Robert Rayford

Uncommon card · No. 106109

Robert Lee Rayford (February 3, 1953 – May 15, 1969) sometimes identified as Robert R. due to his age, was an American teenager from St. Louis, Missouri whose chronic illness, which began in 1966 and ended with his death in 1969, are hypothesized to represent the earliest known case of HIV/AIDS in North America. Rayford's death was a mystery to his doctors, who could not account for his symptoms. A likely cause of his death wasn't suggested until 1987. Rayford's reported symptoms during his illness – which included emaciation, Kaposi's sarcoma, and pneumonia – have been suggested to resemble the symptomatology of AIDS-related complex. A paper published in 1988 reported that Western blot testing of Rayford's preserved tissues revealed the presence of nine different antibodies to HIV-1. In a subsequent letter to the journal Nature, study author Robert Garry stated: "Proviral DNA has recently been detected in his tissues by PCR in collaboration with J. Sninsky and S. Kwok (Cetus Corporation...

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