Editing Misconceptions about HIV/AIDS (section)

==History of HIV/AIDS==
{{Main|Origin of AIDS}}
[[File:Mmwr-aids-July1981-report-101.png|thumb|The cover page of MMWR on July 3, 1981. The first major public info regarding (what later became known as) AIDS/HIV.]]
The current consensus is that HIV was introduced to North America by a Haitian immigrant who contracted it while working in the [[Democratic Republic of the Congo]] in the early 1960s, or from another person who worked there during that time.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7068574.stm |work=BBC News |title=Key HIV strain 'came from Haiti' |date=2007-10-30 |access-date=2010-05-04}}</ref> In 1981 on June 5, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published a ''Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report'' (MMWR) describing cases of a rare lung infection, Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), in five healthy [[gay men]] in Los Angeles. This edition would later become ''MMWR's'' first official reporting of the AIDS epidemic in North America.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|url=https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/history/hiv-and-aids-timeline|title=A Timeline of HIV and AIDS|website=HIV.gov|language=en|access-date=2018-09-30|date=2016-05-11}} {{PD-notice}}</ref> By year-end, a cumulative total of 337 cases of severe immune deficiency had been reported, and 130 out of the 337 reported cases had died.<ref name=":0" /> On September 24, 1982, the CDC used the term "AIDS" (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) for the first time, and released the first case definition of AIDS: "a disease at least moderately predictive of a defect in cell-mediated immunity, occurring in a person with no known case for diminished resistance to that disease."<ref name=":0" /> The March 4, 1983 edition of the ''Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report'' (MMWR) noted that most cases of AIDS had been reported among homosexual men with multiple sexual partners, injection drug users, Haitians, and hemophiliacs. The report suggested that AIDS may be caused by an infectious agent that is transmitted sexually or through exposure to blood or blood products, and issued recommendations for preventing transmission.<ref name=":0" /> Although most cases of HIV/AIDS were discovered in gay men, on January 7, 1983, the CDC reported cases of AIDS in female sexual partners of males with AIDS.<ref name=":0" /> In 1984, scientists identified the virus that causes AIDS, which was first named after the T-cells affected by the strain and is now called HIV or human immunodeficiency virus.<ref name=":1">{{Cite news|url=https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/04/health/timeline-hiv-aids-moments/index.html|title=Timeline: AIDS moments to remember|last=Wilson |first=Jacque Wilson|work=CNN|access-date=2018-10-01}}</ref>

===Origin of AIDS through human–monkey sexual intercourse===
{{See also|HIV/AIDS#Origins}}
While HIV is most likely a mutated form of [[simian immunodeficiency virus]] (SIV), a disease present only in chimpanzees and [[Old World monkey|African monkeys]], highly plausible explanations for the transfer of the disease between species ([[zoonosis]]) exist not involving [[bestiality|sexual intercourse]].<ref name=Locatelli2012>{{cite journal|last=Locatelli|first=S|author2=Peeters, M|title=Cross-species transmission of simian retroviruses: how and why they could lead to the emergence of new diseases in the human population|journal=AIDS  |date=Mar 27, 2012|volume=26|issue=6|pages=659–73|pmid=22441170|doi=10.1097/QAD.0b013e328350fb68|s2cid=38760788|doi-access=free}}</ref>  In particular, the African chimpanzees and monkeys which carry SIV are often [[hunting|hunted]] for food, and epidemiologists theorize that the disease may have appeared in humans after hunters came into blood-contact with monkeys infected with SIV that they had killed.<ref name=Sharp2011>{{cite journal|last=Sharp|first=PM|author2=Hahn, BH|title=Origins of HIV and the AIDS Pandemic|journal=Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine|date=September 2011|volume=1|issue=1|pages=a006841|pmid=22229120|doi=10.1101/cshperspect.a006841|pmc=3234451}}</ref> The first known instance of HIV in a human was found in a person who died in the [[Democratic Republic of the Congo]] in 1959,<ref name="Zhu, 1998">{{cite journal | doi = 10.1038/35400 | last1 = Zhu | first1 = T. | last2 = Korber | first2 = B.T. | last3 = Nahmias | first3 = A.J. | last4 = Hooper | first4 = E. | last5 = Sharp | first5 = P.M. | last6 = Ho | first6 = D.D. | year = 1998 | title = An African HIV-1 sequence from 1959 and implications for the origin of the epidemic | journal = Nature | volume = 391 | issue = 6667| pages = 594–97 | pmid = 9468138 |bibcode = 1998Natur.391..594Z | s2cid = 4416837 | doi-access = free }}</ref> and a recent study dates the last common ancestor of HIV and SIV to between 1884 and 1914 by using a [[molecular clock]] approach.<ref name="nature07390">{{cite journal |last1=Worobey |first1=Michael |date=2 October 2008 |title=Direct evidence of extensive diversity of HIV-1 in Kinshasa by 1960 |journal=[[Nature (journal)|Nature]] |volume=455 |issue=7293 |pages=661–64 |doi=10.1038/nature07390  |pmid=18833279 |first2=Marlea |last2=Gemmel |first3=3=Dirk E. |last3=Teuwen |display-authors=2 |last4=Haselkorn |first4=Tamara |last5=Kunstman |first5=Kevin |last6=Bunce |first6=Michael |last7=Muyembe |first7=Jean-Jacques |last8=Kabongo |first8=Jean-Marie M. |last9=Kalengayi |first9=Raphaël M.|last10=Van Marck |first10=Eric |last11=Gilbert |first11=M. Thomas P. |last12=Wolinsky |first12=Steven M. |bibcode = 2008Natur.455..661W |pmc=3682493|url=http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/5121/ }}</ref>

[[Tennessee Senate|Tennessee State Senator]] [[Stacey Campfield]] was the subject of controversy in 2012 after stating that AIDS was the result of a human having sexual intercourse with a monkey.<ref name=huff0126>{{Cite news|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/26/stacey-campfield-tennessee-senator-dont-say-gay-bill_n_1233697.html |title=Stacey Campfield, Tennessee Senator Behind 'Don't Say Gay' Bill, On Bullying, AIDS And Homosexual 'Glorification' |work=The Huffington Post |date=2012-01-26 |access-date=2012-01-30|last1=Signorile |first1=Michelangelo }}</ref><ref>{{cite news|title=Knoxville Republican says AIDS came from man having sex with a monkey then with other men|url=http://www.politifact.com/tennessee/statements/2012/feb/03/stacey-campfield/knoxville-republican-says-aids-came-man-having-sex/|access-date=16 April 2018|work=Politifact|language=en}}</ref>

===Gaëtan Dugas as "patient zero"===
{{Main|Gaëtan Dugas}}
The Canadian flight attendant Gaëtan Dugas has been referred to as "[[Index case|patient zero]]" of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, meaning the first case of HIV/AIDS in the United States. In fact, the "patient zero" moniker originated from a misinterpretation of a 1984 study<ref name="Auerbach1984">{{cite journal |last1=Auerbach |first1=D.M. |author2=W.W. Darrow |author3=H.W. Jaffe |author4=J.W. Curran |title=Cluster of cases of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Patients linked by sexual contact |journal=[[The American Journal of Medicine]] |volume=76 |issue=3 |pages=487–92 |year=1984 |doi=10.1016/0002-9343(84)90668-5 |pmid=6608269 }}</ref> that referred to Dugas as "patient O", where the O stood for "out of California".<ref name="Macleans">{{cite news |last1=Johnson |first1=Brian D. |title=How a typo created a scapegoat for the AIDS epidemic |url=https://www.macleans.ca/culture/movies/how-a-typo-created-a-scapegoat-for-the-aids-epidemic/ |access-date=20 April 2019 |publisher=Maclean's |date=17 April 2019}}</ref><ref name="npr.org">{{cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/10/26/498876985/mystery-solved-how-hiv-came-to-the-u-s|title=Researchers Clear 'Patient Zero' From AIDS Origin Story|website=NPR.org }}</ref> A 2016 study published in ''[[Nature (journal)|Nature]]'' found "neither biological nor historical evidence that [Dugas] was the primary case in the US or for subtype B as a whole."<ref name=Nature>{{cite journal |title=1970s and 'Patient 0' HIV-1 genomes illuminate early HIV/AIDS history in North America |first1=Michael |last1=Worobey |author2=Thomas D. Watts |author3=Richard A. McKay |author4=Marc A. Suchard |author5=Timothy Granade |author6=Dirk E. Teuwen |author7=Beryl A. Koblin |author8=Walid Heneine |author9=Philippe Lemey |author10=Harold W. Jaffe |display-authors=2 |journal=[[Nature (journal)|Nature]] |volume=539 |issue=7627 |pages=98–101 |date=October 26, 2016 |doi=10.1038/nature19827 |pmid=27783600 |pmc=5257289 |bibcode=2016Natur.539...98W }}</ref>