New York City – the Origin of AIDS ?

In this video, Chris Jennings briefly describes why New York City is the epicenter of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Video Transcript:

Chris Jennings says: “I can’t speak as to the viral pedigree – the viral history of HIV. I don’t know where it came from or where it developed.

I believe from my research in the medical literature that the epicenter of AIDS is New York City. That’s where the world’s first legitimate AIDS cases were documented in the medical literature. And by ‘legitimate,’ I mean two things:

First, they demonstrated typical, early-onset, AIDS-related conditions.

Second, they were part of a disease cluster.

Most of the cases purported to come from Africa dating back as far as 1959 – they were singular, disparate, isolated cases – geographically and temporally distant from all other [AIDS] cases.

HIV is a transmissible agent. AIDS is a transmissible disease. When you have a transmissible disease, like AIDS or the flu, it occurs in a cluster.

So the first true documented cases that could be definitively defined as AIDS – looking back in history over time and seeing them documented in the medical literature – happened in New York City beginning in 1979.”