Killing Patient Zero

[CellarDweller]

Spanning the 1970s until today, the story of Gaétan Dugas - aka 'Patient Zero' - serves as the perfect microcosm of the evolution of AIDS in America and the country's response to it. 

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. 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.

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. 

Exploring timely themes about fear, the demonising of the unknown and the danger of false narratives, this documentary weaves social history and scientific investigation into a poignant story of an individual who became intrinsically and tragically linked with AIDS.

[Karl Rand]

Luckily I escaped the big A as an ex lover working in the US laboratory that first isolated the virus ( No, the French didn’t beat them they just published earlier) warned me the virus was sexually transmitted advising me to use condoms. I did so much to the horror of my partners. But hey, I’m still here to tell the story. 


I remember very clearly the media beat up about Gaetab Dugas.  We finally learnt AIDS was transmitted to our species by an unknown human having sex with a monkey. In the early days of the epidemic the western media fed the delusion this was a ‘gay disease’  when they knew over 60% of cases in Africa were acquired through heterosexual contacts.

[CellarDweller]

I was fortunate that I was in the closet and in denial at that time. Granted, that's not something one would expect to hear from an gay man, but it kept me safe.

I have a friend on another forum who is about 10 years older than me and he told me he's lost count of the number of friends he lost to HIV/AIDS.