
A typo skewed the history of HIV in the US and vilified an innocent man - okket
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/10/a-typo-skewed-the-history-of-hiv-in-the-us-and-vilified-an-innocent-man/
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helloworld
I'd thought that "Patient Zero" was jargon from the world of public health,
but it apparently became widely used only after the publication of "And the
Band Played On," a 1987 bestseller about the AIDS epidemic by Randy Shilts:

 _Back in 1984, the term Patient Zero was not normally used to describe an
outbreak’s first case, said Dr. Jaffe, a co-author of the new Nature paper. "I
don’t remember who first used it," he said. "But after Randy Shilts did, we
started saying it ourselves."_[1]

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/health/hiv-patient-zero-
ge...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/health/hiv-patient-zero-genetic-
analysis.html)

~~~
DrScump
CBS' "60 Minutes" did a story on him that was itself entitled "Patient Zero":
[http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/patient-
zero/](http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/patient-zero/)

