Peter Staley was at the top of his game when
AIDS took off in New York City in the 1980s. He was a Wall Street bond
trader and didn't think the rumor about a disease affecting gay men was
anything he needed to worry about.
He certainly never could have predicted that it would consume his life.
"I was a closeted gay man," Staley, 55, told NBC
News. "I was completely disconnected from the established but mostly
closeted gay community that existed in New York that was doing the early
struggling against this new epidemic."
Now the HIV pandemic is more than 30 years old, and a new study out this week
has put what one expert calls the final nail in the coffin of the idea
that a single flight attendant carried HIV across the U.S. Instead, the
study shows the virus probably arrived in New York City from the
Caribbean around 1970, spreading to San Francisco in 1976 and then to
the world.
"It's shocking how this man's name has been sullied and destroyed by
this incorrect history. He was not 'Patient Zero' and this study
confirms it through genetic analysis," said Staley, who is currently
teaching political activism at the Institute of Politics at Harvard's
John F. Kennedy School of Government.
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