Patient Zero and the Making of the Aids Epidemic

As the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) epidemic ravaged gay America in the early to mid-1980s, health professionals, the public, and the gay community searched for the cause of the scourge. The 1987 publication of And the Band Played On, written by the gay journalist Randy Shilts, seemed to end that discussion by placing the blame squarely on Gaétan Dugas, a French Canadian airline steward, known as Patient Zero. Richard A. McKay maintains that the book “continues to shape historical interpretations of the first five years of the epidemic” (p. 18). In this important corrective to Shilts's prevailing narrative, McKay places AIDS in historical perspective, persuasively undercuts the Shilts account, and, most importantly, writes a compelling story of Dugas as a real person, rather than as the caricature of Patient Zero. McKay ties the search for a cause of the AIDS epidemic to “the long history underpinning the impulses to trace contagion ... and lay blame in times of epidemic” (p. 45). He views Dugas as the latest in a long line of scapegoated individuals blamed for everything from the medieval plague to syphilis to typhoid. Dugas's open homosexuality and foreign birth made him the perfect candidate as the origin of the disease in the United States. Even the label of Patient Zero reflected the concerns surrounding Dugas's culpability in spreading AIDS throughout the United States. Originally designated as “Patient O” (for outside the United States) in a 1982 Centers for Disease Control study, the moniker soon became transmogrified to Patient 0, which Shilts turned into Patient Zero. That label has become synonymous with Dugas ever since

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• Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences 2019

  Francesco Luzzini•Isis•2019

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