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For the new research, Worobey and his colleagues gathered archival blood samples in New York and San Francisco that were originally collected for a hepatitis B study in and The samples came from men who had sex with men. Is this the cure to cancer? The researchers screened the samples and noticed that "the prevalence of HIV positivity in these early samples from hepatitis B patients is really quite high," Worobey said Tuesday.

From the samples, the researchers recovered eight genome sequences of HIV, representing the oldest genomes of the virus in North America. They also recovered the HIV genome from Dugas' blood sample. As many of the samples had degraded over time, Worobey's lab developed a technique called "RNA jackhammering" to recover the genetic material.

The technique involves breaking down the human genomes found in the blood and then extracting the RNA of HIV to recover genetic data about the virus, an approach that's similar to what has been used to reconstruct the ancient genome of Neanderthals in separate studies.

These children have a built-in defense against AIDS. After analyzing the genomes, the researchers found no biological evidence that Dugas was the primary case that brought HIV to the United States, and the genome from Dugas appeared typical of the other strains already in the United States at the time.

The researchers discovered strong evidence that the virus emerged in the United States from a pre-existing Caribbean epidemic in or around Sequencing genomes allows scientists to take a peek back in time to determine how a virus emerged and where it traveled by examining how many mutations appear in the genome. Scientists estimate that HIV was transmitting in humans after a chimpanzee infected a single person sometime in the early 20th century in sub-Saharan Africa.

The general consensus among scientists is that HIV then crossed the Atlantic and quickly spread through the Caribbean before it arrived in the United States, probably from Haiti, Curran said. Scientists at the University of Oxford published a separate study in June suggesting that HIV spread through specific migration routes -- based on tourism and trade -- throughout the past 50 years as it made its way around the world.

The research team behind the new genetic analysis now hopes that its findings may lead to a better understanding of how HIV moved through populations -- and how blaming a single patient for the pathogen's rise remains troublesome.

The case, adds McKay, also highlights the problems with trying to pinpoint the first person to be infected in an epidemic. As well as donating blood plasma for analysis for the original study, Dugas had provided researchers with the names of 72 of the roughly partners he had had a sexual relationship with in the previous three years. Gkikas Magiorkinis, a clinical and evolutionary virologist at the University of Oxford, said that the research highlights the power of such genetic techniques in shedding light on how a virus spreads among a population.

That, he adds, could prove valuable for probing the history of many other viruses, including hepatitis C, and for designing better interventions. Lynd said it was easy to be judgmental, but homosexuality was only gradually being decriminalised in the US.

It had just been struck off a list of mental disorders and no one knew AIDS even existed. Doctors first began to notice clusters of gay men falling ill with a "gay cancer" in California and New York in One said he had had sex with a flight attendant with an accent; another produced Dugas' business card. The CDC contacted Dugas who was an open book to researchers. He allowed them to take vials of his blood and gave them names of his sexual partners.

In the CDC's notes, he was listed as "patient 57" and later as the "out of California" case because he lived away from the state. His willingness to help the researchers, unlike many other gay men who were suspicious of the authorities, helped build a picture of how HIV was spreading.

But at the time there was still no conclusive proof it was passed through sexual intercourse, and many gay men had a fatalistic view assuming it would get them eventually no matter what measures they took. In , he published the best-selling book And the Band Played On. Tucked away in the book were a few pages on a so-called "patient zero" to illustrate how the virus could spread.

Shilts named patient zero as Dugas. The media erupted: Dugas' face was everywhere — this patient zero who was the ground zero of the crisis. He was characterised as a kind of "typhoid Mary" callously spreading the virus.