Gaëtan Dugas

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Dugas' ("O") sexual contact in a network of early cases of AIDS-defining diseases

Gaëtan Dugas (born February 20, 1953 , † March 30, 1984 in Ville de Québec , Québec ) was a French-Canadian steward at Air Canada who played a key role as an early HIV- infected person in the early stages of the spread of HIV in North America .

Dugas was an important figure in the early years of AIDS research: one study found that many early HIV infections in New York City and southern California were traced to Dugas. He became the (first) " patient zero " after epidemiologists from the US CDC discovered that many of Dugas' sexual partners had been infected with HIV or had AIDS. Dugas had sexual contact with at least four of the first 19 known AIDS patients in Southern California and another four patients in New York. A total of at least 40 of the first 248 AIDS patients in the United States were connected to Dugas, nine from Los Angeles , 22 from New York and nine from eight other cities.

The case was picked up in the 1987 book And the band played on by Randy Shilts . AIDS researcher Andrew R. Moss wrote in a letter to the editor in 1988 to The New York Review of Books (NYREV) that there was very little evidence that Dugas was actually patient zero . However, this changed little in terms of media reception, not least in relation to the role of homosexuals. Only recently has it been clearly shown that Dugas could not have been Patient Zero . In fact, he was listed by the authorities as Patient O (Outsider), which in an inattentiveness became Patient 0.

When HIV actually first appeared in the USA has long been the subject of research, with varying results. The first known patient with AIDS-like symptoms in North America was Robert Rayford , who died in 1969 and in whom the HI virus was detected in frozen tissue samples in 1987 . While a paper from 2007 identifies the year 1966 as the time of the first infection, a paper from 2016 again assumes that HIV, which is widespread today, first reached the USA around 1971.

literature

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b David M. Auerbach et al .: Cluster of cases of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome. In: The American Journal of Medicine . Vol. 76 (1984), No. 3, pp. 487-492, ISSN  0002-9343 , PMID 6608269 .
  2. ^ William A. Henry: The Appalling Saga of Patient Zero. In: TIME . June 24, 2001
  3. ↑ AIDS without end. December 8, 1988
  4. ↑ Jon Cohen: 'Patient Zero' no more . In: Science . tape 351 , no. 6277 , March 4, 2016, p. 1013-1013 , doi : 10.1126 / science.351.6277.1013 .
  5. ↑ Michael Worobey, Thomas D. Watts, Richard A. McKay, Marc A. Suchard, Timothy Granade, Dirk E. Teuwen, Beryl A. Koblin, Walid Heneine, Philippe Lemey, Harold W. Jaffe: 1970s and 'Patient 0' HIV -1 genomes illuminate early HIV / AIDS history in North America . In: Nature . doi : 10.1038 / nature19827 .
  6. ↑ The big misunderstanding about “patient zero”. In: WORLD. Axel Springer SE, October 27, 2016, accessed on February 1, 2020 .
  7. ↑ M. Elvin-Lewis, M. Witte, C. Witte, W. Cole, J. Davis: Systemic Chlamydial infection associated with generalized lymphedema and lymphangiosarcoma. In: Lymphology . Vol. 6, No. 3, Sep. 1973, pp. 113-121, ISSN  0024-7766 , PMID 4766275 .
  8. ^ RF Garry, MH Witte, AA Gottlieb, M. Elvin-Lewis, MS Gottlieb, CL Witte, SS Alexander, WR Cole, WL Drake: Documentation of an AIDS virus infection in the United States in 1968. In: JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association . Vol. 260, No. Oct. 14, 1988, pp. 2.085-2.087, PMID 3418874 .
  9. ↑ MT Gilbert, A. Rambaut, G. Wlasiuk, TJ Spira, AE Pitchenik, M. Worobey: The emergence of HIV / AIDS in the Americas and beyond. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . Vol. 104, no. 47, Nov. 2007, pp. 18.566-18.570, doi : 10.1073 / pnas.0705329104 , PMID 17978186 . PMC 2141817 (free full text).
  10. ↑ Michael Worobey, Thomas D. Watts, Richard A. McKay, Marc A. Suchard, Timothy Granade, Dirk E. Teuwen, Beryl A. Koblin, Walid Heneine, Philippe Lemey, Harold W. Jaffe: 1970s and 'Patient 0' HIV -1 genomes illuminate early HIV / AIDS history in North America . In: Nature . doi : 10.1038 / nature19827 .
personal data
SURNAME Dugas, Gaëtan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French Canadian steward for Air Canada, former AIDS patient
DATE OF BIRTH February 20, 1953
DATE OF DEATH March 30, 1984
Place of death Quebec City