The story that I heard in the early 90's was that a gay French-Canadian airline steward had sex with an infected individual in Cameroon in the early 70's and was patient zero in the outbreak in the gay community in the West. HIV/SIV had been around for many decades at that point in Central Africa but the potential for transmission to outside cultures was very limited by the remote populations in which it was endemic. The individual in Cameroon was a refugee from the Congo when he passed the virus to the steward, who then promptly spread it to other gay men in his widespread travels. If the refugee had been a female prostitute we would probably have a completely different conception of the disease.
