POZ Community Forums
Meds, Mind, Body & Benefits => Research News & Studies => Topic started by: edfu on October 29, 2007, 08:15:20 pm
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http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2954500820071029?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true
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I've long suspected something like that... makes sense. Though I'm not quite sure how they know it was a Haitian immigrating to New York City, as opposed to a gay man vacationing in Jacmel during the same time period.
I personally know of a gay guy, living in NYC, from that time period who used to travel with other gay men to Haiti for vacation -- of course this was before Haiti was void of suitable hotels like it is today. And no, they weren't there just for the palm trees.
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You may be right. I think that often these researchers are simply unfamiliar with various gay mores, such as the notion of choosing a vacation location purely on the availability of sexual encounters. I didn't go to Haiti in the 60s, but I certainly went to Puerto Rico. 'Nuff said.
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Actually, I did some googling after I posted that and found a slightly different LA Times article where, near the end, they address this "sex trade" issue.
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-aids30oct30,0,1617683.story?coll=la-home-center
I can accept the "Haiti first" argument, but there's no way to rule out what I stated up above that I can tell, not that it particularly matters. Unless I'm misunderstanding their timeline stuff and how it relates to changes they saw in the old virus samples.
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Goddamn chimp-eaters!
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Barbara please... there are no chimps in Haiti.
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Let's blame the blacks, queers and airlines
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Right, first it was a flight attendent who looked like he just walked out of a William Higgins' porn film set and now patient zero is from Haiti. Unless it really helps finding a vaccine or better meds is there any point to try to pin down the "source"?
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Oh, give me a f*cking break. I'm sure from a scientific view it's quite important what path the virus took. As HIVers it's easy to be parochial about it, but think of the larger picture and what it means for the NEXT nasty retrovirus down the pike.
The only people who get into the blame game and morality are the politicians, not the scientists/medical community, for the most part.
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Oh, give me a f*cking break. I'm sure from a scientific view it's quite important what path the virus took. As HIVers it's easy to be parochial about it, but think of the larger picture and what it means for the NEXT nasty retrovirus down the pike.
Besides, there are still myriads of conspiracy theories floating around teh web as far as the origin of HIV is concerned... I don't need to quote them as you probably know them all. That's why every detail of origin and evolution of the pandemic is important.
Still, I think patient zero is overrated. It is common belief that the first diagnosed cases in Europe during the 70ies were linked to Europeans who had worked in Africa, mostly in the former colonies, like Portuguese in Angola, Belgians in Congo etc. So, no matter if it was a single individual who carried the virus to the U.S., Pandora's box was already open and it was only a question of time when and where the different waves reached the shores.
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i think this is fascinating
but as im the lesser-known subtype F it doesnt tell me how my viral version escaped from africa or mutated or whatever - does anyone know if anyone has researched that one?
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Oh, give me a f*cking break. I'm sure from a scientific view it's quite important what path the virus took. As HIVers it's easy to be parochial about it, but think of the larger picture and what it means for the NEXT nasty retrovirus down the pike.
Nay, I have to disagree. It's important to scientifically confirm that the virus did past from chimps to human, and subsequently how it reached the US and any parts of the world IMHO is rather irrelevant because of the ease of traveling and intermingling between people from different parts of the world.
And inevitably all those studies have to base on some blood samples stored somewhere of patients died of some unknown causes with symptoms that are similar to AIDS before it got its name. But I dare to assume that are other AIDS deaths before and they were categorized as something else with no remaining blood samples. So today it could be an immigrant from Haiti, then next year someone may dig into another lab and discover other cases.
To just pin down on one route is to sensationalize the issue.
Shaun
Modified to add -
Welcome back Philly, I have missed you.. ;)
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And inevitably all those studies have to base on some blood samples stored somewhere of patients died of some unknown causes with symptoms that are similar to AIDS before it got its name.
Apparently this was already done years ago. A St. Louis teenager died from a mysterious disease in 1969. Much later studies confirmed that he was in fact HIV-positive. So if this teenager died from AIDS in 1969, he probably contracted the disease years before, thereby disproving the idea that HIV first entered the US via a Haitian that year...
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101871109-145380,00.html
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Patient Zero (Gaetan Dugas) has been completely and widely misunderstood by the media and the general public, so much so that it seems impossible to correct the misinterpretation.
No one--no scientists and definitely not Randy Shilts, the author who wrote about him in "And the Band Played On"--ever claimed Dugas was the one who brought HIV to the U.S. and/or spread it around by his lonesome.
He was called Patient Zero by the epidemiologists of the Centers for Disease Control because he was at the center of the first cluster of the first case-control study that proved in early 1982 that the illness then known as GRID was sexually transmitted. That's all the term means and meant. Thus, of the first 19 cases of GRID in Los Angeles, 5 had had sex with Dugas. Another 4 cases had gone to bed with people who had had sex with Dugas, establiishing links between 9 of the 19 Los Angeles cases. Etc.
The epidemiologists called him Patient Zero because he was at the center of this first-established contact-cluster. Think of a circle, with him at the center, and spokes and arrows pointing outward. It was only one such contact cluster, but it was the first the CDC was able to prove. Thus it was a significant moment in the history of the epidemic in the U.S.
"Patient Zero" is simply an epidemiological term used to establish contact causation. No one ever claimed he was responsible for all of the first cases in the early 80s; he was, however, at the center of the first contact-clusters the CDC was able to identify.
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It is epidemiologically implausible that one person, or one geographical location, resulted in the worldwide epidemic. So for me "originated in Haiti" or the equivalent is loaded or, at the least, incomplete (in so many ways).
Useful perhaps to the depressed virologists to know sommat about the viruses' evolutions.
The correct term in an epidemological sequence is "index case"
- matt
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Barbara please... there are no chimps in Haiti.
Darling, I was referring to the article's claim of pre-Haiti transmission by those eating chimpanzees in deepest, darkest Africa. Chimp-meat for heaven's sake. They could find a Burger King or Pizza Hut, but noooo, someone gets a hankerin' for chimp-steaks and now we're all screwed!
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BUSH MEAT!
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Hmmm...Haiti huh?...ok.
Happy All Hallow's Eve (Halloween) then everyone. ;)
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Given that this is no more than an untested assumption, I remain sceptical and more gripped by the real motives of the ‘researchers’ (and whoever funded their ‘study’).
As this study stands, I can find more ‘evidence’ to support the (IMHO, quite ludicrous) notion that Native American Indians are descended from the Israelites, than I can the fictional single Haitian immigrant theory.
Why an immigrant?
Why not a business traveller?
Why not one, or more, of the hundreds of thousands of hormonal sailors who go on shore leave, pursue cheap opportunities like rats in a drain, who follow the trade routes and spread infections from country to country - and continent to continent - just as they have done for centuries?
Anyone who thinks that safer sex lectures started with AIDS is sadly mistaken (as a teenager - long before we knew about GRID, HIV or AIDS - most of my induction to the Merchant Navy consisted of warnings about the dangers of sexually transmitted infections and antibiotic resistant syphilis) and there is a damn good reason why Board of Trade Wellingtons (condoms) have been standard free issue on the ships of the world for many generations now.
I am sorry, but it is my belief (until someone proves otherwise) that anyone, who is so determined to blame an unknown immigrant, probably has a less than noble and undeclared agenda.
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Hmmm, I always thought it went from Africa to Europe from Europe to the US from the US to Central/South America/Carribean.
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Why an immigrant? Why not a business traveller?
If 99.9% of all traffic between USA and Haiti during 1960's was immigration related, and 0.1% was business related, then assuming a traveling immigrant as case zero is justified. Could have been a business traveler, but i would place my bets on immigrant in the light of statistics..
Have you read this? Although i do not buy the theory of vaccine-origin, i think this is worth reading:
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent/documents/AIDS/Cribb96.pdf
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If 99.9% of all traffic between USA and Haiti during 1960's was immigration related, and 0.1% was business related...
More untested assumptions? ;)
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i always get the feeling with these studies that there is a "it's not our fault...it came from THEM" undercurrent to them. i'm much less concerned with where it came from than how we're going to try to get rid of it.
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I’ve been thinking about this news story since I heard about it yesterday and I have come to the conclusion that it matters little where or when HIV came to North America. It does however make me question precisely when I was actually infected, even tho I didn’t test positive until September of 1988. That thought is more than a little disturbing.
:-\
Anyhow, it was what it was and yesterday is gone. I think I’ll stay in today.
Daniel
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i remember back in the 70s one of Haiti's main exports was cadavers to other countries for study(i guess).
Never heard of anyone going there on vacation. Why would anyone go on a vacation to a place people are trying to escape from? Is that the island Clinton tried to invade?
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Jack, Haiti used to have resorts before it became completely uncontrollable. IIRC there was even a Club Med there in the 70's, and like I state above I know of a certain jet-setting wealthy clique of Studio 54 queens who used to go there during that decade.
The dictatorial Duvalier family controlled the country for 30 years, until the son was deposed in 1986. By that time they'd financially raped the place that it quickly got very bad. Once they were labeled with AIDS in the early 80's all of the resorts went bankrupt.
That said, Labadee on the north coast is currently a private resort and Royal Caribbean continued to stop there for 2 decades. They just lie to the passengers and tell them they're in "Hispaniola" which, while geographically correct, it's a bit of stretch.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0125/p01s02-woam.html
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i'm much less concerned with where it came from than how we're going to try to get rid of it.
my thoughts exactly, I dont care if it came from outer mongolia or wherever, I know I dont want it.
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i always get the feeling with these studies that there is a "it's not our fault...it came from THEM" undercurrent to them. i'm much less concerned with where it came from than how we're going to try to get rid of it.
TOTALLY AGREE... this was my first thought, too.
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Who cares who spilled the milk? Who is going to clean it up? The WHO (or the British band)
R
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I thought that HIV had entered the U.S. well before the late 1960s. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I recall a story about a case in the late 1950s involving (I think) a sailor who was hospitalized in New Orleans with a mysterious illness. The doctors were unable to figure out what was wrong with him, and he eventually died. His treating physicians were so puzzled, however, that they saved blood and tissue samples in the hope that they could later figure out what had caused his death. The samples were later tested in the 1980s and it was found that the patient had been infected with HIV.
Been looking to see whether I can find an article about this, but haven't been able to.
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Cuban and Haitain soldiers were recruited to go to Africa in the early 60's.....and they brought HIV back to the Carribean according to my research:
The study concludes that AIDS arrived in Haiti after Haitians went to the Democratic Republic of Congo as workers after that country won independence in 1960.
http://miamiherald.typepad.com/gaysouthflorida/2007/10/aids-study-spur.html
also:
http://www.avert.org/caribbean.htm
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I thought that HIV had entered the U.S. well before the late 1960s. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I recall a story about a case in the late 1950s involving (I think) a sailor who was hospitalized in New Orleans with a mysterious illness. The doctors were unable to figure out what was wrong with him, and he eventually died. His treating physicians were so puzzled, however, that they saved blood and tissue samples in the hope that they could later figure out what had caused his death. The samples were later tested in the 1980s and it was found that the patient had been infected with HIV.
Been looking to see whether I can find an article about this, but haven't been able to.
I recall this -- the sailor was Norwegian or British, but you may be thinking of the teenager in St. Louis from the same time period. I know in the wikipedia entry on HIV there's a subsection on these isolated cases.
I would assume that whoever did this recent Haiti study is aware of these cases -- keep in mind we're not reading their full report, but just news items. Perhaps they addressed these other cases.
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Hi Philly,
I'm aware of the St. Louis case, and that's not what I was thinking of. My recollection of this is based on a conversation I had some years back with an older doctor in New Orleans. As I recall, the samples were stored at LSU medical center in New Orleans and were later tested in the late 1980s once the HIV antibody test had become available.
You're probably right, though, that the research mentions these isolated cases. Perhaps the research concludes that these individuals weren't responsible for any infections or transmission in the U.S.
All very interesting . . .