A typo skewed the history of HIV in the US and vilified an innocent man

I'd thought that "Patient Zero" was jargon from the world of public health, but it apparently became widely used only after the publication of "And the Band Played On," a 1987 bestseller about the AIDS epidemic by Randy Shilts:

Back in 1984, the term Patient Zero was not normally used to describe an outbreak’s first case, said Dr. Jaffe, a co-author of the new Nature paper. "I don’t remember who first used it," he said. "But after Randy Shilts did, we started saying it ourselves."[1]

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/health/hiv-patient-zero-ge...