A new study appears to clear the name of the Quebec man thought to be at the epicentre of the rise of the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.

Research published in the October issue of Nature Magazine concludes that Quebecer Gaetan Dugas was not the source for the virus’ introduction into North America.

The research has found that the French-Canadian flight attendant, who died in 1984, was just one of the disease’s victims, and is not responsible for triggering the health epidemic here.

Suspicions that Dugas was at the centre of a network of sexual partners first came out in a study in the American Journal of Medicine in 1984.

But new research by biologist Michael Worobey from the University of Arizona, and Richard McKay, a historian at the University of Cambridge revealed that a sample of Dugas’ blood, taken in 1983, contained a viral strain that was previously infecting men in New York.

The research also shows that the location of the initial outbreak was in New York City, not San Francisco as originally thought.

Worobey said in an interview on CTV’s News Channel on Thursday that combining historical research with scientific analysis helped give the researchers a “pretty complete picture” of the AIDS virus in the 1970s and 80s.

He said it was good to be able to “go back in time with old samples and just look at what the virus looked like long before AIDS was recognized.”

The new findings show that the AIDS virus had been circulating within U.S. borders as far back as 1970, and that it arrived in North America from Africa, through the Caribbean.

The study comes 32 years after Dugas died from complications due to HIV/AIDS.

The researchers reported that originally, Dugas was not even referred to as Patient Zero, but designated “Patient O,” which denoted “Outside Southern California.”

The “O” was mistakenly read as zero, and thus the name was born.

This is not the first time the “Patient Zero” theory has been debunked.

In Nov. 2007, an article in the Proceedings in the U.S. journal National Academy of Sciences found that the HIV virus was introduced from Haiti to the United States in 1969.

That appeared to dismiss the “Patient Zero” hypothesis, however, the article did not gain much traction in the health community.