transmitted. Dugas is warned by Dr. Conant that his condition is likely caused by a sexually
transmitted virus and that he should consider sexual abstinence, a proposal Dugas promptly
shoots down stating ‘Of course, I’m going to have sex… Nobody’s proven to me that you can
spread cancer…Somebody gave this thing to me…’. 6 The chapter closes on a scene of an AIDs
victim’s ashes being depo sited into the sea by his partner, with the implication that Dugas is
in part to blame for this death. 7
After a brief reminder that Dugas is a ‘patient zero’ who had sexual contact with
several of the first ‘GRID’ victims he then reappears in the narrativ e. 8 In a scene that
resembles something out of a horror story, Dugas is said to engage in casual sex in the
bathhouses of Castro Street, only to then reveal his lesions and say ‘I’ve got gay cancer… I’m
going to die and so are you’. 9 The penultimate mention of Dugas is within a scene where he
is confronted by Dr. Dritz, who warns him he must stop frequenting the bathhouses to which
Dugas responds with ‘I’ve got it…They can get it too’. 10
The role of Dugas in Shilts’ telling of the AIDS epidemic is one of a villain. Throughout
the book, aside from being described as handsome, Dugas is given almost exclusively
negative character traits. He is portrayed as a wilful progenitor and spreader of a deadly
disease, having sex with unsuspecting men only to villainously reveal his disease when the
lights come on. This depiction of Dugas as ‘Patient Zero’ would become an important part of
the public memory and discourse around the AIDs epidemic. 11 Shilts’ work quickly made
both him and Dugas famous, with media primarily f ocusing on the narrative of a ‘patient
6 Shilts, pp. 262-277 7 Shilts, pp. 281-282 8 Shilts, p. 295. 9 Shilts, p. 329. 10 Shilts, p. 395-96 11 Wald, p. 215
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