Accidental making of ‘Patient Zero’ myth during 1980s AIDS crisis

A combination of historical and genetic research reveals the error and hype that led to the coining of the term 'Patient Zero' and the blaming of one man for the spread of HIV across North America. We hope this research will give researchers, journalists and the public pause before using the term Patient Zero - Richard McKay A new study proves that a flight attendant who became notorious as the human epicentre of the US AIDS crisis of the 1980s - and the first person to be labeled the 'Patient Zero' of any epidemic - was simply one of many thousands infected in the years before HIV was recognized. Research by a historian from the University of Cambridge and the genetic testing of decades-old blood samples by a team of US scientists has demonstrated that Gaétan Dugas, a French-Canadian gay man posthumously blamed by the media for spreading HIV across North America, was not the epidemic's 'Patient Zero'. In fact, work by Dr Richard McKay , a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow from Cambridge's Department of History and Philosophy of Science, reveals how the very term 'Patient Zero' - still used today in press coverage of outbreaks from Ebola to swine flu to describe the first known case - was created inadvertently in the earliest years of investigating AIDS. Before he died, Dugas provided investigators with a significant amount of personal information to assist with studies into whether AIDS was caused by a sexually transmitted agent. McKay's research suggests that this, combined with confusion between a letter and a number, contributed to the invention of 'Patient Zero' and the global defamation of Dugas.