Talk:Gaëtan Dugas

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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)

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)