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Wednesday, 8 April 2020
Medical racism in Babylon USA : HIV was not brought to USA by a white French Canadian: It was brought by a Black Haiti who got it from an African Monkey in the Zaire-DRCongo
CHRISTIANS IN
AFRICA: AWAKE!
America and the
American Church
Are Not Your Friends
Gaétan Dugas was a handsome Air Canada flight attendant who passed
away at the age of 31 of complications from AIDS on March 30, 1984
Say no to Medical Racism: Why African Americans are
dying at higher rates from COVID-19 in USA? Because they are being used as
guinea pigs in America’s COVID-19 Bio-weapon experiment: Remember the
HIV-bio-weapon was first discovered among gay blacks in USA
In the tortuous mythology of the AIDS
epidemic, one legend never seems to die: Patient Zero, a.k.a. Gaétan
Dugas, a globe-trotting, sexually insatiable French Canadian flight
attendant who supposedly picked up H.I.V. in Haiti or Africa and spread it to dozens, even hundreds, of men before his death in 1984.
Mr.
Dugas was once blamed for setting off the entire American AIDS
epidemic, which traumatized the nation in the 1980s and has since killed
more than 500,000 Americans. The New York Post even described him with
the headline “The Man Who Gave Us AIDS.”
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.
The researchers
also reported that originally, Mr. Dugas was not even called Patient
Zero — in an early epidemiological study of cases, he was designated
Patient O, for “outside Southern California,” where the study began. The
ambiguous circular symbol on a chart was later read as a zero, stoking
the notion that blame for the epidemic could be placed on one man.
Myths
like that of Patient Zero echo in prevention efforts even today,
experts said. Many vulnerable groups, including young gay men and
African women, fail to use protective drugs or avoid testing because
they fear being stigmatized or accused of being carriers.
Reflecting
on the epidemic’s early days, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, then a doctor
treating AIDS patients and now the director of the National Institute of
Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he remembered it seeming
plausible at the time that one person was responsible.
In hindsight, he added, the idea now
seems absurd. “We were unaware of how widespread it was in Africa,” Dr.
Fauci said. “Also, we thought, based on very little data, that it was
only about two years from infection to death.”
The new data is consistent with the scenario described in 2011 in “The Origins of AIDS,” by Dr. Jacques Pépin, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec.
Relying on previous genetic research
and African colonial records, Dr. Pépin showed that H.I.V. was carried
from Kinshasa to Haiti in the 1960s — most likely by one of the
thousands of Haitian civil servants recruited by the United Nations to
work in the former Belgian Congo after colonial rule collapsed.
Gaétan Dugas, the flight attendant once described as Patient Zero in the American AIDS epidemic.
In Haiti, he theorized, a few cases were multiplied by unsterile conditions at a private blood-collecting company,
Hemo-Caribbean, that opened in 1971 and exported 1,600 gallons of
plasma to the United States monthly. Plasma clotting factors were used
by American hemophiliacs, many of whom died of AIDS.
Haiti was also a sex-tourism destination for gay men, another route the virus could have taken to New York.
The
blood samples analyzed in the new study were collected in 1978 and 1979
in New York City and San Francisco as part of an effort to make a
hepatitis B vaccine. Researchers stored almost 16,000 blood samples;
nearly 7 percent of those from New York and 4 percent of those from
California later turned out to be infected with H.I.V.
Killing Patient Zero profiles Quebec man unfairly targeted in AIDS epidemic
Gaetan Dugas became demonized because of his promiscuity — and a typographical error
The Canadian Press ·
Gaetan Dugas, who was a Quebec flight attendant, was falsely blamed for the spread of AIDS in North America. (Hot Docs)In the late 1970s, Quebecois flight attendant Gaetan Dugas was
openly and proudly gay, described by friends as flamboyant, sexual and
generous, with a supportive family and penchant for makeup.
Unashamed
of his lifestyle despite lingering societal stigmas, he co-operated
with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the early
1980s after he contracted what was initially called "gay cancer" in the
media, providing blood samples and the names of 72 of his former sex
partners.
Dugas played a key role in contributing to a study that helped prove HIV/AIDS was sexually transmitted.
But
as the new documentary "Killing Patient Zero" notes, he became
demonized because of his promiscuity — and a typographical error.
In
the CDC study, Dugas was labelled "patient O," as in the letter "O,"
representing "Out-of-California Case," a state where researchers began
to look for links.
However, some misinterpreted the "O" as the number "0," as
in "patient zero," leading to the long-standing and
incorrect implication that Dugas brought AIDS to North America.
"This
is a man whose name needs to be rehabilitated ... Dugas really should
be proclaimed a hero of the fight against AIDS," Laurie Lynd, the doc's
Toronto-based director, told The Current's guest host David Common.
"For him to have been vilified, it's like the classic 'No good deed goes unpunished,'" he told The Canadian Press.
Making its world premiere Friday at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, Killing Patient Zero details Dugas's
life as well as the homophobia and prejudice surrounding the AIDS
epidemic. American author Fran Lebowitz is among the 40 interviewees in
the film, which is based on Richard McKay's book Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic.
Dugas, who grew up in Quebec City, was one of the first 57
AIDS cases reported to CDC and was part of its cluster study in Atlanta.
He
died on March 30, 1984 but became an international name in '87, when
American journalist Randy Shilts published his book on the AIDS
epidemic, And The Band Played On.
In the book and a feature in the New York Post titled The Man Who Gave Us AIDS, Shilts identified Dugas as "patient zero" and accused him of being the source of the U.S. outbreak.
Shilts, who died in 1994, maintained Dugas wasn't singled out and noted many others were also named in the book.
The
60-year-old Lynd, who is openly gay, said he read Shilts's story about
Dugas in 1990 and thought it was correct until he saw the 1993 John
Greyson film Zero Patience, which debunks the myth.
"It
was a real gift to be able to revisit this story, just personally, to
look at those years again and to be able to rehabilitate Gaetan's name,"
said Lynd.
"I think he's a gay everyman. I think what he did was heroic with the CDC."
Laurie Lynd is the Toronto-based director of the documentary Killing Patient Zero. (Hot Docs)
Still,
Shilts's book also drew attention to the epidemic at a time when many
politicians weren't talking about it, added Lynd, noting it woke him up
politically and prompted him to make his short film RSVP, about a man who loses his partner to AIDS.
"It's
hard for us to realize how little traction it had gained in public
attention. Randy's book was a kind of wakeup call," Lynd said.
"In a way, Randy did the wrong thing for the right reasons."
Lynd
said he worried his film would open old wounds for Dugas's family, but
they've seen the trailer and will get a link to the doc through McKay,
who is in touch with them.
"I also hope they will feel it's ...
worth it," said Lynd, "because it so thoroughly, I hope, and finally
rehabilitates Gaetan's name."
Lynd also hopes the film will be
"healing" for gay men and women and serve as a reminder that the fight
against HIV/AIDS isn't over — and that homophobia is still around.
"You
need look no further than the gay serial killer in Toronto, where it
seems fairly clear that had those victims been straight white men, it
would have been handled very differently, and how so many of that
killer's victims clearly had to live on the down-low because of the
homophobia in their communities," Lynd said.
"And we need look
no further than our neighbours to the south. I feel homophobia is on the
rise again in some ways in this populous climate." Killing Patient Zero premiers at the Hot Docs film festival in Toronto on April 26.
