AEGiS-AP: U.S. Medical Study Singles Out A Man Who Carried AIDS

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1984. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

U.S. Medical Study Singles Out A Man Who Carried AIDS

Associated Press - March 27, 1984

Forty cases of acquired immune deficiency syndome in 10 cities have been traced through a chain of sexual contacts to a homosexual man who may have been a carrier of the disease, spreading it across the country without knowing he had it.

The man had sexual contact with eight other men who were found to have AIDS. Four of the victims were in Los Angeles and four in New York, according to an investigation by the Nation Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

The eight victims had contact with others, and the disease ultimately spread to San Francisco, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, to 10 cities in all. The names of the cities other than Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York were not disclosed, and the report did not identify which form of sex the men engaged in.

The identification of this group of AIDS victims provides further evidence for the widely held belief that the affliction is caused by an infectious agent, said William Darrow, the head of the team that tracked down the cases.

In a report in the current issue of The American Journal of Medicine, Dr. Darrow and his colleagues identified a man they call "Patient 0" who links cases in Los Angeles with those in New York. Dr. Darrow thinks Patient 0 picked the syndrome up from a contact in Los Angeles or New York and carried it across the country to the others.

Patient 0 ultimately developed AIDS himself and is still alive, according to Dr. Darrow's most recent information.

The link between the 40 victims was identified in early 1982, he went on, when there were only 248 known cases among homosexual men in the United States.

By March 19, 1984, AIDS had struck 3,775 people in the United States and taken 1,642 lives, according to the researchers.

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