Killing Patient Zero

Gaetan Dugas, who grew up in Quebec City, was a Quebec flight attendant, who was openly and proudly gay, and he liked to wear makeup. In the early 1980s after he contracted what was initially called “gay cancer” in the media, he provided his blood samples and the names of seventy two (72) of his former sex partners. Gaetan Dugas was initially demonized because of his promiscuity, being openly gay, and he was wrongfully identified as patient zero, therefore being wrongfully identified for quite some time as the initial person responsible for introducing the AIDS virus into North America. Dugas’s assistance with a subsequent medical study and his providing his sexual history played a key role in contributing to a study that helped prove HIV/AIDS was sexually transmitted.