So is it true the first case of AIDS in the US was around 1969 from a Haitian?

Timeline of early AIDS cases

1959 – 1960

Until 2008, the earliest known sample of HIV-1 was from Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The sample, named ZR59, was isolated from tissues collected from “a Bantu male” in 1959 and was found with retrospective genetic analysis to be most closely related to subtype D strains. In 2008, partial HIV viral sequences were identified from a specimen of lymph node collected from an adult female in Kinshasa, DRC in 1960. This specimen, named DRC60, was around 88% similar to ZR59, but was found to be most closely related to subtype A HIV-1 strains. These specimens are significant not only because they are the oldest specimens of the virus known to cause AIDS, but because they show that the virus already had an extensive amount of genetic diversity in 1960.^[1] This suggests the virus had been circulating for years or perhaps decades in the Kinshasa population.

Bantu from DRC

HIV’s Path Out of Africa: Haiti, the U.S., then the World

Two hypothetical family trees for HIV/AIDS. Research by Michael Worobey of The University of Arizona and his colleagues has shown that HIV went from Africa to Haiti and then to the U.S. (the family tree on the left) Credit: Michael Worobey, The University of Arizona.

“Our results show that the strain of virus that spawned the U.S. AIDS epidemic probably arrived in or around 1969. That is earlier than a lot of people had imagined,” said senior author Michael Worobey.

 

The research is the first to definitively pinpoint when and from where HIV-1 entered the United States and shows that most HIV/AIDS viruses in the U.S. descended from a single common ancestor. The actual ancestral HIV entered the U.S. long before the storied “Patient Zero,” Worobey said.

 

“Haiti was the stepping stone the virus took when it left central Africa and started its sweep around the world,” said Worobey, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at The University of Arizona in Tucson. “Once the virus got to the U.S., then it just moved explosively around the world.”

 

 

HIV now an epidemic among blacks in the US

At the current rate of HIV infection in the US, more than half of all young gay black men could be infected with the virus in the next ten years.

Nearly 6 percent of black men under the age of 30 become infected with HIV each year in the United States – a terrifying statistic that is leading to increased efforts to get unwilling Americans tested.

Gay and bisexual black men account for one in four new HIV infections in the US, even though they only make up one in 500 Americans overall. A gay black man has a 60 percent chance of being infected with the virus by age 40, but is 22 percent less likely to get treatment if he is HIV-positive.

If the trend continues, more than 50 percent of all young black gay men will be infected with HIV in 10 years, claims Kenneth Mayer, a medical research director at Boston’s Fenway Health.

HIV/AIDS in the United States

The history of HIV/AIDS in the United States began in about 1969, when HIV likely entered the United States through a single infected immigrant from Haiti.^[1] 

88 Little Known Facts About . . .Haiti

In the late 1970s (i.e. 1978) and early 1980s, doctors in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco began seeing young men with Kaposi’s sarcoma, a cancer usually associated with elderly men of Mediterranean ethnicity.

As the knowledge that men who had sex with men were dying of an otherwise rare cancer began to spread throughout the medical communities, the syndrome began to be called by the colloquialism “gay cancer.” As medical scientists discovered that the syndrome included other manifestations, such aspneumocystis pneumonia, (PCP), a rare form of fungal pneumonia, its name was changed to Gay Related Immune Deficiency (“GRID”).^[2] This had an effect of boostinghomophobia and adding stigma to homosexuality in the general public, particularly since it seemed that unprotected anal sex was the prevalent way of spreading the disease.

“Stigma is a huge issue,” preventing people from getting tested and treated, said Kevin Fenton, director of the National Center for HIV/AIDS Prevention.

Because of the stigma associated with HIV, particularly among blacks living in poverty and with poor access to treatment and prevention services, one in five of the estimated 1.1 million Americans living with HIV do not know they are infected.

Up to 44 percent of new infections occur in 12 major US cities, including New York, Chicago, Washington and Los Angeles, with HIV rates in these areas being highest among blacks, Hispanics and gay and bisexual men.

But while gay and bisexual black men are at highest risk of infection, Fenton said the trend is simply a result of healthcare inequalities in communities where HIV is already more common than elsewhere.

“The infection is becoming concentrated in these minority groups as a reflection of the social and structural drivers of health inequalities overall,” Fenton said.

Washington has one of the highest infection rates in the country, and some estimated infection rate statistics place the city in par with some of the worst afflicted areas of sub-Saharan Africa. Approximately 5,000 Washington residents have HIV but do not know it, and the CDC has been working with local health officials to increase testing.

Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick, who sees HIV-positive patients in Washington, said many blacks are hesitant to discuss HIV and sex, considering it a gay-only issue. Additionally, many of the young gay men she sees have accepted the fact that they will get HIV anyway and are “not terribly concerned about it.”

But while increased testing could help reduce the spread of HIV, Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the NIH, said reaching those at highest risk of HIV is difficult. >>>MORE<<<

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