Killing Patient Zero

Year: 2019

Actors: Doris Day, Rock Hudson, Ronald Reagan

Duration: 100 min

The issue of the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s is presented in relation to Gaëtan Dugas, who was ultimately coined Patient Zero in the media. It talks of the gay liberation that took place in the 1970s and the sexual freedom that accompanied it which fostered the culture of having multiple sex partners within the gay community. Dugas, a Montréal-based Air Canada flight attendant, was openly part of that culture in he admitting his love of such sex, which he did in his travels around the continent in his work. How he received the label of Patient Zero is discussed, it which implies that he was the person who was the "start" of the spread of AIDS specifically within North America. The label actually originated as an incorrect transposition of how he was originally labeled by researchers which had nothing to do with start of the spread, in combination with his openness with researchers and scientists about his sexual activity - which most others did not do - leading to the incorrect assumption of he truly being a patient zero in the technical sense. And while it was only a small portion of the book itself, the media picked up on the most sensational aspect of Dugas in Randy Shilts' bestselling book "The Boys in Band" where he did perpetuate the use of Patient Zero in connection to Dugas. The good and bad of that Patient Zero misnomer to Dugas is also discussed, it which may have caused him grief personally, his surviving family who has refused to talk publicly about him in relation, but which did ultimately lead to advancement of the discussion of AIDS and thus advancement of its treatment despite zero recognition of AIDS especially by the US government of the day.—Huggo

Genre: Action   Documentary   History