Is the United States country zero for the First-World AIDS epidemic?

The incidence for AIDS per hundred thousand is several times higher in the United States than in the rest of the First World. Earlier work by Thompson (1984, 1989a, b, 1990, 1998) indicated that a relatively small proportion of gay males frequenting the bathhouses in the United States, drove AIDS over the epidemiological threshold in the U.S. It is shown that the rate of growth of AIDS is essentially the same for the United States and other First-World countries. An argument is advanced, based on WHO AIDS data, to the effect that it is contact with the pool of infectives in the United States that drives the epidemic in other First-World Countries.