In article <1992Jan15.222347.20148@cs.ucla.edu>, danwell@iastate.edu (Daniel A Ashlock) writes:
>
>   I have heard from a number of researchers that the earlies known AIDS
>sample was in preserved blood from the 1950s.  Who found it?  Is there a 
>journal article?  Thanks in advance.  I'm trying to counter another 
>resurgence of the "US Government made the AIDS virus in the 1970s" 
>story.

Just picked this up in the library yesterday:

Corbitt, G., Bailey, A.S., & Williams, G.  HIV infection in 
Manchester, 1959.  The Lancet, 1990, Vol. 336, page 51.

The authors report on a case which they had published about in 1960, of
a man who died of cytomegalovirus and pneumocystis.  They published
a follow up in 1983, suggesting at that time that the man may have had
AIDS.  In the current paper, they use DNA amplification techniques
to search for HIV proviral DNA in target cells of the man's tissue
samples which had been preserved.  Proviral DNA was found in 
kidney, bone marrow, spleen, and pharyngeal mucosa.  Brain and
liver samples were negative, as were control samples.  The authors
conclude that "the paitent who died in Manchester in 1959 with
an unexplained immunodeficiency and overwhelming pneumocystis
and cytomegalovirus co-infection of the lung had HIV infection.

References are given to other supposed examples of early (i.e.
pre-1970s) HIV infection, including an infectionin a Norwegian
family in the 1960s, and the Zaire case from 1959.

John