Medical Figure. He will be remembered as a subject of the Centers for Disease Control's early research of human immunodeficiency virus. He allegedly was "HIV Patient O." The O stands for "outside the area" in a California study but not "HIV Patient Zero", as the media claimed. As a French-Canadian flight attendant, he was suspected of being a major source of the early spread of the HIV virus in North America. Dugas was among the earliest diagnosed AIDS cases reported in the United States and without the pharmaceutical treatment of later years, died from the complication of the virus. Over the following years, books and movies followed this story, damaging Dugas' reputation. According to a 2016 report announced on CNN from the spokesperson from Emory University and the CDC, "a cutting-edge analysis of blood samples from the 1970s offers new insight into how the virus spread to North America via the Caribbean from Africa." A sample of Dugas' blood was used for this study. The results of a similar report were announced later by Oxford University in England, detailing the migration of the virus around the world.
Medical Figure. He will be remembered as a subject of the Centers for Disease Control's early research of human immunodeficiency virus. He allegedly was "HIV Patient O." The O stands for "outside the area" in a California study but not "HIV Patient Zero", as the media claimed. As a French-Canadian flight attendant, he was suspected of being a major source of the early spread of the HIV virus in North America. Dugas was among the earliest diagnosed AIDS cases reported in the United States and without the pharmaceutical treatment of later years, died from the complication of the virus. Over the following years, books and movies followed this story, damaging Dugas' reputation. According to a 2016 report announced on CNN from the spokesperson from Emory University and the CDC, "a cutting-edge analysis of blood samples from the 1970s offers new insight into how the virus spread to North America via the Caribbean from Africa." A sample of Dugas' blood was used for this study. The results of a similar report were announced later by Oxford University in England, detailing the migration of the virus around the world.
Bio by: Linda Davis
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