David Carr (history of AIDS)

David Carr (November 1933 - August 31, 1959) was a sailor from Reddish, Manchester. He died at a relatively young age owing to multiple complications that were at the time inexplicable to his doctors at the Manchester Royal Infirmary. In 1990, more than three decades after his death, stored tissue samples from his body were tested positive for HIV. Given the date of his death, he was suspected to have been the first victim of AIDS in the West. The case gained wide coverage when the Sunday Express printed an exposé that revealed Carr's identity to the public.

However, further tests were carried out in the mid-1990s by the eminent American scientist Dr David Ho, who found that Carr's tissue samples had been contaminated and who thus disproved the earlier AIDS diagnosis. Carr's case is extensively documented in Edward Hooper's massive work on the history of AIDS, The River.