The most influential Canadian of all-time...

[CallMeIshmael]

Half inspired by my last post and half inspired by the "Benal vs The USA" debacle in the RIAA post, I will share this tidbit with you.



In 1999, A&E's biography team got together to come up with what they called a "Biography of the Millenium." In which they saught to determine the 100 most influential people of the time period 1000-1999.

The list was compiled by a group of journalists, scientists, theologians, historians, and scholars.

Absent from the list at first glace were Candadians.

That is, until, you looked a little deeper.


At number 94, you see the term "Patient Zero." Who is this mysterious person you ask? Is he the Candadian deep throat?

Well... sort...

From Wilipedia:

In general, the term Patient Zero refers to the central or initial patient in the population sample of an epidemiological investigation.

In particular, it refers to Gaëtan Dugas (February 1953 – March 30, 1984), a Canadian airline steward who was Patient Zero for an early epidemiological study on HIV by the Centers for Disease Control. His sexual partners were surveyed for the disease in order to demonstrate that it was sexually transmitted. Several of them were among the first few hundred to be diagnosed with AIDS. Dugas eventually died not of AIDS or complications related to AIDS, but of renal failure.

Dugas was not the first AIDS case in North America, but he was the first case to start an epidemic



And people say Canadians dont do anything important [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]


(fwiw, top 5 were: 5. Shakespeare. 4. Darwin. 3. Luther. 2. Newton. 1. Guttenberg.)

(Also, the patient zero theory has been debunked)