDS until 1979, much later than some other men in the study.