Patient zero and the making of the AIDS epidemic

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Last edited by MARC Bot
December 17, 2022 | History

Patient zero and the making of the AIDS epidemic

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The search for a “patient zero”—popularly understood to be the first person infected in an epidemic—has been key to media coverage of major infectious disease outbreaks for more than three decades. Yet the term itself did not exist before the emergence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. How did this idea so swiftly come to exert such a strong grip on the scientific, media, and popular consciousness? In Patient Zero, Richard A. McKay interprets a wealth of archival sources and interviews to demonstrate how this seemingly new concept drew upon centuries-old ideas—and fears—about contagion and social disorder.

McKay presents a carefully documented and sensitively written account of the life of Gaétan Dugas, a gay man whose skin cancer diagnosis in 1980 took on very different meanings as the HIV/AIDS epidemic developed—and who received widespread posthumous infamy when he was incorrectly identified as patient zero of the North American outbreak. McKay shows how investigators from the US Centers for Disease Control inadvertently created the term amid their early research into the emerging health crisis; how an ambitious journalist dramatically amplified the idea in his determination to reframe national debates about AIDS; and how many individuals grappled with the notion of patient zero—adopting, challenging and redirecting its powerful meanings—as they tried to make sense of and respond to the first fifteen years of an unfolding epidemic.

With important insights for our interconnected age, Patient Zero untangles the complex process by which individuals and groups create meaning and allocate blame when faced with new disease threats. What McKay gives us here is myth-smashing revisionist history at its best.

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
432

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Edition Availability
Cover of: Patient zero and the making of the AIDS epidemic
Patient zero and the making of the AIDS epidemic
2017, The University of Chicago Press
in English

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Book Details


Table of Contents

Introduction: "he is still out there"
What came before zero?
The cluster study
"Humanizing this disease"
Giving a face to the epidemic
Ghosts and blood
Locating Gaétan Dugas's views
Epilogue: zero hour-making histories of the North American AIDS epidemic.

Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Copyright Date
2017

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
362.19697/920097
Library of Congress
RA643.86.N7 M46 2017, RA643.86.N7M46 2017

The Physical Object

Pagination
xiv, 432 pages
Number of pages
432

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL26947092M
Internet Archive
patientzeromakin0000mcka_i4b0
ISBN 10
022606381X, 022606395X
ISBN 13
9780226063812, 9780226063959, 9780226064000
LCCN
2017018054
OCLC/WorldCat
975912366

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History

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December 17, 2022 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
November 8, 2021 Edited by Jenner Edited without comment.
November 8, 2021 Edited by Jenner Edited without comment.
August 5, 2020 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
May 24, 2019 Created by MARC Bot import new book