![]() ![]() On a sunny but bitterly cold winter’s day in late January 1982, Gaétan Dugas left his apartment in downtown Montreal to post a letter to Ray Redford, a former lover in Vancouver with whom he remained friends. ![]() The article also traces how Shilts’s highly selective-and highly readable-characterization of Dugas rapidly became embedded in discussions about the need to criminalize the reckless transmission of HIV. Instead I argue that scientific ideas in 19 about AIDS and the transmissibility of a causative agent were later portrayed to be more self-evident than they were at the time. I oppose the assertion that Dugas, the so-called Patient Zero, ignored incontrovertible information about the condition and was intent on spreading his infection. The article presents a more balanced consideration-a “patient’s view”-of Gaétan Dugas’s experience of the early years of AIDS. Published over twenty-five years ago, the book and its most notorious character, “Patient Zero,” are in particular need of a critical historical treatment. ![]() This article contextualizes the production and reception of And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts’s popular history of the initial recognition of the American AIDS epidemic. ![]()
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