Gaëtan Dugas: Killing Patient Zero

Mea culpa: full movie here:

A full service member of cabin crew.

Just watched this and cried at the end. MARY. Those French Canadian flight attendants were so soft-spoken and genuine and lovely speaking about their friend.

Thanks for the recommendation over on the Andy Warhol thread.

Some of you are a little behind in the Gay History class....Gaëtan Dugas WAS promiscuous. He clearly was Poz...But not the villain Randy Shilts portrayed in his book. I knew a guy in the panhandle of florida. Very much like Dugas. Handsome. SUPER promiscuous. Bartender at the only gay club in town. Died of AIDS in the late 80s. He must have killed at least 70 guys (or more) from all the fucking around he did. I went to his apartment to give him a ride one morning and there were like six naked guys all sleeping around the place from the orgy the previous night..I saw him shortly before he died (he was working at the local gay bar as a barback). He was really sick. Scary and frail. My point is there were many "patient zeroes". ....LINK

Thanks, r3. I hardly ever start threads, but discussion of Patient Zero was derailing the Warhol thread.

[quote]Some of you are a little behind in the Gay History class....Gaëtan Dugas WAS promiscuous. He clearly was Poz...But not the villain Randy Shilts portrayed in his book.

R4, if you can find the time, watch the video I linked to. It says exactly the same thing you just said. In fact, Dugas was never "Patient Zero", but "Patient 'O' " - as in the letter. Your own link says this as well. "O" stood for "outside of California".

I just watched this documentary thanks to this thread. It is so sad to think that Dugas and his family went to their graves thinking he was the one who spread the disease.

^Did he even care???

Watch the documentary, r7. Dugas was definitely reckless but didn't fully understand what the consequences of his actions were. No one did back then. He essentially didn't believe that he was spreading the disease. He even appeared at what appear to be town hall-type meetings on the subject.

He did cooperate with health care personnel, giving names of sexual partners. Dates of trysts.

Omg I am sick of people defending this man, especially to trash Randy Schultz as some sort of hate filled yellow journalist.

I'm sorry I would rather protect the name of the dead gay man that DIDN"T go on knowingly infecting men, laughing about it to their face and telling health authorities to fuck off when they told him to stop. Unless you think Selma Dritz would lie for some sort reason. Stop with this shit.

R9 Randy Shiltz...not Shultz..oops

[quote]Omg I am sick of people defending this man, especially to trash Randy Schultz as some sort of hate filled yellow journalist.

Thanks for the 60 minutes link, r9. I don't see anyone (not here, anyway) defending Dugas. We are discussing him. It *was* sad that he was incorrectly accused of being the man who brought AIDS to the world. He no doubt did a lot to spread it, but that accusation that he started it simply is not true. I don't think Shiltz is a bad guy, either, but he made a huge mistake in referring to Dugas as "Patient Zero". That colored everything. As a journalist, he should have done better research. The truth matters. Even Schiltz praises Dugas for his cooperation with health workers.

Things are never as black and white as we would like them to be, Dugas had been an out, proud, and promiscuous gay man his entire life. Lived his life that way for years without repercussion. Like all of us, he was blindsided when AIDS appeared. in Killing Patient Zero, you can see him saying that he will stop if it can be proven that the disease is being spread through sex. Should he have stopped anyway? Of course. Dugas was no innocent, but the idea that he was maliciously infecting other men doesn't appear to be true.

He was likely in denial. None of us knew what was happening then. None of us. Far too many were still elated by their new-found sexual freedoms to want to curb them.

Selma Dritz did incredible work, but it was a little unsettling to hear her talk about these "awful" men and their "awful" lifestyles. Understandable, though, given all that she had seen.

He was probably infected in 1974, a good 4 years after the virus had come to America via a single traveler coming from Haiti (not necessarily a Haitian, as there was a lot of sex tourism in Haiti at the time).

There is a real Patient Zero out there, but we'll never know their name.

The real Patient Zero likely died in the late 70s. Dugas survived until '84.

Wouldn't it be wild if the real Patient Zero was one of those asymptomatic carriers and was still alive? If there was a way to identify that person, could they be prosecuted?

R11 that's fine, and I don't want to make Gaetan a villain either....I honestly just think he was reckless young and honestly not all that bright, but not really evil. It just bothers me that Shilts is getting trashed as a bad guy now. He probably just heard what Selma told him about Dugas and went with it.

Another interesting video I found is this one, with some sort of Canadian gay AIDS conference from 1983 with actual footage of Gaetan asking questions (and Paul Popham,, one of the creators of GMHC).

What I don't get is , even if he had been Patient Zero, how would that make him guilty?....if it wasn't him it would have been someone else. It's his reckless sleeping around while knowingly infected that might have been worse.

R11 Selma is saying "There was massive disinterest in doing anything for these "awful guys that lead these awful kind of life"......she is basically quoting what she perceived the homophobes in the government that ignored Aids were saying/thinking.........she wasn't saying that herself or voicing that as her opinion. Context, my friend.

Shilts rightly pointed out that Dugas was not a good person because he continued to infect people after he knew he was positive. Shilts never claimed that it was Dugas who brought AIDS to the US. "Patient Zero" is an epidemiological term referring to "(t)he index case or patient zero is the first documented patient in a disease epidemic within a population," which Dugas was in NYC and LA.

It's the media that misinterpreted "Patient Zero."

The guy who played Dugas in And the Band Played On wasn’t hot looking enough.

[quote]There is a real Patient Zero out there, but we'll never know their name.

[quote]There is a real Patient Zero out there, but we'll never know their name.

Prime examples of the fundamental misunderstanding of the term, "Patient Zero."

Shilts pings as a total cub bottom. Shame on him for denying it. I can only picture him in a missionary position grabbing his own ankles.

R19 I thought he was pretty hot...not as good looking in the face but a nice little body...I love the scene where the female doctor catches him changing....yum

[quote]The guy who played Dugas in And the Band Played On wasn’t hot looking enough.

Kind of like Dugas himself, R19.

R11 Dritz was conveying the officials’ opinions with the “awful men, awful lifestyles..” How did you not catch that?

Dugas was ugly and this story has made him seem scary as fuck. A great monster.

[quote]Shilts never claimed that it was Dugas who brought AIDS to the US. "Patient Zero" is an epidemiological term referring to "(t)he index case or patient zero is the first documented patient in a disease epidemic within a population," which Dugas was in NYC and LA.

Except no epidemiologist ever referred to Dugas as "Patient Zero", r18. They referred to him as "Patient 'O' ". "O" as in "outside". Shilts *did* erroneously refer to Dugas as Patient Zero, a hugely loaded phrase - and that's a very big mistake for a journalist to make.

HIV goes back to the early 20th century. It started in the Congo.

I was reading that getting HIV from a dirty needle is actually extremely rare.

R27 = WoW. With all do respect: wrong...Go watch "We were Here"... Look, I believe HIV was made in a lab. I certainly do not believe the Congo nonsense. Of all the millions of years ONE TIME an incurable virus crossed species (that mostly effected gays and blacks)? I think NOT...

Gaetan was neither the poor misunderstood victim that was vilified completely unjustly as they are trying to paint him now, nor was he the "Monster" who "brought AIDS to the world" as people painted him then. He was an idiot, reckless to the point of destructiveness, but not, imo, bad intentioned. Randy Shiltz did not investigate properly and went with the catchy headline with the Patient Zero stuff, but he was not wrong in what he reported, as told to him by people who directly worked with Gaetan.

[quote]HIV goes back to the early 20th century. It started in the Congo.

Yeah, I was really interested when I read this, recently. They think it crossed to humans in 1908. Fascinating!

The reason this topic was brought up on the Andy Warhol thread was less to do with Dugas, and more to do with an interview with a scientist I saw where she was talking about how it takes about 10 years for the virus to start making people sick. It made me wonder, those people who were dying in the early to mid-80s, did they really catch the virus in the early to mid 70s? Or did the virus move more quickly initially? I have a lot to learn!

R30 = You had me until you blamed Randy Shiltz bad reporting on OTHER PEOPLE who told him things. So much for personal responsibility or journalistic integrity.

10 years is the average latency period. Some people get sick within a year or two of infection, some much longer.

R32 where was the bad reporting? Other than the Patient Zero stuff?

[quote]Shiltz did not investigate properly and went with the catchy headline with the Patient Zero stuff, but he was not wrong in what he reported, as told to him by people who directly worked with Gaetan.

But people who knew and worked with Gaetan were interviewed for Killing Patient Zero, and they said the way Gaetan was portrayed in ATBPO was inaccurate. Especially one of the worst scenes in ATBPO, where Gaetan is visiting bathhouses as late as 1982 and telling people they were infected after he fucked them. His good friend said that Gaetan was caring and sweet and would never have done something like that. Another friend said that he stopped visiting bathhouses long before that period because they kept making him sick with other illnesses that were hard to shake off.

It's clear that Gaetan still had sex long after he should have, but that was not unusual for a lot of gay men of the period. The documentary talks about that, too. Sex was considered healthy and liberating, and even as late as 1983, scientists weren't sure it was sexually transmitted. Gay men felt like they were being shoved back into the closet, and they wanted proof that one of their biggest joys and freedoms was really killing people. Others assumed everybody was already infected anyway, so why stop? There was a lot of shock and fear and anger, and people don't act rationally under those circumstances. We sat this recently with COVID.

One thing is true, and that was said by multiple people in the documentary: Gaetan's openness and helpfulness with researchers helped them complete early cluster studies that were crucial in identifying the disease as sexually transmitted. Had every promiscuous gay man been as open about their experiences, the clusters would have been defined even earlier and thousands of lives saved. Gaetan flew to NYC to be interviewed by researchers, and he even flew to Atlanta when he was very sick to give blood samples.

Shilts' editor picked out the Patient Zero parts of ATBPO and gave them to the Post because he knew that without this sensational story, the book would be ignored and nothing would change. He admits this in the documentary. Shilts didn't like it, but he went along with it in hopes that the book would be a best seller and help crack the silence surrounding AIDS. That is exactly what happened, but at the cost of vilifying one of the few gay men of the period who sincerely tried to help researchers.

And that just sucks.

*We saw this recently with COVID.

[quote] Dugas was definitely reckless but didn't fully understand what the consequences of his actions were. No one did back then. He essentially didn't believe that he was spreading the disease.

Not believing you are responsible for the spread of a fatal disease does not absolve one of the responsibility for spreading the disease.

R35 but the conversation that we heard straight from Selma's mouth about Gaetan actually HAPPENED. It's been confirmed by several other people. Do you also think she's lying about the men that complained to her about him? Why would she do that? And why would reporting those things as Shiltz did be bad reporting?

Look, no one is denying people can't see things differently in hindsight, and that Dugas's portrayal while not innacurate from RS's perspective, may not have been a complete one of the man. Randy did not worry about the feelings about Gaetan's friends and family, he didn't seek out to tell his life story. He had been dead for years and anyway it was not about him or his 8th grade teacher's feelings about the man but about something much more pressing.

Gaetan behaved stupidly, recklessly to the point that harmed alot of people. In hindsight we can say that did not make him a horrible person, without denying the fact. And Schiltz does not need to be trashed as a bad journalist because some people's feelings were hurt.

Which conversation are we talking about, R38? There's no way in hell Selma could know what Gaetan did and didn't say to some bathhouse trick. His good friends and lovers said that it would have been terribly out of character for him to have said something like that.

Gaetan DID behave stupidly; there is no getting around that. But what the documentary makes clear is that he was one of thousands of promiscuous, mobile gay men behaving stupidly, not some evil Typhoid Larry who brought AIDS to America singlehandedly, which is how he has been seen thanks to Shilts' book.

The work done in recent years by scientists interviewed in the documentary shows that Gaetan was infected in the middle of the plague, not at the beginning of the plague. There was a single individual who unknowingly brought the virus from Haiti around 1970, and that was the strain of HIV which took hold in the gay communities of San Francisco and NYC and was spreading throughout the 70s. Those men in the cluster with Gaetan who got sick a couple of years after he fucked them had ALREADY been infected years before: The latency period for HIV was about 10 years.

Again, I'm not trying to absolve Gaetan of behaving recklessly; but he was NOT Patient Zero, as Shilts and his editor cynically portrayed him for their own financial and political purposes.

While Gaetan may not have been Patient Zero, his job as a flight attendant and his good looks made him a vector to spread HIV around the US.

R39 Selma Ritz claimed men came to complain to her and others about Gaetan behaving as has previously been discussed in the bath houses. And the conversation she had with Dugas as shown in the 60 minutes video posted also, coming directly from her mouth, also paints a similar picture. Is it possible things might have been exaggerated, or ay not have panned out quite as bad as would have seemed from those conversations? Maybe, but the things that were said about them from witnesses that were there WERE said.

Ultimately she wouldn't know any less than the people in the documentary..unless you were there in the bathhouses with Dugas, and as far as I know she is the only on that can claim having direct conversations with these men.

You are trashing a man that did not fuck a bunch of men knowing he was likely transmitting a disease that was deadly over a man that did. Think about that. Shiltz only "purpose" was to get people to listen, and he sure got his way and he did more for the cause against AIDS than some arrogant stupid guy who couldn't be bothered to keep it in his pants even when told by health officials repeatedly not too.

Fuck off.

AIDS probably came from the Wuhan wet market!!!!

Oooof R42 Jesus Christ.

Consenting adults were having sex with Dugas - it’s not like he was banging a bunch of helpless children who had never heard the term gay cancer before. He also had KS lesions early on so anyone who would let him fuck then with visible lesions (one was apparently on his nose - another on his forearm) were taking quite a risk. One guy in the documentary who let Dugas fuck him admitted it was risky and completely owned that decision - saying he wouldn’t have held him responsible if he was infected.

And the documentary actually showed that Dugas’s consistent cooperation with the CDC and his trip to Atlanta (when ill) to give blood samples actually did a shit ton for people with AIDS. So to write him off as some “arrogant stupid guy” is fucked up.

And this is deeper than “hurt feelings,” designating Dugas as patient zero turned him into a villain in history - which was totally inaccurate and proved devastating for his family.

Some of you are being so fucking cold about this.

Okay, R41, but Dritz was herself interpreting events she heard about second-hand just as Dugas' friends were. They had direct and intimate knowledge of Dugas which Dritz did not have. When we look at Dugas' verified actions, such as flying all over the place to give testimony and blood samples, as well as the stories of people who knew him very well, he comes across as a caring and responsible person.

Shilts may also have been caring and responsible, but we know that he vilified Dugas to sell books and break the silence about AIDS. He used Degas for his own purposes. Shilts may have been trying to accomplish something bigger but that doesn't change the fact he did a shitty, duplicitous thing.

My take on Dugas (after seeing the clip of him speaking at the public health forum) is that he was not convinced that the science was right about AIDS being a sexually transmitted disease. Did he finally see the light before he died or did he die still thinking it was not caused by unprotected sex?

They never said, R46. That forum was almost exactly a year before he died in March 1984. Does anyone know if they'd confirmed it was sexually transmitted by early '84?

Dugas gives off major bottom energy in pics; however, if he was simply serving puss he wouldn't have infected all those guys. Could he have been a top? Were the queens just nellier in 1982?

r48 versatile guys exist

[quote]My take on Dugas (after seeing the clip of him speaking at the public health forum) is that he was not convinced that the science was right about AIDS being a sexually transmitted disease.

Wasn't this a commonly held belief in the early days of AIDS, when no one really knew what was going on?

Science knew what was going on, it's just that a segment of the gay male population wouldn't accept it.

Eldergay you actually believe anything Randy Shilts writes? He's trash.

I recently read the memoir Body Counts by Sean Strub, founder of POZ magazine. The book mainly focuses on his activism through the 80’s and 90’s. He talks about his swollen glands and night sweats in the early eighties and his realization that he is probably positive.

Even then, he engages in unsafe sex. Condoms were frowned upon. On one hand, he keeps himself as educated as he possibly can (difficult in those early years); on the other hand, he hits the bar at night, leaving his beloved partner (who dies in 1987 or so) at home.

If you were attending funerals during the day, wouldn’t you just stay at home with your partner? I guess it was the mindset that you were probably going to die soon, anyway. Strub doesn’t really explain his motivations, although he touches on his guilty feelings.

I’m not trying to condemn him or anything, just trying to understand the mindset. It’s a pretty good book, not as gut wrenching or beautifully written as Paul Monette’s memoirs.

According to the movie about him linked above, Dugas felt he had every right to have sex with whomever he wanted despite being warned that sex is causing the problem. Some even went to Air Canada to ask them to limit his routes.

I have no problem believing he said to his partners what Shilts claimed in his book. ("I just gave you gay cancer!")

I think it's pretty interesting that despite him being so "wickedly portrayed" by Schiltz, in the movie he comes out as pretty likeable and is nowhere near demonized as he supposedly is in the book.

I think Dugas mellowed and accepted his condition as time went on. Shilts mainly describes him early in the pandemic

[quote]Except no epidemiologist ever referred to Dugas as "Patient Zero", [R18]. They referred to him as "Patient 'O' ". "O" as in "outside".

Okay, I read the Shilts book when it was first published. There seems to be a bit of backpedaling when it comes to the term "Patient Zero." None of the epidemiologists for years said Shilts made up that term and it seems unlikely he did. Think about it. You're drawing cases on a whiteboard and drawing lines from one person to another and trying to determine transmissibility. Does "O" for "outside" make sense? Maybe "O" for "original." In light of what we've all learned about R0 (R naught) due to Covid and its spread, Patient 0 seems much more likely (and yes, I know they are measuring two different things).

But let's stipulate that Shilts got the zero part wrong. R35 lays out what I was going to post. But let me add this: [quote]But people who knew and worked with Gaetan were interviewed for Killing Patient Zero , and they said the way Gaetan was portrayed in ATBPO was inaccurate.

How many friends and co-workers do you share information about your trips to the bathhouse? I'm sure he was a very sweet guy to his friends and family. But a man on the prowl for sex is often a different person. It's quite likely he lied to his friends about his activities.

[quote]Patient Zero, a hugely loaded phrase - and that's a very big mistake for a journalist to make.

If the term didn't exist before AIDS, how could the phrase be loaded. It became loaded after the book was published because of the way the media misused the term, whether Dugas was Patient Zero, Patient O, or the index case. If Shilts used the term "index case," the narrative would have become "Dugas was THE INDEX CASE," and that term would have then become loaded.

There were plenty of men who behaved like Dugas did and weren’t publicly condemned like he was. I don’t believe he made that comment “I have gay cancer and now you have it too” in the bathhouse because it sounds like something straight out of a movie and because people who knew him said there’s no way he would have said such a thing. I don’t care if they were his friends and coworkers being interviewed - what motive did they have to lie 40 years later?

The story from ATBPO was extremely compelling - to think there was a beautiful whore flight attendant monster who was maliciously spreading AIDS all over North America. Like a horror movie. The truth seems a lot sadder and more mundane - he was someone extremely comfortable with his sexuality and appeared to be in denial about the virus at a time when no one knew anything for sure about transmission.

I can totally believe he said "“I have gay cancer and now you have it too” if he thought it was a joke, some random vd disease that would be cured with a shot of penicillin.....people underestimate I think how NOT seriously he took the disease in the beginning.

And therein lies the problem. People make their minds up and decide that him saying that means he was maliciously spreading a deadly disease on purpose and laughing about it and I doubt that is accurate. I would have to read Schiltz book to see if that is how he really tried to portray him or if that's what the readers read in to. But I absolutely believe the people that said he said those things. I just think people do not have the right context.

I prefer "Zero Patience".

While Dugas was a great many things, haven't epidemiologists debunked the idea that he was the so-called "Patient Zero" to whom the epidemic could be traced?

While he was clearly an early super-spreader of the virus, don't most scientists discount the idea that he was the actual starting point?

R61, yes. where have you been? This is what the entire thread is about

The movie interviews shows that so many people with AIDS named Dugas as someone they had sex with

[quote]While Dugas was a great many things, haven't epidemiologists debunked the idea that he was the so-called "Patient Zero" to whom the epidemic could be traced?

No one claimed the entire pandemic was due to him. He was the index patient for several groups, meaning was one person the geographical cluster had in common.

In the movie, others also say Dugas said "I gave you the gay cancer!"

Stilts didn't make that up

Movie at R1. At about 50:12, the Reagan White House and the press corps are laughing and joking about AIDS.

It's horrifying

Dugas was hot. Shilts = fug.

R67 Shilts had a brain...Dugas was, weeeelll, not the brightest light in the Christmas tree.

I really question the whole "Dugas was hot" business. He seems okay, but certain not a model

Dear R69 (how inappropriate a number for you since you don't have a clue what's hot), Dugan could walk into a gay bar and have any man he want.

[quote] Dugas was hot. Shilts = fug.

NO WAY! Shilts was a hot cub

If you haven't read AND THE BAND PLAYED ON, read it! It's far better than the HBO movie.

Shilts got some things wrong, but overall, it's a stunning account of the emergence of AIDS.

His CONDUCT UNBECOMING about gays on the military is excellent too. I've never read his Harvey Milk book.

Where in the movie, R65? I don't remember that.

R70 Gaetan was cute, and a very friendly flirt, but nowhere near the Adonis people made him out.

I like the guy that was interviewed in the 60 minutes story...Bai hon, ahm goin to the baths nau...poor dude got his heartbroken and much worse.

[quote]While he was clearly an early super-spreader of the virus, don't most scientists discount the idea that he was the actual starting point?

He wasn't an early super-spreader, though. Many of the men he slept with who died of AIDS had already been infected long before. The science shows that. The virus was already swirling silently in the gay communities of NYC and SF by the mid-70s when Gaetan was himself infected.

Did he infect people? Almost certainly. But if they'd had a cluster study that showed all promiscuous gay men of the period, there would have been a lot of Patient Zeroes at the center of many clusters that all linked up with other clusters. Urban gay men regularly had several hundred partners a year back then--everybody was fucking everybody.

R73, Just watched it from the link above. People state it in a few places. near the middle?

R73, interesting because some say that he said it and was very aggressive about not caring about infecting others while others said he was caring and would never do that.

Some of the epidemiologists mentioned that people they interviewed said that's what Gaetan said

Did any of the people who knew him--old friends and lovers--say he said that?

[quote] Did he infect people? Almost certainly. But if they'd had a cluster study that showed all promiscuous gay men of the period, there would have been a lot of Patient Zeroes at the center of many clusters that all linked up with other clusters.

The first cluster study showed Dugas at the center--but you're right that there was so much sex happening with everyone and that symptoms took 10 years to appear, that first cluster study wasn't accurate

R78 probably not alot of them around.........

R78, no his friends and lovers said it would have been out of character

I know this will sound bitchy but if only Gay men were coming down with this 'gay cancer' how the hell else could it have been caught other than by them having sex? Singing show tunes?

36000 Americans dead before Reagan even mentioned AIDS

R82, they actually investigated if things like poppers and lubricants, (mainly Crisco which was what was used then) may have anything to do with it.

Yes, it was poopers caused it.

Heroin users, homosexual men, hemophiliacs and Haitians R83. It was all four H’s, not just gay men.

The joke (in poor taste) was indoor track lighting on gray carpet.

The blood banking industry and the makers of factor eight, bribed doctors to Pooh-Pooh acting on the reasonable assumption that it was blood borne.

Really broke my heart when Randy Shilts died of AIDS. He offered so much and he was gone.

Liked how the documentary got into the joys of bottoming.

There's another 60 minutes episode that aired right after he died in 1994 and you see him so emaciated compared to the previous 1987 interview, he's unrecognizable. I'd post it but I don't want to be that much of a Debbie Downer

Activists were begging that hepatitis positive blood be thrown out, since there was so much overlap between hepatitis infection and GRID, but not only were they not throwing it out, they were purposely collecting it to save money because the components from a single donation could be separated into the hepatitis vaccine and clotting factor.

Bayer was company zero.

[quote]None of the epidemiologists for years said Shilts made up that term and it seems unlikely he did. Think about it. You're drawing cases on a whiteboard and drawing lines from one person to another and trying to determine transmissibility. Does "O" for "outside" make sense?

It absolutely does, r57, because it's grounded in fact. It stood for "Patient outside of California", to differentiate Dugas from other patients, such as "Patient LA1", "LA2" and "SF4" or "NY7". These letters and numbers stood for the patients' locations and the order they came in (Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York). Gaëtan was from OUTSIDE OF CALIFORNIA, or Patient O. Not Patient Zero. This is not supposition on my part. This is documented fact.

[quote]If the term didn't exist before AIDS, how could the phrase be loaded. [sic] It became loaded after the book was published because of the way the media misused the term, whether Dugas was Patient Zero, Patient O, or the index case.

You have heard the term "Ground Zero", though, haven't you, r57? A term that originated when the nuclear bomb was dropped on Japan? An epicenter that radiated death and destruction? I would not go so far as to say Shilts deliberately misinterpreted the designation the doctors gave Gaëtan (ironically, to protect his privacy), but Shilts sure as shit ran with that imagery.

I felt physically ill watching that White House press conference in the documentary. What total wastes of human beings.

Is anybody surprised that gay men of the time didn't trust what government researchers were saying? Look at what the fucking government was saying.

R92...that was sick....turned my stomach.

Especially when you know there were at least a few closet cases in Reagan's White House tee-heeing along with the others even while they planned their latest trysts in the woods.

Reminds me of the Joe character in Angels in America.

Yes that audio from the WH was horrible - a bunch of homophobic childish bullies.

R29, AIDS is not the only incurable fatal virus to cross species. What about rabies?

R89 - I just watched that segment. So fucking sad. My god. Glad I watched it though.

Rabies has been around since 3000 BC - it certainly wasn’t made in a lab. But it’s classified as a “neglected tropical disease” because it disproportionately affects poorer countries. If medical treatment isn’t received right after the bite or scratch it’s always fatal. Similar to AIDS in that the amount of medical attention plays a very strong role in the course of the disease. Rabies kills 20,000 in India every year but the U.S. sometimes goes years with zero rabies deaths.

R89 Yeah it is sad, though he seemed to be in good spirits and didn't look as bad as many other cases I've seen

R96 "One patient did submit the bat for testing, and the bat tested positive, but the patient didn't receive PEP because of a fear of vaccines, according to the report."

Imagine not getting a shot that prevents you from developing a 99.99% fatal (and painful) death) because, ouchie needles! Yikes.

R89 - The part that got me was when he said he was at the height of his career as a journalist and about to die.

[quote] Look, I believe HIV was made in a lab. I certainly do not believe the Congo nonsense.

It was already traced, hon. This isn’t up for debate. HIV is the same as that found in animals. It already thanks to trading in the Congo at the ports where they were eating these animals and prostitution was rampant.

HIV infection in humans came from a type of chimpanzee in Central Africa. The chimpanzee version of the virus (called simian immunodeficiency virus, or SIV) was probably passed to humans when humans hunted these chimpanzees for meat and came in contact with their infected blood.

Yes, and the virus spread outwards as the transportation networks opened up Central Africa. After the people of what was then Zaire got rid of the Belgians, they brought in French-speaking professionals from Haiti to fill gaps while they educated their people and rebuilt their infrastructure. The French-speaking Haitians were happy to get away from Papa Doc's brutality. A few of those Haitian professionals brought HIV home with them, and then a sex tourist from America brought that particular strain to the gay communities of New York and San Francisco.

HIV is, and has always been, a disease spread by exploitation. It feeds on human misery.

The HIV which dogged hemophiliacs was spread by blood products sourced in Haiti, which the impoverished locals would sell for as little as $3 a pop. More exploitation.

I try to cut Shilts some slack. He was writing the first draft of a very complicated story.

We know much more now.

R105 funny I'm the opposite. I try to cut Dugas some slack because he was young and stupid and was a just liberated gay man. Shilts is hardly the bad guy here so imo he does not need slack to be cut for him.

R103 I assume you read about Robert Rayford? The first victim to have been confirmed of dying of AIDS in 1970? The story is so troubling and heartbreaking...just a 15 year old kid who had been sold to god knows how many men and had not only AIDS but all sorts of weird STD's....broke my heart. Poor kid died alone with no family and no one knowing what was wrong.

[quote]Gaetan was cute, and a very friendly flirt, but nowhere near the Adonis people made him out.

I have always thought he's was kind of cute, but not extremely attractive. I do wonder if there's any truth to the claims about Gaetan saying, "he was always the prettiest one at parties".

Are there any pics of Gaetan without the porn stache?

Here's one...hope the link works...cute but no Adonis...slightly munchkin like looking

R109 Thank you. I think he's good without the stache.

^^^I meant to type "looked good"

I thought I was Patient 0?

[QUOTE] The joke (in poor taste) was indoor track lighting on gray carpet.

I don't get the joke. Someone explain.

Sex is very much a natural part of our natures, and I don't think you can blame people for doing it. Some comments I've seen here and elsewhere seem to be implying that it's kind of certain gay men's fault for being promiscuous in the 70s. If only they hadn't been so disgusting as to have so much sex. But sex isn't disgusting and it's not a bad thing to do. Yeah, if you know you're infectious and you deliberately go around not caring about others you're a shit person (and doing something illegal in many places), but I try and put myself in the minds of gay guys in the 70s. Imagine a time where you could shag around as much as you like and your biggest worry was probably getting a case of the clap, which there are antibiotics for. It must've seemed like such an amazing thing, that you could fuck around consequence free - at least as far as they knew at the time. Which is so sad and chilling in retrospect.

But humans are going to fuck, and saying "well, if they just hadn't fucked around so much..." seems kinda victim-blaming to me.

R114 I think you are reading into this thread what you want. No one implied that promiscuity itself was wrong per se, though there are times for it and not for it. Nor was anyone implying sex was dirty, lol.

And yes promiscuity DID make things worse in this case, that's not victim blaming...it's a fact...with sociological and political reasons behind it that cannot b ignored if we want to understand ourselves and what happened and why it happened. No one is blaming men for sleeping around after being suppressed for so long but it is a factor that sped things up, and that cannot be denied.

R91, if “O” stood for the letter O, why wouldn’t Dugas have been labeled “O1”? That is, wouldn’t the doctors have assumed that there would be other infected individuals outside of California, New York City, and other hotspots?

This is becoming exasperating. There is no "if", r116. “O” stood for the letter O, which was short for "Outside". It seems that those designations were created by behavioral scientist William Darrow, who was a young scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Here is a fairly comprehensive article explaining the said labelling. It might prove helpful in answering your questions. It has diagrams. From the linked article:

[quote]The study did not use any names but rather designated the infected men based on their locations. The patients in Los Angeles were therefore referred to as LA1, LA2, LA3, etc., while Dugas (who stood in the center of the diagram to show his role in the spread of the disease between the coasts) was dubbed “Patient O” (the letter, not the numeral) for 'Outside of California.'

[quote]When Shilts interviewed employees at the CDC, they mistakenly referred to Dugas as “AIDS Patient Zero” rather than “Patient O,” the result of a small typo. Shilts recalled he thought “Ooh, that’s catchy” and seized upon the dramatic epithet for his book. This encouraged the implication that “AIDS Patient Zero” was the first man to contract the disease and was therefore responsible for its spread.

If this is accurate, it would seem that Shilts did know the difference between "Patient O" and "Patient Zero", and deliberately chose the more sensational nomenclature - and the one that he knew was incorrect.

[quote]Thanks to advances in genetic analysis, a 2016 study of Dugas’s blood revealed that the strain of HIV he had carried existed in several other gay men in New York well before he first visited the city in 1974.

If this is correct, Dugas did not bring HIV to NYC.

Thanks, R117, the article you cited and accompanying diagram were very helpful. My misunderstanding was that there was just one map in which Dugas was designated as Patient O. Instead, there likely were different maps for different clusters, and so there could have been other Patient Os. Also, Patient LA3 for one cluster might be different from Patient LA3 for another cluster. As mentioned earlier, epidemiologists were only able to construct a map of the Dugas cluster because he was forthcoming of information of his sexual partners, whereas most people would have likely been much more reticent.

Well I just googled Robert Rayford and am thoroughly disturbed. How horrifying is that story? MARY.

r12 You're wrong. The first confirmed North American AIDS case was a teenager in 1969. Your timing makes zero sense unless he contracted HIV and then died of AIDS in the same year.

For those talking about Dugas and his looks - remember it was the late 70s. He definitely wasn't the classic, timeless butch guy, but that look was popular *at that time.*

Dugas actually looks great when he lost all his hair during chemo. He thought he looked hideous.

Hit "Free full text" in the link below for his pic

R121 Actually I think around the time the butch look was in. Look at the leather scene that was all the rage during those days, But a cute blonde twink never goes out of fashion anyway

The documentary talked about how he was extremely charming and sexy because he was so comfortable with himself. Photographs don't capture it all. He was handsome in that video where he is questioning the GMHC in Vancouver and he was already quite sick at that point.

R120, I'm talking about the strain of HIV known as HIV-1 group M subtype B. Genetic analysis has shown that strain, which has become the dominant one in the Western world, took hold in NYC and SF gay communities thanks to a single traveler from Haiti in 1970. It spread silently throughout the 70s.

That was not the first HIV infection in North America. In addition to Robert Rayford, there were several cases in the 50s and 60s which have now been identified as probable AIDS infections. These infections affected a very small number of people and burned out on their own. There have probably been many such cases over the course of the 20th Century.

Rayford was likely infected in 1959 due to child prostitution and/or incest. He may have had HIV-1 Group M subtype B, but if he did, his particular infection never spread beyond a small group. It's also possible that he, like many other early AIDS cases, had a totally different strain. The strain that killed Arvid Noe, another famous early AIDS case, was only common in Cameroon and he picked it up as a teenage sailor there.

St. Louis was a major hub for TWA in the 50s and 60s, and Rayford probably got it from some well-traveled perv on a pitstop. OR, he was infected by a relative who got it from that traveler. In any case, it was a sad story, but it has nothing to do with the route HIV 1 Group M subtype B took to get to America from Haiti around 1970.

You're welcome, r118. I posted that link at r117 for r57, as well, since they were asking questions already answered, and making incorrect suppositions, as in:

[quote]Does "O" for "outside" make sense? Maybe "O" for "original."

Here's another article on Darrow and further clarification. From that article:

[quote]When Darrow wrote up his findings inside the CDC, he didn't name names. Instead, he called the men by a code, based on the city they lived in. For those in LA: "There was LA1, LA2 ... and so forth," Darrow says.

[quote]And for Dugas, a Canadian? "Patient O, the outside-of-California case."

[quote]The letter O? Not Patient Zero? "That's correct," Darrow says. "I never labeled him Patient Zero."

[quote]The designation "was never meant to suggest that he was the first case," Darrow says. "It only meant there was some person who was very important in this cluster of cases."

Dugas may very well have been infected on his first visit to NYC in 1974. He didn't bring it to the city by any means.

I was poking around online last night, and apparently, there was an illness known as the "junkie flu" or the "dwindles" which started affecting IV drug users in late 1970s NYC. Blood samples from that population have shown exponentially growing HIV infections from around 1977 onwards. Nobody studied the problem because NYC was in a budget crisis for most of the mid to late 70s. Public health services reduced their staff by almost 30% between 1974 and 1977, closing many neighborhood health clinics visited by vulnerable populations. They think now that HIV entered that population around 1975, but the problem was allowed to grow unchecked until the early 80s when HIV/AIDS was identified in other groups.

Those waxing nostalgic about partying their asses off consequence-free in 1970s NYC should realize that there were ALWAYS consequences. There were a lot of silently sick people there throughout the decade, and many of them never lived to see 1980. The public just didn't start waking up to the problem until 1981, and the groups affected were so distasteful to middle America that not much was done about the problem until the middle of that decade. Reagan's America just didn't care if junkies and homosexuals were dying in the cities.

In that sense, I understand why Shilts did what he did in ATBPO. He and his editor knew they needed a shocking story to get people's attention, and the Patient Zero schtick worked. They probably figured that Dugas was dead, and one dead man's reputation was less important than the possibility of saving thousands of lives. And it must be admitted that the strategy worked.

I remember being a gayling down south and my republican father talking about some pervert homosexual flight attendant who spread AIDS all over America because the gay men are just animals who all have sex nonstop with each other - so yes r127 - it definitely got people’s attention….

The documentary said that after ATBPO was published and the Dugas story hit the New York Post, the New York Times published 11 stories about AIDS in just a couple of weeks, after years of downplaying the news. It really was a breakthrough moment in terms of getting the public's attention.

You could say that Dugas was instrumental to AIDS research both before and after his death: His assistance to researchers helped establish those early cluster studies, and Shilts' use of him to sell ATBPO focused the public's attention and secured funding for research later on. Now that the dust has cleared, it's good that his role in saving thousands of lives is finally being acknowledged. Perhaps that balances out his more reckless choices during his lifetime.

Dugas was born in the same week as my incredibly homophobic father. What a strange coincidence. Here's Dugas' family grave.

Randy's book is a monumental work of research. Randy spoke the truth and people got pissed at him. Patient Zero was a literary tool. I knew several guys who had the same distorted view that Dugas had. They refused to stop going to the baths and infecting others without a second thought. It was horrifying. Men I was friends with turned into bitter, self-pitying beasts. Even after they knew they were positive, they were dismissive of responsibility to those they infected. One man was a doctor who was cavalier about going to the baths and not caring at all. Although Gaetan Dugas was probably not the actual "patient zero", he certainly was representative of a portion of the community who refused to alter their sexual habits.

R131 - serious question though - weren't a lot of the men going to the bathhouses infected anyway and didn't know it? Wasn't anyone at the baths putting themselves at risk at that point? So why blame Dugas or this doctor etc? Like were you expected to stop going once you had KS? Where was the line?

Not trying to be an asshole - just wasn't around then - can you just speak more about the mentality? Thank you.

[quote] They refused to stop going to the baths and infecting others without a second thought. It was horrifying. Men I was friends with turned into bitter, self-pitying beasts.

There was so much confusion about exactly what caused HIV and the government's silence only made things worse. Some people thought it was made up just to get back at gays.

The CDC first used the term "AIDS" in September 1982 and identified all major routes of transmission (while ruling out casual contact, food, water, air or surfaces) over the course of the next year. It was very clear that it was spread sexually, especially through anal sex. Some gay men just didn't want to believe it, so they kept fucking with abandon.

Gee, I can't imagine anyone thinking the letter "O" in the middle of this graph might be a zero. This was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in March of 1984.

[quote] [bold]A.[/bold]When Shilts interviewed employees at the CDC, they mistakenly referred to Dugas as “AIDS Patient Zero” rather than “Patient O,” the result of a small typo. Shilts recalled he thought “Ooh, that’s catchy” and seized upon the dramatic epithet for his book. This encouraged the implication that “AIDS Patient Zero” was the first man to contract the disease and was therefore responsible for its spread.

[quote] [bold]B.[/bold]If this is accurate, it would seem that Shilts did know the difference between "Patient O" and "Patient Zero", and deliberately chose the more sensational nomenclature - and the one that he knew was incorrect.

How do you get from A to B? The CDC told him Dugas was known as "Patient Zero." Shilts used the term that was provided by the CDC. Where is the evidence Shilts knew the difference between the O and zero before ATBPO was published?

FTR, Shilts never claims in the book that Dugas was the first man to contract the disease and was therefore responsible for its spread. I don't think you've ever read the book. I have, several times.

Neither did Shilts ever claim that Dugas brought AIDS to NYC. He said there was a good possibility that it became widely spread during the Bicentennial in 1976 when ships from fifty-five nations had poured sailors into Manhattan. It's on the first page of the book.

The author of this article clearly has her own biases. Non sequiturs abound.

"People say you can spread this through sex, said Gaetan Dugas. "Are there any studies that actually prove this can be passed.....when they don't even know what causes this:?" - March 12 1984 Vancouver AIDS Forum. It was already clear that AIDS was sexually transmitted but he refused to believe the science. Who does that sound like? Do we have people around like that today?

They even had Duga's character in the movie version saying "And remember something, whatever it is, if I have it, someone gave it to me", which I always thought made perfect sense.

Shilts' editor said that when he gave the 12 cherry-picked pages about Dugas to the New York Post, Shilts correctly predicted what the exact headline would be: THE MAN WHO GAVE US AIDS.

They knew exactly what they were doing.

Headline in the Post.

Not much nuance there, huh?

What happened to the HIV doesn’t cause AIDS thing? Do people still believe that?

Article in Time, October 1987:

[quote]Since the early days of the AIDS epidemic, researchers have reasoned that a handful of people -- maybe even a single individual -- bore the unknowing responsibility for having introduced the disease to North America and its first large group of victims, the homosexual community. By tracing sexual contacts, officials at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta in 1982 found a likely candidate: one man who, through his sexual liaisons and those of his bedmates, could be linked to nine of the first 19 cases in Los Angeles, 22 cases in New York City and nine more in eight other cities -- in all, some 40 of the first 248 cases in the U.S. The CDC acknowledged his role with an eerie sobriquet: it called him Patient Zero.

Now Patient Zero is publicly identified for the first time in a stunning new book on the AIDS epidemic, And the Band Played On (St. Martin's Press; 630 pages; $24.95). Zero, says Author Randy Shilts, was Gaetan Dugas, a handsome blond steward for Air Canada, who used to survey the men on offer in gay bars and announce with satisfaction, "I'm the prettiest one." Using airline passes, he traveled extensively and picked up men wherever he went. Dugas developed Kaposi's sarcoma, a form of skin cancer common to AIDS victims, in June 1980, before the epidemic had been perceived by physicians. Told later he was endangering anyone he slept with, Dugas unrepentantly carried on -- by his estimate, with 250 partners a year -- until his death in March 1984, adding countless direct and indirect victims. At least one man indignantly hunted him down. Dugas' charm proved unfailing: he sweet-talked the man into having sex again.

[quote] The CDC told him Dugas was known as "Patient Zero." Shilts used the term that was provided by the CDC. Where is the evidence Shilts knew the difference between the O and zero before ATBPO was published?

From Shilts himself, from “Patient Zero” The Absence of a Patient’s View of the Early North American AIDS Epidemic by Richard A. McKay. The numbers "39" and "40" are footnote numbers that you can trace back to the origin of the quotes:

[quote] Indeed, Shilts had written an article acknowledging this longer incubation period in 1985. (39) Nonetheless, the storytelling potential of the cluster study’s central figure captivated the reporter, who later explained, “In the middle of that study was a circle with an O next to it, and I always thought it was Patient O. When I went to the CDC, they started talking about Patient Zero. I thought, Ooh, that’s catchy.” (40)

Shilts says that he originally thought the designation was "Patient O" as in "outside" (which it was, of course) - then he heard *some* CDC employees use the phrase "Patient Zero", thought it was "catchy" (Shilts' own word), and he, an investigative reporter chose not to clarify it further? That's a disingenuous choice for someone with his job.

[quote] FTR, Shilts never claims in the book that Dugas was the first man to contract the disease and was therefore responsible for its spread.

He certainly has strongly implied it elsewhere:

[quote]Shilts’s position might best be summed up by his later description of this moment in an interview: “The worst day, which I’ll never forget . . . [was] the day I discovered that Gaetan Dugas was Patient Zero and was conceivably the person who brought the disease to the United States.” (48)

[quote] I don't think you've ever read [Shilts'] book. I have, several times.

I read it when it came out. I've read all the links in this thread. I've learned a lot. I hope you have, too, r135. I don't know what to make of your comparison of an early victim of AIDS to today's anti-vaxxers.

To pretend Shilts didn't know what he was doing with the Dugas story is ridiculous. He knew he was making Dugas the scapegoat, he felt bad about it, but he and his editor reasoned it was the only way to get people to read the book and break the silence on AIDS. The editor confirms this from his own mouth in the documentary.

IDK certain posters are having such a hard time believing this: It's really clear in the news coverage of the time that ATBPO makes Dugas the charming, sociopathic face of the epidemic.

*IDK why

[quote] What happened to the HIV doesn’t cause AIDS thing? Do people still believe that?

Yes.

The documentary said Gaetan had visible lesions on his face and men still had sex with him.

Gaetan did heroic things (openness about his sex life with researchers and flying a long way to give blood samples) and shitty things (continuing to have sex after he was diagnosed).

Randy did heroic things (being the only mainstream journalist to talk about AIDS in the early years) and shitty things (making Gaetan the scapegoat).

Life is like that.

Does anyone else think that it was unrealistic to expect us to believe that Blanche Devereux didn't have AIDS?

R142 I have yet to read ATBPO to be able to see if the portrayal is particularly demonizing (the movie, for what it's worth, isn't at all) but I do not believe Shilts would lie about anything, nor do I believe the people he talked to would. Outside of that, sure, he may have sensationalized some aspects to get more attention, if he did indeed do that. But I do not think he was dishonest, and nothing has proven that he was.

Thanks for posting this OP. I cried and cried. My son came out in high school. As torture filled as it was for me, his mother , to know the intense discrimination he felt, his friends all shunning him….

His pain was so much bigger then my heart could capture.

I love and support him always. I thought my heart could break no more, but it always does.

I love all you guys no matter how bitter , rage filled, hate filled, hate for your mother, your father …. As my late mom always said ,”You come by it honestly .”

[quote]Shilts' editor said that when he gave the 12 cherry-picked pages about Dugas to the New York Post, Shilts correctly predicted what the exact headline would be: THE MAN WHO GAVE US AIDS.

So Shilts's editor gives 12 pages to the NY Post. Shilts, who was a journalist, knew how the Post would spin it. Because that's how the NY Post rolled then and now. Your point?

R140 - The first part that you quoted was terribly written. The first sentence sets up the way they want to tell the story, not much different from the NY Post.

The second sentence continues by saying researches may have "found their man." That's not what they were doing and never claimed that. The third sentence gets what an index patient, Patient "O", or Patient Zero totally wrong. Thus, a reputable source with misinterprets an author and makes Dugas into a villain. Shilts doesn't make him sympathetic because he continued to have sex with people after he was diagnosed. [boldShilts never accused him of being the person who started the epidemic. [/bold]

So then the second paragraph starts with what was previously misreported that Patient O was responsible for AIDS, and continues the same bad take in the second sentence. See above.

I'm not going through the article and dispute piece by piece what is states. The author feels Dugas was treated unfairly and is entitled to his opinion. But he cites personal interview notes about his opinion at a moment in time, not what he published.

If you need to have it explained to you how Dugas' rejection of the science (AIDS transmitted through sex) to anti-vaxxers rejecting science, well then...

So this is going nowhere, and I'm going to stop responding in this thread. The following is my opinion based on a lot of reading I've done on the subject. Dugas was a very handsome young man with a great sex life. He was also, no doubt, a loving son and friend, with charm to spare and a good heart. To some degree though, his looks and sexual conquests defined him. You all know people like that in your lives. Then he was confronted with the reality that he got very sick from something so much a part of himself. He went into denial that it was sexually transmitted and continued to have unprotected sex. Did he help the researchers with blood samples and providing them with names? Yes, but you also have to understand he also liked the attention he got from telling researchers he had sex with 250 people a year. He didn't deny he was sick, he denied he got AIDS from sex. It's a very human story and at the same time, he was reckless and infected God-know how many men. All these things can be true at the same time. And like most things in life, it's not black and white.

Shilts wrote a towering book that has and will continue the test of time. That people think he treated Dugas unfairly has some resonance, but I don't think he was being malevolent.

Finis.

R150 Great post and I am in complete agreement.

If ever a post deserved a "Thread Closed"...

There were likely several very promiscuous gay men late 1970s to mid 1980s who had a similar pattern of spreading the virus. Apparently the HIV virus began appearing in the US as early as the mid 1970, but it was less prevalent then and not properly isolated and identified.

Yes, this has been discussed in its fullness here....

The Great Oz has spoken!

...and flounced.

R150, you and I are fundamentally in agreement. Dugas and Shilts were both complex individuals dealing with an impossible situation. They both made questionable choices, though opinions may vary about whose choices were more questionable given the circumstances in which they lived.

I've enjoyed the debate in this thread, which for the most part managed to be thoughtful and intelligent. That's rare at DL these days.

[quote] The CDC first used the term "AIDS" in September 1982 and identified all major routes of transmission (while ruling out casual contact, food, water, air or surfaces) over the course of the next year. It was very clear that it was spread sexually, especially through anal sex. Some gay men just didn't want to believe it, so they kept fucking with abandon.

I raise you Covid

R144, from WIKI:

"Two independent studies have concluded that the public health policies of Thabo Mbeki's government, shaped in part by Duesberg's writings and advice, were responsible for over 330,000 excess AIDS deaths and many preventable infections, including those of infants"

All because of AIDS denial

[quote] So Shilts's editor gives 12 pages to the NY Post. Shilts, who was a journalist, knew how the Post would spin it. Because that's how the NY Post rolled then and now.

Welcome to how capitalism works...

He was not any more promiscuous than anyone else at the time, stop the hate and judgement!

[quote] He was not any more promiscuous than anyone else at the time, stop the hate and judgement!

No one is judging because no one at the time had any solid info as to what HIV was and what the consequences were.

[quote]Those waxing nostalgic about partying their asses off consequence-free in 1970s NYC should realize that there were ALWAYS consequences.

As I stated in my post - "It must've seemed like such an amazing thing, that you could fuck around consequence free - at least as far as they knew at the time. Which is so sad and chilling in retrospect."

[quote]no one at the time had any solid info as to what HIV was and what the consequences were.

Yes, exactly. But there are some posters on this site who do seem to have some judgment in what they are saying, in my opinion.

I'd love it if you kind fellas could recommend what you think might be the best source on the history of HIV/AIDS, whether that's book or documentary, I don't mind. I'd be interested in something that's pretty comprehensive, deals in both the origins and stories from Africa and the spread of it around the world, to also the crisis in the 80s, etc. Not sure if something like this does exist, but what do you think might be the best thing to read/watch? I have a lot of gaps in my knowledge on this, and I think it's important I know more about it, especially to really honour those of you who lived through it and paved the way for the rest of us. Thanks in advance.

I really liked "How to survive a plague"

R163 As far as showing both the impact that AIDS had on the gay community, and the activism it spurred, How to survive a plague is good, as well as Larry Kramer-In love and anger and United in Anger: A History of ACT UP. There are also a tons of videos on youtube about it's first reports, gay activists reaching out to the media, trying to get attention. GMHC volunteers taking calls and helping scared, infected men. I'm posting a particularly interesting one I found recently of Donahue with several gay activists as early as 1982 just when people were starting to come out of the woodwork to talk about it.

For a more in depth and epidemiological look on the disease itself and how it was discovered, studied and investigated there's a good one on youtube called The Age of Aids.

I am not a huge fan of fictional movies for this topic, I much prefer documentaries but ATBPO is pretty good for an overall glimpse of the first couple of years of the disease especially in regards to the politics behind it's discovery and it's lack of funding.

For a good thumbnail overview, the newest Freddie Mercury bio also does chapters on the history and spread of HIV. Good stuff and also a good bio of Mercury.

ATBPO isn't a fictional movie; it's a dramatization rather than a documentary. Almost all of the people were real.

I have wondered if there were any composite characters in the ATBPO movie. Richard Gere's choreographer character was never referenced by name, but IMDB says the character was supposed to be Michael Bennett.

The trivia page linked below is a bit long. Originally, NBC wanted to make a mini-series, but dropped the project because they felt the structure of the book didn't work for a two night miniseries. There's other interesting tidbits.

The ATBPO movie was such a pale version of the brilliantly written book

ITA R169 - it could do with a remake as a limited series using the same format as the book.

R170 I was also thinking it could be remade as a limited series, but with more accurate take on Gaetan Dugas. The ATBPO movie didn't really touch much on the Grethe Rask case. I remember there was some reference in the beginning with a brief scene in the late 70s of a woman dying of a mysterious illness in a hospital.

Just rewatched ATBPO - scene between Ian Mckellan and Matthew Modine in the hospital at the end was very moving.

Grethe Rask was infected really early--around the mid-60s--and probably contracted it from a patient during treatment. She worked at a health clinic in the Congo. A very sad case.

I read Good Intentions when it first came out in 1990. A lot of the book is wildly inaccurate, but looking back it does go into two things that were really important, to the bungling of AIDS research in the 1980s 1) because of Kaposi’s being the most visible sign of AIDS in the early days, research into the disease was assigned to NCI (if anyone want to know more about CFDA numbers, now assistance listing numbers let me know) That impacted the type of research that got funded - very little on transmission and none on the big killer at the time, PCP. NCI has a unique status at NIH since it’s budget is the only one that is reviewed separately by Congress. There was a protracted fight to move it to NIAID.

2) the year it was re-assigned to NIAID there was a continuing resolution (84?85?) that lasted almost the whole fiscal year. Most people either don’t either know what a CR is or consider it relatively benign (basically when the US government doesn’t pass a budget by 9/30, a CR keeps everything funded at last year’s levels) However, CRs can be incredibly damaging in that no new initiatives can start. So NCI stopped funding AIDS research and NIAID couldn’t start funding AIDS research for almost a full year in the mid 80s.

It sounds like what we're due for is a new, really good, in depth, holistic documentary on this topic. I'd definitely sit down and watch that one.

Thank you to OP, who posted the link to “Killing Patient Zero”. I’d heard of it but was reluctant to watch. I’m glad I did.

I met Gaetan waaay back when I was starting my career in aviation. Yes, he was handsome (I don’t think the photos do him justice), and popular. I do not believe the stories that have portrayed him as stating “I have gay cancer and now you do too”. I’d heard that story before his name was ever attached to it. He (and many of us back then) simply did not know initially, HOW HIV was spread. Even the scientists didn’t know for the longest time. The idea that it was through sex seemed a little far fetched, and it was thought to be a way of the Government (at the time) to control the gay community, and not believing in, or trusting the scientists. As a result, some continued on as normal, some lived in fear, some figured it was inevidable, some stuck to the side of caution.

Safe sex? Wearing condoms? “No one is going to tell me to wear a condom”. If you’ve lived through the last 2 years, does ANY of this sound even remotely familiar??

It’s 2022 and gay men are STILL seroconverting, even with all the information, and medicines we’ve had at our fingertips for at least the past 30+ years.

Was he perfect? No. No-one is. However he didn’t deserve the demonizing that his memory and his family have received over the years. Like the documentary states, the incubation period from infection to AIDS was determined to have been about 10 years - and it was only because Gaetan shared the contents of his black book, was open and honest with the researchers, that he found himself being in what appeared to be a cluster - or in the middle of the sequencing of cases, which showed him to be no more important than any other cases in the sequencing. He was just a small part of a much larger diagram of infections that would have been known, if others had shared details as much as he did.

What makes it all even more tragic is that he was demonized over someone mistaking an “Oh” (for out-of state), for “Zero”. As was said in the doc, he wasn’t Patient Zero in the study, he was Patient #57.

[quote]I do not believe the stories that have portrayed him as stating “I have gay cancer and now you do too”. I’d heard that story before his name was ever attached to it.

I've always thought it really has a whiff of "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche!" about it, for sure.

Back in the 80s, I remember hearing urban legends about people both male and female taking home one-night stands--both male and female--and finding a note or a lipstick-inked message on the mirror the next morning which said "Welcome to the world of AIDS" or something like it.

It's clear Dugas had unprotected sex long after he should have, but the "I have gay cancer and now you do too" story has always sounded like horseshit.

Yeah, it sounds like something you would read about on Snopes, R179.

Everyone here keeps saying the "O" meant "outside of California", but I think it was actually "outside of the U.S." Some of the others listed states like "NY", etc.

It was for that particular cluster where the other members were all in California and labeled accordingly. (LA1, LA2, etc.)

""I have gay cancer and now you do too"

As said before, I can see him saying it not in earnest, more as a joke, if he didnt take AIDS seriously or how it was transmitted, but if he didn't, I do not think Randy Shills or Selma Ritz were the ones who manufactured it.

I agree, R183.

And it's actually Selma Dritz. A lot of posters have made the same mistake so I surmise it's due to autocorrect.

[quote]Randy's book is a monumental work of research. Randy spoke the truth and people got pissed at him. Patient Zero was a literary tool.

Problem is, [italic]And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic[/italic] is not literature, nor a novel. It's allegedly "investigative journalism." One cannot employ literary tools and license in non-fiction works.

[quote]One cannot employ literary tools and license in non-fiction works.

It worked for me.

My first thought, Tru (R186).

He was handsome

With that haircut/style he looked great.

The one that choked me up is the 50-ish guy toward the film's end who said we lost all these men who could have been mentors to him and taught him how to age as a gay man.

It's true: there aren't a lot of gay men over 60.

R190

If it's not linked above, here's another documentary.

There was no myth about it.

Heartbreaking. What gay and AIDS activists went through, for us to enjoy the rights we have today, only to have parasitic trans and queers usurp our work and co-opt our movement.

Reading this thread, my rage is fortified.

R194, please STFU

Dugas was not patient zero since the virus was actually going around undetected at least since the mid 1970s. He was however one of the main transmitters of the AIDS virus during the major breakout.

I really don't want to shit on Dugas and I do try to see things in their context and time ( because I do believe at one time Dugas was unnecessarily villainized) but all of a sudden these slew of docs and testimonials about how GD was this misunderstood angel that did nothing wrong have the exact opposite of their intended goal, at least with me. People are intentionally trying to erase facts and quotes and testimonials as given by very reliable sources. It is ESPECIALLY egregious when they go after Randy Shilts, another dead from Aids man who instead of using his last years on earth knowingly screwing men knowing (if maybe not quite believing) he could be giving them a deadly disease, used them for writing a groundbreaking, game changing book on Aids and how America dealt with it.

Dugas wasn't a Patient Zero, but he was still an arrogant asshole.

R113 The joke is that every gay man's apartment in the late 70s/early 80s would have had tasteful gray carpeting and track lighting. (Though, if you had money you would have recessed can lighting like in Halston's apartment below.) It would be like saying that Calvin Klein bomber jackets caused AIDS because every gay man in1982 had one.

I've always though Halston's apartment looked bleak as hell.

It's clear that Dugas was not Patient Zero. By the time he got the bug in the mid-70s, it was already well-established in NYC and SF. However, he was incredibly irresponsible in his sex life. That said, he did give good information to researchers that helped establish early cluster studies. You can't really condemn or excuse him.

R201 - good post, but the fact is that he was in denial years after it was conclusively proven AIDS was sexually transmitted and continued to have unprotected sex. I believe that merits condemnation.

Yes, but his openness with researchers was game-changing for early AIDS research. I guess that's my point: It's hard to exclusively condemn or excuse him, because he did rotten things and admirable things