It’s “Patient O,” Not “Patient Zero”

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Science

4.6 • 964 Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2020

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Learn about how patient O became patient zero, what it takes for a species to evolve twice, and how pesky fruit flies keep getting into your garbage.

Please nominate Curiosity Daily for Best Technology & Science Podcast in the 2020 Discover Pods Awards! It's free and only takes a minute. Thanks so much! https://awards.discoverpods.com/nominate/

It's "Patient O," Not "Patient Zero" by Ashley Hamer

Researchers Clear “Patient Zero” From AIDS Origin Story. (2016, October 26). NPR.Org. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/10/26/498876985/mystery-solved-how-hiv-came-to-the-u-s
Worobey, M., Watts, T. D., McKay, R. A., Suchard, M. A., Granade, T., Teuwen, D. E., Koblin, B. A., Heneine, W., Lemey, P., & Jaffe, H. W. (2016). 1970s and ‘Patient 0’ HIV-1 genomes illuminate early HIV/AIDS history in North America. Nature, 539(7627), 98–101. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature19827

With Iterative Evolution, a Species Can Evolve TWICE by Cameron Duke

Brigit Katz. (2019, May 13). How Evolution Brought a Flightless Bird Back From Extinction. Smithsonian Magazine; Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-evolution-brought-flightless-bird-back-extinction-180972166/
Mancini, M. (2019, May 31). Iterative Evolution: Did the Aldabra Rail Evolve Twice? HowStuffWorks. https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/evolution/iterative-evolution.htm
Hume, J. P., & Martill, D. (2019). Repeated evolution of flightlessness in Dryolimnas rails (Aves: Rallidae) after extinction and recolonization on Aldabra. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 186(3), 666–672. https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlz018

How do fruitflies keep getting into my house? by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from Julien)

Binns, C. (2012, November 18). Where Do Fruit Flies Come From? Livescience.Com; Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/32251-where-do-fruit-flies-come-from.html
Drosophila melanogaster. (2020). Animal Diversity Web. https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Drosophila_melanogaster/
Fruit Flies | Entomology. (2017). Uky.Edu. https://entomology.ca.uky.edu/ef621
van Breugel, F., & Dickinson, M. H. (2014). Plume-Tracking Behavior of Flying Drosophila Emerges from a Set of Distinct Sensory-Motor Reflexes. Current Biology, 24(3), 274–286. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2013.12.023
Markow, T. A. (2015). The secret lives of Drosophila flies. ELife, 4. https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.06793

Subscribe to Curiosity Daily to learn something new every day with Ashley Hamer and Natalia Reagan (filling in for Cody Gough). You can also listen to our podcast as part of your Alexa Flash Briefing; Amazon smart speakers users, click/tap “enable” here: https://www.amazon.com/Curiosity-com-Curiosity-Daily-from/dp/B07CP17DJY

Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/its-patient-o-not-patient-zero

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Curiosity.com.
0:06.4	I'm Ashley Hamer.
0:07.8	And I'm Natalia Reagan.
0:09.2	Today you'll learn about how Patient O became Patient Zero,
0:12.4	and what it takes for a species to evolve twice.
0:15.2	We'll also answer a listener question about how those pesky fruit flies keep getting into your garbage.
0:20.4	Let's satisfy some curiosity.
0:22.1	When a disease spreads, it's up to epidemiologists to find patient zero,
0:28.0	the first person to have the disease.
0:30.0	That's not always easy.
0:32.0	And in fact, the first person ever to be named Patient Zero for any disease?
0:37.0	He wasn't even Patient Zero. He was Patient O.
0:41.0	Here's how a tiny misinterpretation gave us a whole new medical term.
0:45.0	In the early 1980s, gay men were dying from a horrific new disease,
0:50.0	a disease that eventually came to be known as HIV AIDS.
0:55.0	The CDC asked scientist William Darrow to investigate its cause.
0:59.9	He began to suspect that AIDS might be sexually transmitted, so he interviewed AIDS patients about their sex lives.
1:07.0	In the process, he talked to three AIDS patients who all named the same lover, a flight attendant from Canada that man Gaitan du Gah has since
1:16.6	been immortalized as Patient Zero the man who brought AIDS to North America the only problem is that Dugga wasn't Patient Zero, as in the first patient.
1:27.3	He was Patient O, as in a Patient from Outside of California.
1:32.4	To maintain the privacy of the men in his study,
1:35.0	Darrow identified them with a code that included their patient number
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Warner Bros. Discovery, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Warner Bros. Discovery and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.