Killing Patient Zero

In the aftermath of Stonewall and the rise of the gay liberation movement, gay men celebrated a newfound sexual freedom – but, in 1981, the dawning awareness of AIDS changed everything. Right-wing bigots exploited AIDS to demonize gay men, and no one was more villainized than Gaétan Dugas, the Canadian flight attendant dubbed “Patient Zero.” Seeking the origins of the mysterious epidemic, the Centers for Disease Control interviewed men with the disease, finding patterns that suggested sexual transmission. In this groundbreaking documentary, director Laurie Lynd explodes the myth of “The Monster Who Brought AIDS to North America” using beautifully framed interviews with Dugas’s friends along with the scientists unlocking the earliest AIDS cases. The Gaétan we meet here is a playful, complicated soul who wore eyeshadow to work, cruised in short-shorts, and went out of his way to help CDC researchers crack the mystery of “gay cancer.” Lynd also looks at San Francisco journalist Randy Shilts, who doggedly kept the politics of AIDS in the headlines. Shilts’ landmark book, And the Band Played On, perpetuated the Patient Zero myth—a complicated reality that Lynd takes great care to unpack. Killing Patient Zero is an important work of queer archaeology that shines an empathetic light on a generation traumatized not just by a virus but by society’s blame and vitriol.