The Tainted Name of Gaëtan Dugas: The Patient “O” Not Zero

In line with the World AIDS Day celebration, here is a story about an adulterated name by the mass media decades ago. You may have already heard that Gaëtan Dugas was once named as the first man to have acquired and spread HIV in the United States. But NO! People were wrong and science has proven that Dugas’ name should have been immaculate from and detached from an urban legend that claimed this victim as the first man to have spread HIV in the United States.

Gaëtan Dugas was a flight attendant and a Canadian native. No one knew that his name would be infamously attributed to the feared HIV pandemonium back in the 80s. It was like the first ever “fake news” on HIV was made entirely to be connected to his name. That was how vilified Dugas’ name was.

Rand Gaynor, Dugas’ friend once said in an interview that Gaetan was “very sexual, he was always cruising“. It’s a lifestyle Dugas cannot be blamed for by that time when the research was not that extensive for a disease that has not even known to reach the Americas. Until a research that leading to this fallen victim’s name as one of the hundreds of people who may have acquired the disease and caused its spreading over the country. Sad thing was Dugas being singled out.

WHAT WENT WRONG

A young scientist named William Darrow thought in 1981 that this then-unknown disease might be something that can be transmitted sexually since most infected people were couples and sexual partners. He came to study an odd sickness that killed gay men in Los Angeles, CA. He had spoken with 3 men, who do not know each other, about their sexual lifestyle and they all named the same person as their lover. A very “handsome flight attendant from Air Canada” as for how Dugas was loosely described by these men. All these findings were published in a study by The American Journal of Medicine tracing the disease back to Dugas. The flight attendant from Canada. Since he was OUTSIDE California (as the focal place of the study), the then-unnamed Dugas was labeled as “Patient O“. O stands for ‘Outside California’ since Darrow named people he interviewed based on where they lived. That same month when the study was published, Dugas died of kidney failure due to AIDS-related complications.

He died but his name was resurrected after a few years. Dugas’ best friend Rand received a call expressing interests on his photographs of his late best friend. He was appalled when he found out that tabloids were already running “racy headlines and trashy stories” about Dugas.

Randy Shilts, the journalist in this subject, penned a scholarly book “And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic” which was published in 1987. The book mainly focuses on the discovery and tackles the lack of attention from the government when it comes to studies about the epidemic. But this was just one of the many subjects the people have taken notice of.

Shilts also identified Dugas as “Patient 0” (for some reason, “Patient O” which was how Dugas was labeled by the time the research was conducted, became “Patient 0” that gave Shilts an impression that he finally discovered the person who started it all). Shilt’s misrepresentation of Dugas as “Patient 0” has led the mainstream media to mistakenly pick up a story as Dugas, who passed away because of AIDS, was the first one to acquire the HIV and spread it because of his promiscuity. This was when media were trying to buy Dugas’ photos from his best friend Rand. It’s a “fake news” that tainted a name and villainized a character that nobody really knew about until this mishap.

MYTH BUSTED

According to a study that was published in Nature at the latter part of 2016, it appears that Dugas was just one of the thousands of infected people by the time he was carrying the virus. And it also stated that New York was the hub where the virus situated. All these results were after screening several samples until they were able to obtain 8 complete HIV genetic codes. Along with this research, they were also able to examine the genetic code of HIV from Dugas’ blood and found out that it was not him who spread the epidemic.

It was at least a clearance that Dugas’ name deserved. After almost 30 years of misleading account about this inaccurately “demonized” deceased person, his name was repurified. He should be then remembered not as the “Father of AIDS” but just as one of the many people who suffered so bad from this epidemic when preventions were still not available and awareness about the disease was not advocated yet.