Gaetan Dugas

The whole Patient Zero thing was kind of made up by Randy Shilts in order to tell a story. Just like OP made up the idea that 'gays still honor him'. What are you talking about.

Nobody really knows who was the first to spread HIV.

What is "[italic]kind of[/italic] made up" supposed to mean? Either something is true or it isn't.

By 'kind of made up' I meant Shilts took some facts that were true and basically created a narrative around them that included things that weren't true in order to make a point about how one person unknowingly spread infection.

He was "Patient Zero" but the epidemic did not begin with him.

Also, Shilts made him look like he was spreading the disease on purpose.

While Dugas was not "patient zero" he did knowingly continue to spread the HIV virus:

"The CDC did interview Dugas, and on multiple occasions, when it was becoming evident that AIDS was an infectious disease, doctors sternly advised him to stop having sex. He refused these suggestions — orders, really, as he was stubbornly unconvinced that he could transmit cancer. He remained sexually active. Dugas later confided that he felt that the CDC did not treat him very well. He had moved to San Francisco, gained a significant degree of notoriety at the bathhouses to the point that some members of the gay community hatched a conspiracy to force him out of town. Eventually, he did move back to Vancouver. His disease advanced, he suffered through multiple bouts of Pneumocystis pneumonia, and on March 30, 1984, he passed away in Quebec."

"Phil Tiemeyer, author of “Plane Queer” documented his interview with Michael Denneny, Shilts’ publisher. Denneny described the initial dismal prospects for “And The Band Played On” that motivated them to find a more creative way to promote the book. The solution was to use Patient Zero and present him as the handsome, promiscuous French-Canadian airline steward who may have brought AIDS to America. This was the pathway to the bestseller list, and it worked. Tiemeyer noted Denneny’s rationalization that once the book gained publicity, Shilts could use the platform to denounce the Reagan administration’s indifference to the AIDS problem. Apparently Shilts himself was averse to the idea, but Denneny convinced him to go along with it. When the frenzy over the book was in full swing, however, it seemed that the interest over the Patient Zero story trumped the other issues, and ironically hurt the AIDS cause."

He was patient zero, it's just that patient zero was not what they thought it was.

Anyway, on the plus side, he was a lot hotter than Milo Y.

R6's quotes make him out to be something of a Typhoid Mary of AIDS. The story I heard (and I'm too lazy to try and check the validity of my sources so I may be wrong) was that he would sleep with men and afterwards he'd tell them "I have the Gay Cancer and now so do you." That he was angry at the world and he was a sociopath so he tried to inflict as much harm as he could before he died. I am not aware of anyone in the gay community who regards him as a hero. He is considered Patient Zero insofar as the disease had been snaking very slowly from deep in the African bush through to villages, towns, small cities, larger cities...but it didn't really explode globally until Dugas, a flight attendant, contracted it and then transmitted it to untold gay communities on multiple continents, first unknowingly and later with malicious intent.

Even if he hadn't spread it around so far and wide --even if he hadn't existed-- it would have still ended up becoming a worldwide epidemic within a matter of years. I lost friends and close family to AIDS in the mid-1980's, and I do wonder if they might've had another five or ten years if Dugas hadn't lit the match when he did. It would have been nice if the world had had Freddie Mercury for more time.

Radiolab did an episode called Patient Zero that discusses the origins of HIV/AIDS in depth. It is believed to have developed spontaneously after large primates, like chimps, ate smaller types of monkeys, and two separate viruses that existed in the monkey species merged in the blood of the chimps. The odds of it happening and the viruses not only surviving but combining and strengthening to the extent that they could thrive in humans were infinitesimally small. Alas, it happened.

Then in the early 1900's, a human hunter killed an infected chimp for meat and became the first person with HIV. He would have been the real Patient Zero, but his identity is lost to history as it took decades before anyone realized that the mysterious disease even existed.

Any decent pix of Dugas?

r8 my understanding was that he had cancer, drs told him they suspected his illness was sexually transmitted, and advised him to stop having sex. But they didn't know definitively then, yet. Dugas didn't believe cancer was spread through sex so he did not follow their advice.

The 'I have gay cancer and now you do too" is part of the made-up stuff.

Dugas was sexy in an early Falcon video sort of way.

I'd have blown him mid-flight in the lavatory.

Gaetan Dugas at an AIDS meeting in Vancouver

Ah, okay r10, I wouldn't want to vilify him if he doesn't deserve to be vilified. As with Typhoid Mary, however, I do wish he'd just taken the doctors advice rather than risk killing innocent people.

They couldn't prove anything R13. Not the same as Typhoid Mary at all. And he was likely right about the vaccine.

r13 I saw a documentary, "100 Jahre" by historian Guido Knopp, which was done by a big German channel, ZDF, and they said that some medical people from higher institutions made it clear to him, that he spreads the virus and has to stop having unprotected sex, and they said he became really angry at them. He didn't come across there as a sociopath and killer either, but it was made quite clear to him, that he spreads the virus and has to stop; I think they told him that he is patient zero, and he became really angry at all that and them, they said, and he rejected it. I guess it also became relatively clear for people relatively early that the disease is spread by sex, so once one might have had it, at least then one should have stopped having unprotected sex. If he wouldn't have continued his global sex life after the infection, the virus might have been contained, maybe even somewhat easily so. I think the virus increases sexual interest, all species and living forms want to flourish and multiply, and I guess the force and will to multiply and spread out in viruses and aggressive viruses is very big.

Ridiculous and you can see that by looking at Vancouver which was not a place of mass transmission as your scenario suggests.

[quote]If he wouldn't have continued his global sex life after the infection, the virus might have been contained, maybe even somewhat easily so.

No way in hell.

They couldn't even convince the major urban centers not to be more careful even once there was a lot more evidence.

"To be more careful." Fuck this afternoon.

[quote]If he wouldn't have continued his global sex life after the infection, the virus might have been contained, maybe even somewhat easily so.

I don't know that much about the history of AIDS but I assume it didn't need Dugas to spread in Africa. The virus would've spread worldwide through other people if Dugas hadn't even existed.

100 Jahre - Patient Zero

any nudes online?

R19 Apparently HIV arrived in NYC in 1969 or 1970. OP, Gaetan was NEVER celebrated or thought of as a good person. I have noticed how now that it has been discovered or confirmed that HIV showed up sometime in 1969 or 1970 how the media is now claiming that Gaetan Dugas is 'exonerated' when in fact he did knowingly infect others with HIV. Yes I know that it was the 1980s and HIV/AIDS was extremely new and not everyone was certain at first how it was spread or how you could be infected; but Dugas knew he was infected with HIV and living with AIDS and had unprotected sex anyway and infected lots of men.

People have to understand that Dugas was the first person in which researchers understood how the disease was contracted and spreading. Until they interviewed Dugas, the spread of the virus was a complete mystery. That's why he's "Patient Zero". However, the disease didn't begin with him.

OP, you are such a moron and such a troll. Where is your evidence that "gays still honor him as an international hero"? Wtf?

R22 = AIDS bump bitch