Wikipedia talk:WikiProject AIDS

Living With AIDS film

Hello, I recently created a draft for the 1987 film Living With AIDS. It is an early film documenting the life and death of a young AIDS patient. Any help with the article would be appreciated. Thank you, Thriley (talk) 15:16, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

"Bugchasing" article

The bugchasing article was largely written before the advent, and since late 2020, wide availability, of PrEP and effective HAART HIV meds which reduce viral load to undetectable levels, which more or less completely eliminate the risk of transmitting HIV. (see and here for some cites regarding this)

Given this risk reduction, is "bugchasing" still actually a thing? If not, I suspect this article's content is now largely of historical interest, and most of the content should be moved to the past tense.-- The Anome (talk) 15:52, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

28: Stories of AIDS in Africa

I just completely re did the article on this book, in case anyone wants to take a look, I'm sure it's due for a reassessment now. CT55555 (talk) 01:39, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Charles Ortleb

I just came across a draft for Charles Ortleb. Ortleb was an important figure in promoting early AIDS misinformation. He continues to promote bizarre theories to this day. The draft is currently a mess, but would be a good long term project. Thriley (talk) 04:10, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Name change and closing an article

I hope this finds you well! I am posting to ask about possibly closing the article "Female Prostitution During the HIV/AIDS Crisis in the United States" and moving it to a subsection of "Women and HIV/AIDS". I would also like to suggest a name change of both, "Female Prostitution During the HIV/AIDS Crisis in the United States" becoming "Women in the Sex-trade during the HIV/AIDS Crisis in the United States". The usage of the word female here is incorrect and exclusionary, the term prostitution is being used in a way that is outdated. I am also hoping to continue working to update the content in my sandbox. The article "Women and HIV/AIDS" is only writing about women in the United States so naming it "Women and HIV/AIDS in the United States" would be more accurate.

Thank you so much for your help and please take care,

FTEFC Forcedtoeditforclass (talk) 23:01, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Help needed editing Canadian AIDS org articles

I'm currently working on Canadian AIDS organizations, and I'm wondering if anyone could help edit and/or peer review some of the articles?

The first one is the Canadian AIDS Society, which needs editing and/or copywriting. I've completed about 90% of it and provided excellent citations. It has been flagged for style and tone, so I went through it a few times to see what I did wrong. In my opinion, it's factual, informative, clear, and organized, covering various aspects such as its history, structure, funding, notable programs, and campaigns. The language used is neutral and objective.

Can someone please help? I'm about to give up.

@OwenBlacker @Bluerasberry Accuracy-searcher (talk) 19:05, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

I wrote you offering to meet by video chat. If that works then let's schedule it; if you prefer I can continue with comments on the talk page. Thanks. Bluerasberry (talk) 19:22, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

@OwenBlacker I've never done a video chat before. If you could walk me through it, we can proceed with that option. Otherwise, we could continue communicating through comments. Accuracy-searcher (talk) 19:29, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry, My apologies for the confusion. I mistakenly responded to Owen instead of you. I've accepted your invitation. Looking forward to our discussion. Accuracy-searcher (talk) 21:17, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry, Is there anything specific I should prepare before our video chat? Accuracy-searcher (talk) 21:23, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

@Accuracy-searcher: No, just the video chat itself! We can look at and talk through the feedback you got to your revisions. Sometimes it is easier and quicker to have a voice chat that to type out explanations. Also I just wanted to say hello from meta:Wikimedia LGBT+, where Owen and I are both coordinators. Bluerasberry (talk) 21:31, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry: Got it, looking forward to our video chat! Thanks for the clarification. Great to connect with you both. Accuracy-searcher (talk) 21:51, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Barnstar?

Contributing to AIDS related articles seems like it would be met with a lot of discouraging vandalism and flaming since it's such a controversial topic. I think it might be a nice way to encourage people who are helping with such articles by having a barnstar to award to them. I'm not really good at that sort of thing though. Maybe someone else would care to make a WikiProject AIDS Barnstar? I would really appreciate it.SigurdsSister (talk) 00:44, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

visual aids

Is the request for Visual AIDS still pending? Saturniapavonia (talk) 06:59, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Julio and Marisol PR

Julio and Marisol has been rated High-importance to this project, so noting here that I've listed it at peer review. Your comments would be appreciated. RoySmith (talk) 13:07, 3 August 2025 (UTC)

Blackliners article

Hi, I co-ran a World AIDS day event recently where one of the attendees really didn't want to actually edit Wiki but has since sent me a Google doc they've worked. It's a stub / beginnings of an article on a past London based HIV charity called Blackliners who focused on the needs of the Black Caribbean, African and Asian communities in the UK. (It also has a red link on the Elizabeth Galgobin article). I don't have another event for a couple of months and I'm not going to have time to work on it as a volunteer for a while so sharing their work here (they know I'm sharing it!) just in case it's useful to help anyone who might be interested in creating an article on that charity. Gemma Coleman (WMUK) (talk) 10:18, 23 December 2025 (UTC)

"Patient 0" vs. "Patient O" - suggested change to svg

I don't have experience editting .svg files or uploading files to wikimedia commons, so I'm reaching out to Wikiproject LGBTQ+ and Wikiproject AIDs because I think this is an important change to get made.

We currently have a file on wikimedia commons which represents the contract tracing done in 1984 by Darrow et al.

This svg lists Dugas as "0" not "O"

It's used on a number of pages on both the English wikipedia and also foreign language wikipedias and wiktionaries. It shows Dugas as "0", but the 1984 study never listed him as such, he was "Patient O", as in "Out of California". The misinterpretation of him as "Patient 0", or "Patient Zero", was in 1987 by different publications reporting on this study who had misread "0" as "O".

Some of the pages this image is used on do talk about this misunderstanding, such as the page on Gaëtan Dugas and the english language Index Case, but some other pages across the various wikipedias don't catch this part of the story, either because it isn't the focus of their articles or they have just missed this element, or were unaware of this part of the story.

And that's not to even begin to comment on the potential for the image to be used off wikipedia as well.

And ultimately, the image is wrong. It's own description on wikimedia commons says "A graph of the early onset of AIDS from the alleged index case of Gaëtan Dugas aka "Patient Zero". Based on information originally published in the American Journal of Medicine, March 1984." and references Darrow, but that is false.

Dugas is dead, so the caution around BLP implications isn't relevant although spreading misinformation about a deceased person still isn't great, but more importantly the whole story behind this is tied strongly to harmful stereotypes about queer people and foreigners, Dugas was a foreigner who had multiple sexual partners and was an easy scapegoat. We are helping to perpetuate that myth by retaining this error in this image.

I am going to post this same request to Wikiproject AIDs in case it gets missed here, I sincerely hope someone picks it up. ~2026-35981-44 (talk) 14:12, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

I looked at the image.

The image is derived from that 1984 paper. Check it -

• https://doi.org/10.1016/0002-9343(84)90668-5
• Cluster of cases of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Patients linked by sexual contact (Q28270797)

This paper uses the terms "0" and "patient 0" for the index case. It does not identify Dugas, but this paper is the origin of the term "patient 0".

You raise multiple points, but to address one of them, I have edited the Wikimedia Commons metadata to avoid mentioning Dugas. This image is derived from that paper, and the paper does not mention Dugas, so this image should not mention him.

What more do you propose, or what else do you think about any of this? Bluerasberry (talk) 15:00, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the work here. I've had to work around what sources I can access as that doi link is behind a paywall, and multiple sources quote Darrow as stating he identified Dugas as "Patient O" (my understanding was that was subsequently misread from the paper as "0" and then republished as such from '87 onwards), but if upon rereading it that it clearly is a "0" to you, then it seems like the O -> 0 change happened earlier then? ~2026-41111-87 (talk) 15:04, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Hi, if you register a Wikipedia account, then we have ways of helping you access resources, such as through Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange.

I could be mistaken on details. I am seeing 0, not O, in that paper. My understanding - and again I could be mistaken, is that this 1984 Darrow paper is the origin of the term "patient 0". It references earlier, unpublished notes, which other sources have also referenced, which use the notation "O" to mean "out of California" which made sense in the context of many other tracked patients being in California. I do not think there is anything on all of this published before 1984, and even if there were, then this Darrow 1984 paper is the one that was the center of scientific discussion, and the one that jumped into popular awareness in And the Band Played On.

I am a bit lost on the injustice aspect, although I see it raised in the 2016 Worobey paper here. The Worobey paper clarifies that there was neither" biological nor historical evidence that [the individual known as ‘Patient 0’] was the primary case in the US or for subtype B as a whole. The popular culture scrutiny on Degas is unfortunate, but from a research perspective, there can be multiple index cases for a pandemic. Like for example, each city, or subpopulation, or outbreak of a larger contagion can have an index case. The 1984 study attempted to do contact tracing on "patient 0", and I cannot quickly untangle or understand all this, but the 2016 Worobey paper also says that patient 0 was also numbered as patient 57 (being the 57th identified) in another chain of contact tracing.

It is extremely uncommon for scientific papers to come to public attention, and probably most people who read this paper were nonscientists looking at a scholarly publication for the first time in their lives.

To answer your questions

• If Darrow identified Dugas as patient 0, then that was not in this paper. There is a prohibition on medical researchers sharing patient private info.
• Yes, in 1987, I see Dugus identified on the first page of And the Band Played on, which is how everyone heard this story - https://archive.org/details/andbandplayedon0000unse/page/10/mode/2up
• No, I do not think there is an earlier published paper which mentions patient "O", but I think that 1984 Darrow and 2016 Worobey got some access to these private confidential medical records. I think the records had numbers counting degrees of contact tracing, where in a given group, everyone with a lower number got the infection before anyone with a higher number. The illustration here on wiki only has numbers, but in the original paper, there are both letters and numbers. The "0" is the same both in the original and on-wiki, but for example, the 3 and 9 on wiki are "NY 3" and "LA 9" in the original source, standing for New York City and Los Angeles. Darrow 1984 definitely was numbering people and I do not think I am mistaken in confusing the typography of 0 versus O here, although Darrow is also assigning both letters and numbers to everyone except for the patient 0/O at the center.

Keep talking things through. There could be something here to fix or improve. I do not immediately recognize what options for change could be useful. Bluerasberry (talk) 19:12, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

I fully appreciate your response, sorry it's taken me a couple of days to get back to you- I honestly just forgot to check back.

With setting up an account, I've traditionally not done that in the past in a protest in support of IP editors as a whole, after having some initial bad treatment as an IP editor, though with the whole temporary accounts system that's now slightly more of a moot point, so maybe one day I will set up an account, we'll see! Useful to know that there's some tools for editors to access closed source sources though.

--

Doing some further reading and re-reading I think I've found the answer to both our "patient 57" and "patient 0" mystery, at least as far as I can today: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/research-reveals-accidental-making-of-patient-zero-myth-during-1980s-aids-crisis

Dugas was the 57th patient, "Case 057", however the CDC developed a coding system to help with with analysing the clusters, that system considered of the city name (ie LA, NY, etc.), then a number identifying when in that sequence of cases for the city their symptoms appeared.

Within this coding system, (my inference here:) presumably either because Dugas wasn't from an American city but was Canadian and/or because he was frequently travelling as a flight attendant to multiple cities, he was referred to as "Out(side)-of-California", shortened into "Patient O" within the CDC. At some point through CDC investigators discussing that, the "O" morphed into "zero" or "0". The zero did not really mean anything, it was a misinterpretation, but one that happened within the CDC while they were piecing this together, before the study was published.

He also by an unfortunate coincidence of having a memorable name, remembering the names of many of his partners, and being cooperative, ended up naturally sitting in the middle of the chart.

It looks like you're right that Darrow didn't identify Dugas as the "Patient 0", likely for the reasons you mention, and it sounds like it was Shilts' research who identified Dugas a couple of years later, and then published that identification in his book.

--

The Worobey paper is this one - https://www.nature.com/articles/nature19827 - which was concerned with tracing the spread of the disease over time through the genetic variation in it's samples, it pointed towards the epidemic already being established in the US about a decade earlier (we also know through other samples that it came via the Caribbean, and ultimately appears to have emerged by the 1920s in the Congo - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-29442642)

Possibly a further source to pursue, Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic, R. A. McKay (ISBN 978-0226063959) & (https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhz398)? ~2026-41111-87 (talk) 21:21, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

Where do we go from here? Your original request was about fair representation. Is there an identified easy fix to better surface or represent the sources? I can see development options in lots of directions, but nothing quick and obvious. Timeline of early HIV/AIDS cases is a relatively high traffic article that needs work, for example, and the image in discussion File:AIDS_index_case_graph.svg is used in lots of articles in lots of languages, but I am not seeing a move to make that makes the complex story easier to understand. Bluerasberry (talk) 22:59, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

I'm not 100% sure where we go from here with "patient zero". We could potentially make a second SVG that uses an "O", and for some of the articles where it's history is elaborated we could present both as a visual demonstration of how the confusion happened?

As for Timeline of early HIV/AIDS cases, two suggestions:

• What about moving the cut-off date for that page to be 1982 (inclusive). That lines up with the change of the name from "GRID" to "AIDS"? Plus then we can reduce the "History of Spread" section on History of HIV/AIDS to cover the more broad patterns, leaving the closer details to the early cases page.
• I think a large problem at the moment is the page just breaks it up into a few time blocks, whereas subheadings covering it's approximate migration from one region to another would likely be useful. May even be more useful to have the time-division being 1900-1950, and 1950-1982.

Did you have any ideas? ~2026-41111-87 (talk) 00:50, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

Just chiming in, as I've been following this discussion, which I've appreciated. The image File:AIDS index case graph.svg seems to be an accurate representation of the original paper, which did use a zero even if its original and intended meaning was not what it became in the popular imagination. The image is used and discussed on en-wiki most prominently at Gaëtan Dugas and Index case, where both articles address the inaccuracies and injustice surrounding "patient zero", and set the record straight. These articles do differ in some details, which is perhaps not ideal, but they both make most important clarifications. I don't think duplicating the image with aan 'O' would provide any additional clarity, and it would seem to not accurately represent the original publication. Do you see opportunities to improve either of these articles? The image is also used at Contact tracing. I think it's used less effectively there, in an article that already has a lot of images, but it does not draw any undue attention to Dugas. I think it could be removed from Contact tracing although I don't find its inclusion there inappropriate. Of course, the image is used on many other language wikis. It's good that the reference to Dugas has been removed from the Commons description, it certainly did not need to be there. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 02:04, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

That's pretty fair, just an idea that had popped into my head but I think you're right.

I've removed the image from Contact tracing, and moved the backward/forward contact tracing diagram to it's place (makes sense to put the other diagram in the section referring to what it shows).

I'm gonna sit on the Gaëtan Dugas and Index case articles for a little while and think about possible changes. There's definitely improvements that can be made to those two, I just don't know what they are yet. ~2026-41111-87 (talk) 23:25, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

See also

https://doi.org/10.1038/NATURE19827

1970s and ‘Patient 0’ HIV-1 genomes illuminate early HIV/AIDS history in North America (Q27574619)

Bluerasberry (talk) 15:04, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for your thorough response to the TA's inquiry, and for making the changes you did. —Myceteae‍🍄‍🟫 (talk) 21:13, 21 July 2026 (UTC)