Gaetan Dugas, a Quebec flight attendant, was openly gay and wore makeup. After contracting "gay cancer" in the early 1980s, he provided blood samples and names of 72 former sex partners. Despite being demonized for his promiscuity and being openly gay, his assistance in a medical study helped prove HIV/AIDS was sexually transmitted.
Killing Patient Zero
The 1993 film "And the Band Played On" tells the story of Gaetan Dugas, a gay man who contracted an unidentified illness in the early 1980s that would later be recognized as AIDS.
