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Gaëtan Dugas (; February 20, 1953 – March 30, 1984) was a Canadian and early AIDS patient who worked for Air Canada as a flight attendant.〔 ("La découverte de la maladie — Sida, les premières années" ) (Discovering the illness — AIDS, the first years), ''Radio-Canada'', 17 January 1992.〕 In March 1984, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study tracking the sexual liaisons and practices of gay and bisexual men in California, New York, and some other states found Dugas to be the center of a network of sexual partners, which led to him being dubbed "patient zero",〔 although suspicions that he initially brought HIV to North America were disproven. He is used as an example in epidemiology of an index case. Dugas traveled the world and had many sexual liaisons with men.〔〔(Gaétan Dugas and the 'AIDS Mary' myth )"Gaétan Dugas, the gorgeous French-Canadian flight attendant who hopped cities as easily as he hopped beds."〕 At the time, gay culture was largely illegal, underground, and clandestine. Gay bars and gay bath houses were social settings for gay and closeted men to meet. The extent to which HIV/AIDS was known about in the early 1980s, how it was spread, or when Dugas was diagnosed are disputed.〔(“Patient Zero”: The Absence of a Patient’s View of the Early North American AIDS Epidemic )〕 Dugas died in Quebec City on March 30, 1984, as a result of kidney failure caused by AIDS-related infections. =="Patient Zero" hypothesis== A study published in the ''American Journal of Medicine'' in 1984 traced many of New York City's early HIV infections to an unnamed infected gay male flight attendant. Epidemiologists hypothesized that Dugas had carried the virus out of Africa and introduced it into the Western gay community. Dugas is featured prominently in Randy Shilts's book ''And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic'' (1987), which documents the outbreak of the AIDS pandemic in the United States, and was portrayed by Jeffrey Nordling in the 1993 HBO film adaptation. Shilts portrays Dugas as having almost sociopathic behavior by allegedly intentionally infecting, or at least recklessly endangering, others with the virus. Dugas is described as being a charming, handsome sexual athlete who, according to his own estimation, averaged hundreds of sex partners a year. He claimed to have had over 2,500 sexual partners across North America since becoming sexually active in 1972. Genetic analysis of HIV provides some support for the Patient Zero theory. Dugas is now believed to be part of a cluster of homosexual men who traveled frequently, were extremely sexually active, and died of AIDS at a very early stage in the epidemic. However, a number of authorities have since voiced reservations about the implications of the CDC's Patient Zero study and characterizations of Dugas as being responsible for bringing HIV to cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco. In the Patient Zero study, the average length of time between sexual contact and the onset of symptoms was 10.5 months.〔 While Shilts's book does not make such an allegation, the rumor that Dugas was the principal disseminator of the virus became widespread. In 1988, Andrew R. Moss published an opposing view in the ''New York Review of Books''. A November 2007 article in the ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'' dismisses the Patient Zero hypothesis, and instead claims that HIV was transmitted from Africa to Haiti in 1966, and from Haiti to the United States in 1969. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Gaëtan Dugas」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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