Killing Patient Zero — A Movie Review
I admit that walking into the documentary, Killing Patient Zero, I was relatively unaware of the story of “Patient Zero” and the role he had inadvertently played in the AIDS epidemic. I knew from the movie’s description that he was a flight attendant who had been incorrectly blamed for bringing the disease to the U.S. I didn’t know that what I would watch was the unspooling of a series of scientific misunderstandings and blatant PR maneuvers that made one man a scapegoat, and in turn may have helped force the hand of those tasked with stopping this epidemic.
Walking out of the theatre, it was hard not to think deeply about all that this movie brings to the forefront. As someone who communicates science, I was dismayed and saddened by how an epidemiologist’s cluster map had been misinterpreted to give the impression that this one man, an Air Canada pilot from Quebec, was at the epicentre of the AIDS crisis in America. That he was not in fact, “Patient Zero”, but Patient 54 — or Patient O (for Out of Country) and likely one of many men at the centre of similar clusters across the U.S., was shocking.
But as a communications and marketing person, I was equally disturbed when I learned that it was a PR person who suggested taking the “Patient Zero” story as it was told in And the Band Played On, journalist Randy Shilts’ seminal book about the AIDS crisis, and publicizing it in the conservative media. On the one hand, this bit of PR slight-of-hand helped sell thousands more copies of the book — a book that was critical in getting out the story of the AIDS epidemic and in forcing those in power to take swift action, and one that would otherwise have likely quietly disappeared after being read primarily by those already aware of the crisis.
That Gaëtan Dugas, a flight attendant from Quebec, was the person identified and publicly named as “Patient Zero” seemed an afterthought. The epidemiologists from the Centre for Disease Control say they strongly urged Shilts not to use his name, knowing that their cluster maps did not reflect this man bringing the disease to the U.S. — but they were unable to stop it. And the fact that Dugas had willingly worked with the CDC, providing information about his sexual partners, samples of his blood, and ongoing information made this even more galling.
Killing Patient Zero brings Dugas to life through interviews with his friends (his family have long refused to speak to the media) and they tell the story of a gregarious, brash and unabashedly out man in a time when such openness would have been incredibly challenging. The movie goes through the sexual awakening that gay men in the 70s and 80s were experiencing and how this new “gay cancer” seemed a slap in the face after so many years of oppression.
The director also brings to light how conflicted Dugas was about giving up his freewheeling lifestyle when there was still no concrete evidence of how the disease was spreading. He was imperfect, as all of us are, but he was also a real, flesh and blood person, who in the one documented video of him speaking at a meeting about the AIDS epidemic in Vancouver, seems completely upended by having been labeled as a pariah by this emerging condition.
The modern day scientists who test the blood samples Dugas gave to the CDC have done much to “clear” him, though the epidemiologists at the heart of the story say he never should have been blamed in the first place. The disease itself was already spreading far and wide long before Dugas was infected.
That his story, and his inadvertent vilification may have helped move the needle forward by forcing government to make the changes needed to increase education and treatment, and to help reduce the spread of this disease is tough to justify. But it’s also hard not to understand, on some level, the desire to tell the story as far and wide as possible — especially since many involved did not truly understand that they were spreading information that was, in fact, incorrect. And, given that Dugas had passed away before any of this happened, does that make it more or less awful? As with Henrietta Lacks’ cells, there are so very many shades of grey.
I like to think that, if told I would become a posthumous pariah, vilified for something in no way my fault, but that this characterization would push forward a movement that saved potentially millions of lives, I would accept this with grace. But I’m not sure I’m that fully formed a human. I’m not sure anyone is.
In the end, all I can do is encourage everyone to take the time to watch this documentary and to see how science, culture, epidemiology, fear and the human condition can collide with one person suffering extreme collateral damage. If nothing else, it will make you aware of one man whose story is worth knowing.
Learn more about Killing Patient Zero on their website.
