Talk:Gaëtan Dugas/Archive 1

Archive 1

The theory claimimg Dugas as Patient Zero discarded ?

The HIV would have entered the USA through Haiti and not Dugas, according to the research of Dr Worobey

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-10/uoa-hpo102507.php

Sseb22 10:23, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Clarification

The page is pretty hostile to the Patient Zero hypothesis, and perhaps with good reason. But I feel it should point out that few people refute how prolifically Dugas did spread the virus, and when it was at extremely low levels in the population, even if he wasn't the first person to spread it in NA. He was probably one of the first people to spread so much of the disease. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.9.231.33 (talk) 14:12, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually Patient Zero is well refuted. Those that do not refute "Patient Zero" and the victimization and exploitation of Gaetan Dugas also fear sailing vessels due to their firmly held conviction that the world is flat. The clarification above is by no means a clarification. The original CDC researchers that published their findings about Patient Zero later refuted the study as being bias and empirically flawed. Gaetan Dugas was simply a product of his times. A man that was exploited by the CDC to play into the mass homophobic hysteria concerning AIDS at the time. A man exploited by Ralph Shilts to garner a New York Times review of And The Band Played On at the time of its publication. As if something as complex as HIV and AIDS could have possibly had such a simple etiology. Why must people cling to such simplistic explanations for something so complex as the origins and etiology of HIV? How incredible naive the 1980s populous now appears. The 1980s have now passed. Scapegoating AIDS as a gay only virus is now passe. Notice the discontinuance of such terminology as Gay Cancer and GRIDS. All misnomers of their time. Such is the true for the tragic life of Gaetan Dugas. Vilifying him for all posterity only allows the AIDS hysteria and homophobia of the 1980s to live on.

References: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-10/uoa-hpo102507.php

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/4227 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Validinformation (talk • contribs) 15:45, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I would remove the quote

from Randy Shilts' book. Though it's a good quote from the book, it is at most a semi-ficticous event and only possibly representative of an event that Dugas participated in. It belongs, if anywhere, in the And The Band Played On article, but not in Dugas' article.

Any thoughts?

207.237.228.71 (talk) 07:32, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I am removing the quote for the reasons stated above. 207.237.228.71 (talk) 06:32, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Statement about Patient Zero Theory

I can read in the text: "Genetic analysis of HIV provides some support for the Patient Zero theory." Unless I am wrong, it seems to be the opposite: Genetic analysis shows that there were many kinds of HIV in the early 80's, which invalidates the Patient Zero theory. One would need some references to maintain this statement. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.221.215.37 (talk) 13:01, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Contradictions with other articles

This article is inconclusive as to whether the "patient zero" theory is correct, as does the patient zero article. On the other hand, AIDS origin definitively says that the theory is false. 128.103.197.56 (talk) 02:02, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Canadian Spree Killer?

Is this link warranted? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.239.12.86 (talk) 03:19, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

210.239.12.254 (talk) 03:19, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

You're right, the category doesn't apply. C1k3 (talk) 01:00, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Beyond that, it seems like the anon who made the change knows enough about how Wikipedia works to leave "typo" in the edit summary so it would be less likely that the editors who patrol this page would notice. SMSpivey (talk) 01:24, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Origins of HIV

The article mentions a claim by the National Academy of Sciences to the effect that HIV was brought from Africa to the US through Haiti. Such speculation should not be included, or it should clearly be stated that it is unsubstantiated. Often whenever the world encounters a strange and deadly malaise, some "experts" will first of all attempt to trace its origins to Africa or a poor country even without any credible evidence. So it has been with the HIV virus. If Robert R. was the first acknowledged North American patient, and he had never left the United States, then how can it be proven that he somehow contacted the deadly virus (directly or indirectly) from someone who had been in Africa? Why not somewhere else? Let's not forget that this virus was first of all widely diagnosed among the Western gay community, before it became worldwide. This is not homophobia, it is a fact.

It is common knowledge that HIV did not become an epidemic in Africa until late 1990s. If somehow HIV originated in Africa, given the generally poor state of healthcare in that continent, then logically it should have been an epidemic over there as early as the late 1960s, before it was officially identified in the West. But that is not the case. I was resident in West Africa as a professional throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. Within the medical profession, HIV (and AIDS) was in the news as a disease of the West, and it was not until early to mid 1990s that the first HIV cases began to be recorded in West Africa. A lack of public awareness combined with poor healthcare enabled those early cases to multiply exponentially, resulting in an African epidemic in the late 1990s.

Africa often takes a bad rap due to its inability to aggressively promote its self-interests around the world. This is a function of its predominantly bad leadership; however, it is disingenuous for some Western intellectuals to exploit that situation. Merlin1935 (talk) 00:06, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

The evidence tracing HIV back to Equatorial Africa is more than just conjecture. This wiki page may be a good starting point for you. The early case of Robert R is likely an example of an initial infection cluster that didn't take hold, and possibly died out because there were insufficient conditions for its further spread beyond that particular group of people. 121.73.7.84 (talk) 01:34, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Patient 0 for Out of California seems wrong

I'm removing the sentance "As Dugas was found to be the link between a number of cases, he was dubbed "patient O" for "Out of California". It was mistakenly then interpreted as Patient Zero.". I have the scanned reference here, and

• There's no clear statement that "Patient 0" is supposed to mean "Out of California" (altough it is noted that he doesn't come from California and this fact is considered usefel).
• The character after "patient" is obviously a zero and not an O. There's a lot of uppercase Os and zeroes and they aren't the same character. Tehboii (talk) 13:10, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Acadian?

I noticed that her last name is Dugas (a common Acadian last name), and that the article said she was french-Canadian. Is she an Acadian? 72.45.121.108 (talk) 03:40, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about Acadian, but Dugas was a man.

*Septegram*Talk*Contributions* 06:31, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes; the big bushy moustache is a bit of a giveaway. Nicander (talk) 21:11, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 16:14, 27 August 2007 (UTC) This article shows that even Wikipedia is influened by politics. Of course logic proves that there must be an orgin for the disease. The links to Dugas and his own admission to multiple sex partners, the fact that the disease is contagious. The fact that even now MRSA another infectious disease is being directly linked to the gay community, that homosexual males are spreading MRSA into new directions possibly mutating it and all proved again by the CDC. The CDC is a government agency and a branch of the Public Health service and One should trust their opinions over some highly "biased" gay activists that grasp at straws to create illusions on their character is a shame. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.88.117.246 (talk) 00:19, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Gay culture was illegal, underground, and clandestine

From the introduction: At the time, gay culture was largely illegal, underground, and clandestine.

That is far from true. Even if there's some truth to it in some parts of the US and Canada, the "largely" is definitely not accurate.

What does it even mean for "gay culture" to be illegal?? Gay sex was not illegal in all or most of the US and Canada at the time. As to underground and clandestine, this was 15 years after Stonewall. There were plenty of cities and areas where "gay culture" had mainstream visibility, and gay events were out in the open and celebratory. Gay pride marches and rallies and parades were held throughout the US and Canada. Gay choruses performed in major venues (Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York City, etc.).

I'd vote to remove this sentence completely. If someone wants to propose a revision which is closer to the reality, then we could consider it. But why have a statement like that at all? What's the purpose of such a statement in this context? Omc (talk) 18:32, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

My guess is that the original editor was probably trying to convey the notion that homosexuality, and much related to it, faced more stigma and oppression then is seen currently. Equating that to 'gay culture' generally is probably a poorly worded assumption (and as we can see, an uncited one), but I personally think that retaining some of this context has merit. Clearly, gay culture itself wasn't and isn't illegal, but as featured in our article regarding sodomy laws in the United States, it wasn't until 2003 that the Supreme Court struck down all sodomy laws, and at that time 4 states still had sodomy laws on the books. So, even if they weren't enforced and might have been practically unenforceable, technically, consensual sodomy was illegal in a number of US states at that time. My vote would be to revise this sentence. Perhaps it could reflect more of the negative social stigma surrounding the sub-culture and make it sound like less of a persecuted cloak-and-dagger game? Buddy23Lee (talk) 23:35, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Oct. 2016 New York Times article

McNEIL Jr., DONALD G (26 October 2016). "H.I.V. Arrived in the U.S. Long Before 'Patient Zero'". New York Times. Retrieved 26 October 2016.

' . . . The strain of H.I.V. responsible for almost all AIDS cases in the United States, which was carried from Zaire to Haiti around 1967, spread from there to New York City around 1971, researchers concluded in the journal Nature. From New York, it spread to San Francisco around 1976. . . '

' . . . The new analysis shows that Mr. Dugas’s blood, sampled in 1983, contained a viral strain already infecting men in New York before he began visiting gay bars in the city after being hired by Air Canada in 1974. . . '

' . . . Also, Mr. Dugas may have become the cluster’s focal point partly because he kept a diary. Men in the study reported an average of 227 partners a year, often quick, anonymous encounters in bars and bathhouses. But Mr. Dugas gave investigators 72 names. . . '

' . . . “No one wants to be the Patient Zero of their village,” he [Dr. Robert M. Grant] said. “But this may be helpful because it says, ‘Just because you are the first to be diagnosed doesn’t mean you started the epidemic.’” . . . '

outside possibility either New York Times or BBC might have done poor job summarizing Nature article, but unlikely both did! We can go with this. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 17:10, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Oct. 2016 BBC article

HIV Patient Zero cleared by science, BBC, James Gallagher, Health and science reporter, Oct. 26, 2016.

"One of the most demonised patients in history - Gaetan Dugas - has been convincingly cleared of claims he spread HIV to the US, say scientists. . . "

" . . . a study, in the journal Nature, showed he was just one of thousands of infected people in the 1970s. . . . . by analysing stored blood samples, some of them containing HIV, from hepatitis trials in the 1970s. . . . . And after screening 2,000 samples from New York and San Francisco, the researchers were able to get eight complete HIV genetic codes. That gave scientists the information they needed to build HIV's family tree . . . "

" . . . Dr Michael Worobey, one of the researchers, said: 'The samples contain so much genetic diversity that they could not have originated in the late 1970s. We can place the most precise dates on the origins of the US epidemic at about 1970 or 1971.' . . . "

" . . . Like a failed paternity test, the results showed that the virus in his blood was not the 'father' of the US epidemic. . . "

" . . . The Air Canada employee was labelled Patient O (the letter, not the number) by the US Centres for Disease Control because he was a case "Out-of-California". . . "

BBC is a good source. Shouldn't be our only source, but generally let's go with it. I think I have more confidence in them summarizing the study from Nature than I'd have in myself! And we should make both available for our readers. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 16:38, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

I added that ref to the article a few days ago. Yintan  17:08, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you.  :-) You're quicker than I am. I hope you like my changes to the first paragraph. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 17:32, 28 October 2016 (UTC)