Gaëtan Dugas
| Gaëtan Dugas | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
February 20, 1953 Quebec City, Quebec |
| Died | March 30, 1984 (aged 31) Quebec City, Quebec |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Occupation | Flight attendant |
| Known for | Long misdescribed as "patient zero" of the North American AIDS epidemic |
Gaëtan Dugas (French: [ɡaetɑ̃ dyɡa]; February 20, 1953 – March 30, 1984), a Canadian flight attendant, was a relatively early HIV patient who once was widely regarded as "patient zero" for AIDS in the United States; his case was later found to have been only one of many that began in the 1970s, according to a September 2016 study published in Nature.
In March 1984, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study tracked the sexual liaisons and practices of gay and bisexual men, especially in California and New York. Dugas was code-named as "patient O" (pronounced "oh", and standing for "Out-of-California"); misconstruing of the letter "O" as 0 (zero) led to the origin of the term "patient zero" as a synonym for "index patient".
Dugas worked as a flight attendant for Air Canada and died in Quebec City in March, 1984 as a result of kidney failure caused by AIDS-related infections.
A study published in The American Journal of Medicine in 1984 traced many early HIV infections to an unnamed infected gay male flight attendant. Initially, however, the CDC researcher, who was studying cases in Los Angeles, California, referred to Dugas not as "patient zero", but as "patient O", the letter "O" standing for "outside California".
Dugas is featured prominently in Randy Shilts's book And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (1987), which documents the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic in the United States. Shilts portrays Dugas as having almost sociopathic behavior by allegedly intentionally infecting, or at least recklessly endangering, others with the virus. Dugas is described as being a charming, handsome, sexual athlete who, according to his own estimation, averaged hundreds of sex partners per year. He claimed to have had over 2,500 sexual partners across North America since becoming sexually active in 1972. In David France's 2016 book How to Survive a Plague, Shilts's editor expressed his regret for having "made a conscious decision to vilify Dugas in the book and publicity campaign in order to spur sales."
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