Do you think Gaetan Dugas was really 'Patient Zero'?

It’s long been established that he wasn’t patient zero, like 2 decades ago. AIDS was spreading primarily through drug addiction and needles in the States since the 70’s and probably the 60’s.

I thought it was the publisher’s idea to make Gaten the “bad” guy. He was patient “O,” not zero, to begin with.

Shilts was a pig who didn't understand what he was reporting about.

R1 That’s right. Michael Dennehy, Shilts’ Editor on ATBPO, pushed the Patient Zero angle to make s more intriguing narrative. Shilts agreed to it, so he’d no Innocent.

Two of my friends and my first bf were friends of his time from the Committee on Social Thpught at Univrrdity of Chicago. They speak highly of him from their time with him. It may be the business of commercial publishing that led Dennehy down that road. I also found it interesting that Shilts never revealed it his HIV+ Status somehow in the book. I don’t know whether he knew yet or whether he thought it would intrude on “jourrnslisticbobjectivity,” but it feels like s major omission, given jlhow immediate and urgent the stakes were.

The whole "patient zero" thing is/was a myth.

I don't think he was literally patient zero. I think it was more of an anecdotal story about an extreme way the virus was spread in the early days. He had an unusually high number of contacts in various cities. It was just one story of how the virus spread faster than it would have otherwise.

While he wasn’t patient zero, he surely spread HIV throughout the country

It was a naive reading of data that specified a typical promiscuous example as Patient O, the letter, not zero, the number. And yes, Dennehy suggested it and Shilts was complicit. It sold books and demonized one man.

Maybe he wasn't patient zero but wasn't Dugas still knowingly and deliberately spreading it?

R8, yes. There are many stories of him at Bath houses and, after sex, telling people, “I just gave you gay cancer!”

[quote] Shilts was a pig who didn't understand what he was reporting about.

No one knew when he was reporting. Do you think he should have kept quiet about the people dying and the possible reasons why? Jesus!

Of course not, as has been discussed here a dozen times or more, OP.

The OG cumdump, ✊ Respect!

No, he wasn't Patient Zero. Why not do some research rather than digging up debunked salacious harmful myths. I concur with R1, R4, R5.

In fact, one of the first cases took place in rural Missouri. Maybe this was 1965 or 1966. I remember reading something about this a year or two ago, so maybe I have the facts mixed up.

A teenager named Robert Rayford or something like that was perhaps the first in the United States who were identified as having AIDS. But this wasn't figured out until the mid-1980s. I think he was either a battered kid or a homeless kid went into a hospital for help in the mid-1960s. The staff had never seen any such symptoms before. Welts, bruises, blue spots, his lungs were full and his genitalia and rear end were covered with blisters. Nobody knew what to do.

After he passed, they saved some of Rayford's samples at the hospital. Decades later, in the 1980s, a nurse and doctor who had been around at that hospital in the 1960s thought to revisit the samples from Robert Rayford. They discovered that he had AIDS but nobody knew what the disease was in 1966. So if Robert Rayford had it in the mid-1960s, he must have gotten it from someone else. That would therefore clear Gaetan Dugas of being Patient Zero.

Well he definitely spread it heavily by being a sick person who didn't care about the rights of others. Allegedly, he came into contact with Freddie Mercury in 1981 and when the crisis was raging in 1985, Freddie's ex, Mary, asked him for a baby and he said no. His manager, who sold Freddie down the river when he found out he was POZ, said Freddie had tested negative several times but already had spots on his arm and he had refused Mary not because he didn't want a baby but because he wanted to save her life just in case as he knew damn well who he had come into contact with in New York. Maybe rumor, but it does add up.

Robert Rayford did not have AIDS. Stop spreading lies.

And you don't demonize a real person to sell books.

Sure Shilts was wrong (He was just reporting the prevalent opinion of the time), but his books are amazing histories of gay culture.

If you have never read his And The Band Played On and his book on gays in the military (Conduct Unbecoming), find then and read them! They are excellent.

I think everyone knows now that he was patient O, as in M, N, O, P. It was an error and his memory has been dragged through the mud.

Not saying that other gay men didn't behave the same way in the 70's.

R17, His memory? He would have been completely forgotten otherwise. Even now, he HAS been completely forgottn

[quote]I also found it interesting that Shilts never revealed it his HIV+ Status somehow in the book. I don’t know whether he knew yet or whether he thought it would intrude on “jourrnslisticbobjectivity,”

Did you even read the book? He addresses it in the book. He got tested but did not want to know the results until he was finished writing the book.

And please proofread FFS.

He was a Typhoid Mary but no Patient Zero!

Reports of Dugas being Patient Zero or willfully spreading the disease have been completely discredited. It's ridiculous that later copies of Shilts' book have not corrected the misinformation.

And I'm not GROUND Zero!