WIKIMEDIA, NIAID
The first reports of the disease that would later be known as HIV/AIDS came in 1981, when AIDS-related conditions were already on the rise, particularly among gay men. HIV can linger in the body for a decade or longer before the onset of AIDS, so experts have conjectured that the virus arrived in the country years before it was recognized. But precisely when and where has been a matter of contentious debate. Almost all US samples of the virus come from after 1981, which has stymied direct study of the earliest cases of person to person viral transmission.
In a paper published today (October 26) in Nature, a team of scientists presents eight complete genomes of the HIV virus from blood samples taken in 1978 ...
