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This article was published 10 years ago on The New York Times. A Canadian was ''Patient Zero,'' not a Haitian:

Canadian Said to Have Had Key Role in Spread of AIDS

AP

Published : October 7, 1987

LEAD: A forthcoming book identifies an airline steward from Montreal as playing a key role in the early spread of AIDS in North America.

A forthcoming book identifies an airline steward from Montreal as playing a key role in the early spread of AIDS in North America.

Randy Shilts, the author, says he uncovered the identity of the man, Gaetan Dugas, who died in 1984, from reading medical journals and interviewing health experts for his book, ''And the Band Played On: People, Politics and the AIDS Epidemic,'' to be published later this month by St. Martin's Press.

The book provides new details of the early spread of acquired immune deficiency syndrome in the late 1970's and early 1980's, and of what Mr. Shilts, who reports on AIDS for The San Francisco Chronicle, describes as the initial failure of society to comprehend and curb the deadly disease.

A slow Government response, lack of attention from the press and the initial failure of the gay community to accept changes in life style allowed AIDS to rage out of control in the early years of the disease, the book asserts.

Although charges of foot-dragging by scientists and Government health officials are not new, Mr. Shilts provides new details of these allegations in the 630-page book.

He writes that by the time America ''paid attention to the disease, it was too late to do anything about it.'' The epidemic ''was allowed to happen by an array of institutions, all of which failed to perform their appropriate tasks to safeguard the public health.''

He argues that if the news media had given more prominent coverage to the epidemic in its early stages, more Government funds and attention would have been directed against it.

Mr. Shilts, a homosexual, accuses many gay community advocates of treating AIDS originally as a ''public relations problem.'' Contracted in Europe

In retracing the early spread of AIDS among gay men, the book says scientists suspect Mr. Dugas brought the AIDS virus to this country after having contracted it in Europe through sexual contacts with Africans. While there is no way to determine whether he was the first person to bring the virus to North America, studies by Federal medical sleuths, previously reported without disclosing the man's name, have implicated him as a key actor in the initial spread of the virus among homosexual men in the late 1970's, before AIDS was identified.

Calling Mr. Dugas ''Patient Zero,'' researchers for the Federal Centers for Disease Control retraced his sexual activity as he traveled throughout North America, going from Canada to New York to Toronto to San Francisco on flight benefits, the book says.

Of the first 19 cases of AIDS reported in Los Angeles, four had sexual relations with Mr. Dugas and four others had sexual relations with one of his sexual partners. New York's first two known cases, in 1979, were his sexual partners.

At least 40 of the first 248 AIDS cases reported in the United States by April 1982 either had sexual relations with Mr. Dugas or one of his sex partners, says Mr. Shilts.

The book describes how the 28-year-old Mr. Dugas used his good looks and French-Canadian accent to lure handsome American men, even after he was diagnosed with AIDS in 1980.

In July 1981, Mr. Dugas told doctors trying to track down the origins of the disease that he had averaged 250 sexual liaisons every year for the last decade.

He refused to believe that his ''gay cancer,'' as he called it, could be spread sexually, telling a doctor, ''It's my right to do what I want with my body,'' according to the book.

Mr. Dugas died in March 1984, having survived four bouts of the form of pneumonia that often kills AIDS patients.

''At one time, Gaeten had been what every man wanted from gay life,'' Mr. Shilts writes. ''By the time he died, he had become what every gay man feared.''

Source: The New York Times

Canadian Said to Have Had Key Role in Spread of AIDS - New York Times=