A Dive Into Darkness - The Story Behind The Story

Paul Franks
  • 0.0 (0)
  • BOOKS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY
A Dive Into Darkness - The Story Behind The Story

Hello, I’m Paul Franks, a Leeds-based, retired History teacher, and I’ve written a conspiracy-thriller called ‘A Dive Into Darkness’. I’ll tell you everything you need to know about the story behind the story, the four-year research and writing process, from inspiration to publication, and all points in between. cascades.substack.com

  1. 31/12/2024

    A Dive Into Darkness

    Hello, I’m Paul Franks and I’ve written a conspiracy-thriller called ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, based upon my four years researching HIV/AIDS. In this original podcast series, I’ll tell you everything you need to know about the story behind the story, the four-year research and writing process from inspiration to publication, and all points in between. In Episode Thirty-Three of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, I will tell you about how I was influenced by the American writer, Dan Harmon. By October 2022, I had re-plotted ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ into what I felt was a compact, 5 day, ‘all-thriller, no filler’, novel. I had watched dozens of Reedsy advice videos and many other novel-writing videos as well. Still, I wasn’t happy. There are many different forms of novel structure, some of them such as the ‘3-Act Structure’ being incredibly simplistic. The three-act structure is a model used in narrative fiction that divides a story into three parts (or acts), often called the Setup, the Confrontation, and the Resolution. Basically, a beginning, middle and end – that to me wasn’t going to help me write a densely plotted thriller. It was then I discovered Dan Harmon and his ‘Story Circle.’ Harmon’s ‘Story Circle’ has 8 elements: 1) A character is in a zone of comfort, 2) But they want something. 3) They enter an unfamiliar situation, 4) Adapt to it, 5) Get what they wanted, 6) Pay a heavy price for it, 7) Then return to their familiar situation, 8) Having changed I found when I applied these elements to Anne-Sophie in ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ it worked beautifully. So, from Dan Harmon, I got the knowledge of how to plan a more detailed plot and also to produce a ‘character arc’. The protagonist had to be a different person by the end of the novel. Anne-Sophie is certainly that! In addition, Dan Harmon gave me the title ‘A Dive Into Darkness.’ In his fantastic ‘Story Structure 102: Pure, Boring Theory’, he says: ‘Whereas the health of an individual depends on the ego's regular descent and return to and from the unconscious, a society's longevity depends on actual people journeying into the unknown and returning with ideas. In their most dramatic, revolutionary form, these people are called heroes, but every day, society is replenished by millions of people diving into darkness and emerging with something new (or forgotten): scientists, painters, teachers, dancers, actors, priests, athletes, architects and most importantly, me, Dan Harmon.’ I’d been unhappy with ‘The Red Book’ as a title for a while. I wanted something that captured the book’s genre and theme: ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ was perfect as Anne-Sophie finds herself presented with a live or die, sink or swim, scenario. If you’re interested in how to write a story, or just want to read some very funny articles, please read the Dan Harmon links I’ve included below. Thank you, Dan. And, thank you for listening to Episode Thirty-Three of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please tell your friends about it. In Episode Thirty-Four of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, ‘John Truby’, I will tell you about another writing guru’s influence on ‘A Dive Into Darkness.’ Till the next time, goodbye and happy reading. A reminder that ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ is available both as an ebook and paperback, with Barnes & Noble and Amazon and all the references/links connected with this podcast can be found at my ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ Substack page. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-dive-into-darkness-paul-franks/1145527746?ean=9781917129855 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dive-Into-Darkness-Paul-Franks-ebook/dp/B0D32DP97S https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_104:_The_Juicy_Details Dan Harmon’s Story Circle https://channel101.fandom.com/wiki/Story_Structure_102:_Pure,_Boring_Theory Dan Harmon Story Circle: 8 Proven Steps to Better Stories This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cascades.substack.com

    4 min

  2. 29/12/2024

    A Dive Into Darkness

    Hello, I’m Paul Franks and I’ve written a conspiracy-thriller called ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, based upon my four years researching HIV/AIDS. In this original podcast series, I’ll tell you everything you need to know about the story behind the story, the four-year research and writing process from inspiration to publication, and all points in between. In Episode Thirty-Two of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, ‘Carlos Alcaraz and The Lightbulb Moment’, I will tell you how I began turning ‘The Red Book’ into ‘A Dive Into Darkness’. I can tell you precisely when ‘The Red Book’ began to morph into ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ – the evening of September 11th, 2022. I was in Alderney, in bed, nursing a very sore torn calf muscle and listening to the Men’s US Open tennis final, hoping the ‘future of tennis’, Alcaraz, would win his first Grand Slam title. I was pondering ‘The Red Book.’ It had many flaws, the main ones being too much medical-science and a meandering, weeks long, plot. As I was lying in bed trying to get to sleep, I remembered what Dan Brown had said about the ticking clock. I decided there and then to compress the novel’s action to seven days. The next day I would compress it even further, to five. I had reached this stage of writing novels without actually doing much research into the writing process. Way back in June 2020, when I was planning out ‘Race’, I knew I wanted chapters to be short as I wanted to write a book with chapters that people could read on short Tube journeys, or on the toilet! In September 2022, I knew short, sharp chapters were perfect for a ‘page-turning’, hard-to-stop reading, thriller and a ticking clock was another way of building tension and as ‘Reedsy’ put it, raising the stakes. Next day, 12th September (or, as I call it, Kevin Pietersen day), I found the Reedsy video, ‘8 Ways to Raise Your Story's Stakes’. These were: Create goals; Add a ticking clock; Raise the emotional stakes; Raise the external consequences; Create a sacrifice; Avoid plot armour; Create stakes in each scene; Create moral no-win situations. I looked at the plot for ‘The Red Book’ and realized I had most of those elements already. Shortening the action to five days meant that I could cram a gallon into a pint pot – the novel would definitely be ‘All thriller, no filler’! I was filled with excitement and on my way to devouring every Reedsy creative writing video on Youtube. By the time of the Queen’s funeral, a week later, I had re-plotted ‘The Red Book.’ It wasn’t the finished article, but it was already a hell of a lot better. Thank you for listening to Episode Thirty-Two of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please tell your friends about it. In Episode Thirty-Three of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, I will tell you about Dan Harmon and how he inspired the title, ‘A Dive Into Darkness.’ Till the next time, goodbye and happy reading. A reminder that ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ is available both as an ebook and paperback, with Barnes & Noble and Amazon and all the references/links connected with this podcast can be found at my ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ Substack page. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-dive-into-darkness-paul-franks/1145527746?ean=9781917129855 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dive-Into-Darkness-Paul-Franks-ebook/dp/B0D32DP97S Dan Brown - Masterclass live Reedsy, ‘8 Ways to Raise Your Story's Stakes’ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cascades.substack.com

    4 min

  3. 28/12/2024

    A Dive Into Darkness

    Hello, I’m Paul Franks and I’ve written a conspiracy-thriller called ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, based upon my four years researching HIV/AIDS. In this original podcast series, I’ll tell you everything you need to know about the story behind the story, the four-year research and writing process from inspiration to publication, and all points in between. In Episode Thirty-One of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, ‘The Road to A Dive Into Darkness’, I will tell you how I went from my first attempt at writing a novel, ‘Race’, in 2020, to my, at least, fourth attempt, ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, in November 2022. As I said previously, ‘Race’ was based upon my research into what I termed the rabbit-hole of Edward Hooper’s ‘AIDS caused by HIV caused by contaminated polio vaccines in the late 1950s’ hypothesis. By Easter 2021, my following of the evidence had led me to conclude that the American, UK and French medical-science establishment had become obsessed with an unicorn – that AIDS had been caused by a new retrovirus, and this had led to the ‘discovery’ in 1983 (Paris) and 1984 (Washington) of a ‘deadly’ pathogen, and the naming of that pathogen as HIV in 1986. My research had uncovered the simple, basic scientific reality, that the ‘deadly’ pathogen was a double-contaminant, found only in ‘HIV’ labs around the planet, nowhere in nature. I had established that the official ‘Cut hunter / soldier’ theory of the origins of HIV was another nonsense, but unfortunately another nonsense that was swallowed hook, line and sinker by a gullible public and a rapacious ‘Medical-Science-Big Pharma-Media’ complex, blinded by riches, rewards, research grants, fame and prizes. I had discovered a much simpler, less glamourous, or rewarding, truth, that ‘fast-lane’ bath-house-attending gay males, shooting-gallery frequenting IVDUs and Factor VIII ingesting hemophiliacs, had, as a result of too many infections entering their bodies on a too regular basis, simply burned out their immune systems, leaving them defenceless to ward off usually harmless ‘invaders’. No new pathogen required. By Easter 2021, my job was to transfer hundreds of hours of research into a readable book and my first attempt at doing this was ‘The Fast lane Experiment.’ Looking back at the ‘Chapter By Chapter’ plan, I can see that this was A) An ambitious work, starting with the Stonewall Riots of June 1969, and concluding round about 1992. B) Not much good! In the summer of 2021, I read Montagnier’s autobiography, ‘Virus’, which I read as almost a confessional. There are enough nuggets in there to take down the official ‘HIV causes AIDS’ narrative from the horse’s mouth. I also learned that he kept a record of his experiments in a red book, a piece of information which would very quickly come in very useful. By late October 2021, I was struggling to put down on paper my desire to write a commercial novel based upon my HIV/AIDS research. It was only then, the day before I went off to France for a week’s holiday, that I had an epiphany. I loved murder mysteries, thrillers, especially Dan Brown-esque conspiracy thrillers like ‘The Da Vinci Code’ – why not write a conspiracy thriller? I began to watch as many Dan Brown interviews as existed on Youtube, to listen to any conspiracy-related podcasts and to read conspiracy-novel guides. Dan Brown’s major legacies were thorough planning, chapter by chapter, time pressure (ticking clock), the inclusion of a crucible – the physical point of no return and, seemingly, no escape, and lastly the contract – by the end of the book there should be no loose ends or unanswered questions. By the time I stepped off the ferry in Dunkirk, I had planned out ‘The Red Book’- my third attempt at an HIV/AIDS novel. This was a hybrid of ‘The Fast-Lane Experiment’ and a couple of other ‘novels’ that never got beyond the title and planning stages. By the autumn of 2022, it had become a tale of two narratives. First, Jean-Marie Montreau’s adventures in America in 1976, where he learned of the incoming AIDS storm in New York and San Francisco, and helped deal with the Legionnaire’s outbreak in Philadelphia. Second, his Parisian daughter, Anne-Marie Montreau’s, discovery that what she had been told about his death was not the truth. The conspiracy element was the propagation and protection of the fake ‘HIV causes AIDS’ narrative, the truth of which is contained in the eponymous red book. So, ‘The Red Book’ was the forerunner to ‘A Dive Into Darkness.’ I spent a year planning and writing it, as well as carrying out plenty more research into AIDS – none of which swayed me from my conviction that there had been a 40-year global conspiracy and cover up. However, by September 2022, I was still unhappy about my work-in-progress novel. It most definitely wasn’t the next ‘Da Vinci Code.’ Tom Hanks had no need to hold his breath. Thank you for listening to Episode Thirty-One of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please tell your friends about it. In Episode Thirty-Two of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, I will tell you about my how The Red Book became ‘A Dive Into Darkness.’ Till the next time, goodbye and happy reading. A reminder that ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ is available both as an ebook and paperback, with Barnes & Noble and Amazon and all the references/links connected with this podcast can be found at my ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ Substack page. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-dive-into-darkness-paul-franks/1145527746?ean=9781917129855 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dive-Into-Darkness-Paul-Franks-ebook/dp/B0D32DP97S Dan Brown - Masterclass live This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cascades.substack.com

    6 min

  4. 18/12/2024

    A Dive Into Darkness - The Story Behind The Story

    Hello, I’m Paul Franks and I’ve written a conspiracy-thriller called ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, based upon my four years researching HIV/AIDS. In this original podcast series, I’ll tell you everything you need to know about the story behind the story, the four-year research and writing process from inspiration to publication, and all points in between. In Episode Thirty of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, ‘KS, Poppers and the Malpractice of Dr James Curran’, I will focus on the event which convinced me that the CDC’s James Curran was guilty of serious malpractice. On p133 of ‘And The Band Played On’, Shilts describes how IVDUs, although suffering from the same T4 cell deficiency as gay men, they suffered from PCP pneumonia but not Kaposi’s sarcoma, KS. ‘Only gay men seemed to be getting the skin cancer.’ The gay men were obviously doing something different to the IVDUs. Let Harry Haverkos take up the story: ‘I worked with Dennis Bregman and his co-worker Dr Paul Pinsky. Paul, I think, did a lot of the work, but anyway, they came out with a single variable that separated the gay men with Kaposi's from the gay men with pneumocystis. It was nitrite inhalants (poppers), which was a startling discovery, I thought, and it made a lot of sense to me. It [nitrite] causes blood vessels to dilate, and it [Kaposi's sarcoma] is a blood vessel tumor. Kaposi's is predominantly in gay men, and nitrites are used more by gay men than heterosexuals. It turns out if you reviewed the cancer studies, the research studies that had been done on poppers, it caused cancer in the Ames Test. This made just total sense to me. It was like a eureka moment. But the problem was-- I got these results, so we stopped in September-October of '82. We stopped enrollment, and we finally got the data analyzed. I came back from a meeting in Italy in June of '83, and Paul Pinsky told me what the answer was. Nitrite inhalants. This is now June, July of '83, and I am excited. This is like "hot stuff." Anyway, I presented to the Task Force, and the Task Force was --unimpressed. Jim Curran sent me back to re-analyze, break it out by groups, male interviewers, female interviewers, length of interview. Anyway, it turned out, in the secondary analysis, every analysis was higher [for] Kaposi's, whether you split it up by any of these groups. These results were incredibly robust. CDC was under the gun from PHS [Public Health Service] because we hadn't found the virus yet. When they put in their budget request--I think [Dr. Walter] Walt Dowdle told me this later, in August or September of '83--it turns out CDC listed their number one accomplishment in their fiscal year 1984 budget request, their major accomplishment was ruling out a role of nitrites as the cause of AIDS. So, I presented this to the Task Force. I couldn't present this. I had a big lecture in San Francisco at the end of August, and Curran made it perfectly clear if I said a word about this study, he'd can me. Emotions were high. There was a lot of tension going on.’ In a research paper Haverkos reported that ‘Multivariate analysis showed that the variable most strongly associated with Kaposi's sarcoma was the use of large quantities of nitrite inhalants.’ On 1 April 1983, a press release was issued by Joseph F. Miller, 'president of Great Lakes Products, Inc., the nation's largest manufacturer of nitrite-based odorants'. It was entitled, 'U.S. Government Studies Now Indicate that Nitrite-Odorants Not Related to AIDS!' According to Miller, 'the assistant director of the Center for Infectious Diseases (a part of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta), Dr. James Curran, invited him to Atlanta in late November of last year to discuss the work being done by CDC relative to its AIDS investigations'. (If true, this meeting would be a very serious indiscretion on Curran's part, raising the possibility of collusion between the poppers industry and CDC officials.) According to Miller's press release, the CDC assured him that 'no association exists between nitrite-based odorants and AIDS'. This for me is a shocking episode. Let me reiterate: James Curran, the Chair of the CDC’s KSOI Task Force, the man with overall responsibility for the collation and publication of the Case-Control Study, the most important research of early GRID/AIDS amongst gay men, effectively blocked the dissemination of one of the Case-Control Study’s most important findings, that poppers was key contributor to ‘gay cancer’. This is on top of the mysterious 20 month delay in the publication of the report itself which stated clearly that ‘The occurrence of these diseases (KS/PCP pneumonia/Opportunistic infections) was found to be associated with certain aspects of lifestyle, including a greater number of male sex partners per year, exposure to feces during sex, history of syphilis, non-B hepatitis, EBV and CMV, treatment for enteric parasites, use of various illicit substances.’ Just as occurred with 9/11 and the FBI and the CIA, this was clear evidence of conspiracy and malpractice by a US government organization, clear evidence of putting the preservation of an institution, before the preservation of human life. Thank you for listening to Episode Thirty of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please tell your friends about it. In Episode Thirty-One of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, I will tell you about my second attempt at a novel, The Fast Lane Experiment. Till the next time, goodbye and happy reading. A reminder that ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ is available both as an ebook and paperback, with Barnes & Noble and Amazon and all the references/links connected with this podcast can be found at my ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ Substack page. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-dive-into-darkness-paul-franks/1145527746?ean=9781917129855 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dive-Into-Darkness-Paul-Franks-ebook/dp/B0D32DP97S https://www.amazon.co.uk/Band-Played-Politics-People-Epidemic/dp/0285640194 ‘And The Band Played On’ Harry Haverkos interview https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3878602/ Disease manifestation among homosexual men with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome: a possible role of nitrites in Kaposi's sarcoma, Haverkos https://cascades.substack.com/publish/posts My Substack site, ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ Hank Wilson interview – Gay guys, poppers and KS. https://paganpressbooks.com/jpl/POPBOOK.PDF POPPERS & AIDS. Wilson and Lauritsen This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cascades.substack.com

    6 min

  5. 16/12/2024

    A Dive Into Darkness - The Story Behind The Story

    Hello, I’m Paul Franks and I’ve written a conspiracy-thriller called ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, based upon my four years researching HIV/AIDS. In this original podcast series, I’ll tell you everything you need to know about the story behind the story, the four-year research and writing process from inspiration to publication, and all points in between. In Episode Twenty-Nine of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, ‘The CDC’s Response To AIDS – Part Three, I will focus on the official explanations provided as to why publication of the most important report into GRID / AIDS thus far, the ‘KSOI Task Force’s Case-Control Study’, was delayed for twenty months, by which time it had become almost an irrelevance as the ‘retroviral cause of AIDS’ snowball got bigger and bigger, and the AIDS net had widened to include hemophiliacs, Haitians, heroin addicts, transfusion cases and victims in Europe and Africa. In ‘And The Band Played On’, Randy Shilts says that the raw data compiled between October and December 1981 had to be ‘neatly analyzed, with all the scientific ratios that the general public doesn’t understand,’ or else the ‘conclusions would never stand up in a court of science. To utter them publicly would threaten the CDC’s credibility.’ On p119, Shilts writes the ‘case-control study was hopelessly mired because they didn’t have the staff and money to tabulate the questionnaires.’ Harold Jaffe, the CDC’s lead on the report stated that ‘It took a long time to analyze the case control study, partly because we didn't have a full-time statistician working with us. We had to borrow one from the epidemiology program office, who is, I think, a very bright statistician, but a bit difficult to work with. So he basically said, Well, give us the data and I'll give you the answer, but leave me alone. So that was kind of the way it worked. He was doing what at the time were fairly sophisticated multivariable analyses.’ He also said ‘that really the differences between the cases and the controls involved lifestyle. The cases were much more sexually active, they were much more sort of out there, they were going to bathhouses all the time, they were using a lot more drugs. Men who were very sexually active were using a lot of drugs.’ Harry Haverkos had his say on the delay in 2016: ‘The problem was, yes, I was very interested in the analysis, and so were Harold and a guy named [Dr.] Keewhan Choi, the statistician who was assigned to work with us. I worked with them for several months, but they did not agree on so many things, and I just saw myself as getting in the way. Harold, I think, argued as a biologist. He was saying, all these variables are confounded with each other; numbers of partners, rates of STDs, drug use. We need to group these variables to lead us to an infectious agent. Is it a toxin? Keewhan Choi was kind of rigid--I see him as a statistician, and so I described them as two artists. Harold's an impressionist, and Keewhan Choi is a photographer. Choi basically was going to look at the data, and let the numbers speak. They couldn't agree, and so they grouped them different ways. The analysis took forever because they couldn't agree on how to do it. We didn't publish that work until October of '83 (actually August). We had preliminary data by December of '81. By December we had the first printouts, percentages that did this or that. But I don't think the results--I don't think we announced the results to the general public because Harold and Keewhan couldn't agree on the results. I don't know what happened.’ Despite being one of the most eagerly awaited reports in the CDC’s history, with 1,000s pf lives depending upon it, the KSOI task force’s case study report really died a death. Shilts doesn’t mention it much after the early part of 1982. This reflects the fact that ‘lifestyle as the cause’ was replaced by ‘virus as the cause’ from the middle of 1982 onwards. The kicking of the report into the long grass cost 1,000s of lives. If CMV infection had been given the prominence it deserved, hundreds of thousands of gay men would have been told that even kissing was a risk because one of the most effective means of CMV transmission is saliva exchange. Thank you for listening to Episode Twenty-Nine of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please tell your friends about it. In Episode Thirty of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, I will look at the event which convinced me that the CDC’s James Curran was guilty of serious malpractice. Till the next time, goodbye and happy reading. A reminder that ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ is available both as an ebook and paperback, with Barnes & Noble and Amazon and all the references/links connected with this podcast can be found at my ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ Substack page. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-dive-into-darkness-paul-franks/1145527746?ean=9781917129855 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dive-Into-Darkness-Paul-Franks-ebook/dp/B0D32DP97S https://www.amazon.co.uk/Band-Played-Politics-People-Epidemic/dp/0285640194 ‘And The Band Played On’ Harry Haverkos interview https://cascades.substack.com/publish/posts My Substack site, ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ https://globalhealthchronicles.org/items/show/5385 Harold Jaffe This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cascades.substack.com

    5 min

  6. 12/12/2024

    A Dive Into Darkness - The Story Behind The Story

    Hello, I’m Paul Franks and I’ve written a conspiracy-thriller called ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, based upon my four years researching HIV/AIDS. In this original podcast series, I’ll tell you everything you need to know about the story behind the story, the four-year research and writing process from inspiration to publication, and all points in between. In Episode Twenty-Eight of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, ‘The CDC’s Response To AIDS – Part Two’, I will continue examining one of the key areas of my HIV/AIDS research, the area which led me eventually to write the conspiracy-thriller ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, the CDC’s response to the new immunodeficiency epidemic, especially its ‘KSOI Task Force’s Case-Control Study’. Once Harry Haverkos established the first case definition in July 1981, over a year before KSOI / GRID became AIDS, according to Shilts in ‘And The Band Played On’ p81, the members of the Task Force agreed that what they needed was a Case-Control Study. They would match up the cases of KS and PCP pneumonia with controls who did not have the ‘disease’. ‘The differences between the cases and the controls would point the way toward what was causing the epidemic.’ What actually happened was that one of the main differences, that of the levels of CMV in cases and controls, was ignored. As the Case-Control study was going to take weeks to set up, the questionnaire totaled twenty-two pages and contained sixty-two questions, two investigators went out into the field. Their initial data was analyzed at the end of July by the only sociologist in the Task Force and expert in gay STIs Bill Darrow. He said that the ‘only thing that seemed to matter in these cases was the number of sexual partners.’ Some cases had 2,000 lifetime sexual partners. Michael Callen had had 3,000 sexual partners by the age of 26 in 1980, when he gave up sex because ‘every time he had sex he caught something’. As I said in previous episodes the best analogy to make is that of lung cancer and cigarette smoking. GRID was the product of a lifestyle. On p96, Shilts writes that by October 1981, ‘the only factors that seemed to distinguish cases from controls was the number of sexual partners, the incidence of venereal disease, and attendance at gay bath-houses.’ It took nearly two years from this date for the final report to come out, a report which confirmed these findings. What is astonishing is that Shilts states that ‘the evidence for a new and deadly (infectious) viral disease was becoming incontrovertible.’ Absolute codswallop! What was clear was that GRID patients suffered from KS but IVDU patients did not. I have discussed the reason for this before, fast-lane gays were addicted to poppers, IVDUs weren’t. The CDC’s conspiracy to cover up ‘poppers as a cause of KS’ will be explored in future episodes. By the beginning of December the data from the Case-Control study was in, but media interest, and therefore political interest, in GRID was negligible. James Curran, the head of the Task Force, was scrabbling around for funds and ever-fearful of the organization’s closure. Shilts writes that in December 1981 ‘thousands of lives depended’ upon the ‘newly completed’ Case-Control Study, those thousands would have to wait 20 months for the report to be published. However, ‘a preliminary review of the untabulated data showed one difference between the gay plague cases and the control cases - sexual activity. There was also a tendency amongst cases to use poppers and street-drugs.’ Shilts does not mention another clear difference - patients were also found to have significantly higher titers of antibody to cytomegalovirus and a higher frequency (3 times higher) of isolation of cytomegalovirus. Don’t forget I have already told you that by 1981 it was known that CMV was closely associated with PCP pneumonia, KS and toxoplasmosis, and was known to be a killer in an immunosuppressed demographic, renal transplant patients. The CDC knew all this by December 1981 but did not release the information fully to the public until August 1983. Thank you for listening to Episode Twenty-Eight of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please tell your friends about it. In Episode Twenty-Nine of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, I will look at the excuses given to explain the delay in the publication of the Case-Control study. Till the next time, goodbye and happy reading. A reminder that ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ is available both as an ebook and paperback, with Barnes & Noble and Amazon and all the references/links connected with this podcast can be found at my ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ Substack page. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-dive-into-darkness-paul-franks/1145527746?ean=9781917129855 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dive-Into-Darkness-Paul-Franks-ebook/dp/B0D32DP97S https://www.amazon.co.uk/Band-Played-Politics-People-Epidemic/dp/0285640194 ‘And The Band Played On’ Harry Haverkos interview https://cascades.substack.com/publish/posts My Substack site, ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cascades.substack.com

    5 min

  7. 11/12/2024

    A Dive Into Darkness - The Story Behind The Story

    Hello, I’m Paul Franks and I’ve written a conspiracy-thriller called ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, based upon my four years researching HIV/AIDS. In this original podcast series, I’ll tell you everything you need to know about the story behind the story, the four-year research and writing process from inspiration to publication, and all points in between. Before I begin Episode Twenty-Seven properly, I wish to point out that last week in the USA, the Republican-led House select subcommittee released its final report on the government's COVID-19 response. Scripps reported that ‘Republicans on the committee insisted that former government infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci pushed a false narrative about the virus' origins.’ The report states: “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” Was “Prompted” by Dr. Anthony Fauci to “Disprove” the Lab Leak Theory.’ According to the report, Fauci stated ‘he may not have ever actually read Proximal Origin. This raises questions of why he would cite a paper, he did not even read, from the White House podium as proof COVID-19 was not the result of a lab leak.’ Yes, this is the very same Anthony Fauci who was America’s AIDS czar for decades and who pushed a similarly false narrative about the origins of AIDS for 40 years, that AIDS was a single disease, caused by a single virus called HIV! Not coincidentally, in the same COVID-19 report, Fauci’s assistant David Morens is said to have ‘Likely Destroyed Evidence, Used Personal Email to Hide from Accountability, and Acted Unbecoming of a Federal Employee; Used Personal E-Mail Accounts to Avoid the Freedom of Information Act and Accountability; Deleted Federal Records illegally; Likely Provided False Statements to Congress; his actions violated NIH policy’. This was the same David Morens who in 1983 was a co-author of the CDC’s ‘National Case-Control Study of Kaposi's Sarcoma and Pneumocystis carinii Pneumonia in Homosexual Men: Part 2 - Laboratory Results’. That leads me nicely onto Episode Twenty-Seven of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, ‘The CDC’s Response To AIDS – Part One’, where I will cover one of the key areas of my HIV/AIDS research, the area which led me eventually to write the conspiracy-thriller ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, the CDC’s response to the new immunodeficiency epidemic, especially its ‘KSOI Task Force’s Case-Control Study’. As I’ve stated in previous episodes, in 1981 the CDC was fearing extinction courtesy of the new Reagan administration and was desperate to find a new epidemic that could keep it going. Accordingly, the new cases of immune deficiency in gay men was greeted like manna from heaven in CDC’s Atlanta HQ. Almost from the get-go the CDC’s James Curran manipulated the epidemic for political purposes. The original title of the 5th June 1981 MMWR was ‘PCP pneumonia in homosexual men – Los Angeles.’ The reference to ‘homosexual men’ was removed. As Shilts commented in ‘And The Band Played On’ p69, ‘Don’t offend the gays and don’t inflame the homophobes. These were the twin horns on which the handling of this epidemic would be torn from the first day of the epidemic.’ Shilts says in his introduction: ‘People died whilst public health authorities and the political leaders who guided them, refused to take the tough measures necessary to curb the epidemic’s spread, (ie shutting down the bath-houses) opting for political expediency over the public health.’ The CDC’s handling of the epidemic is chronicled in some detail by Shilts, who knew ‘everything’ about the response courtesy of Don Francis. The Monday after the MMWR was published, 8th June, saw the first meeting of an ‘ad hoc Task Force’ hurriedly put together to investigate the outbreaks of PCP pneumonia and KS. This quickly became the ‘Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections Task Force’ with Curran as its Chair. The CDC’s tactics were clear from the start: first, drag out its investigation for as long as possible, and then drag it out some more; second, make the AIDS ‘net’ as wide as possible. The bigger the epidemic, the better its chances were of survival. On p170 Shilts tells us that many FDA officials ‘thought the CDC had taken a bunch of unrelated illnesses and lumped them into some made-up phenomenon as a brazen ruse to get publicity and funding for their threatened agency. Bureaucrats had been known to undertake more questionable methods to protect their budgets.’ Thank you for listening to Episode Twenty-Seven of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please tell your friends about it. In Episode Twenty-Eight of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, I will continue my deep dive into the CDC’s KSOI Task Force Case-Control study and uncover further clear evidence of conspiracy and cover up. Till the next time, goodbye and happy reading. A reminder that ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ is available both as an ebook and paperback, with Barnes & Noble and Amazon and all the references/links connected with this podcast can be found at my ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ Substack page. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-dive-into-darkness-paul-franks/1145527746?ean=9781917129855 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dive-Into-Darkness-Paul-Franks-ebook/dp/B0D32DP97S https://www.amazon.co.uk/Band-Played-Politics-People-Epidemic/dp/0285640194 ‘And The Band Played On’ https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2024.12.04-SSCP-FINAL-REPORT-ANS.pdf House select subcommittee final report on the government's COVID-19 response James Curran interview https://cascades.substack.com/publish/posts My Substack site, ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cascades.substack.com

    6 min

  8. 10/12/2024

    A Dive Into Darkness - The Story Behind The Story

    Hello, I’m Paul Franks and I’ve written a conspiracy-thriller called ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, based upon my four years researching HIV/AIDS. In this original podcast series, I’ll tell you everything you need to know about the story behind the story, the four-year research and writing process from inspiration to publication, and all points in between. Before I analyze the CDC’s KSOI Task Force’s Case-Control Study, in Episode Twenty-Six of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, ‘Arguments Against CMV Being The Cause Of AIDS’ I will focus on the arguments put forward by opponents of my ‘CMV causes AIDS’ hypothesis, or, more accurately, my ‘CMV helps cause, and exploits, AIDS.’ All the way through my investigation into AIDS I kept looking for any piece of evidence that would derail my hypothesis. That never happened, in fact, the more I researched CMV the more I became convinced I was right. However, there were several explanations mooted as to why CMV could not cause AIDS. I recently found a paper from November 1982, ‘The Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome: Current Status’, which at first states many of the reasons why CMV could be the cause of AIDS, reasons I’ve explored in previous episodes: - Previous or current CMV infection is a unifying presence in all the CDC case reports - Homosexual males are at greater risk for developing CMV infections than heterosexual males due to exposure to infected semen in which CMV persists for up to 18 months - Acute CMV infection has been shown to be associated with a similar pattern of T-cell imbalance as seen in patients with AIDS, this T-cell imbalance has been documented to last for up to ten months - CMV has been shown in clinical studies of renal transplant recipients to be associated with a high rate of superinfection, especially PCP pneumonia - CMV may predispose at a local level, along with systemic T-cell imbalance, to superinfecting pneumonia - Increasing evidence has supported the association of CMV and Kaposi's sarcoma, an association proposed by Giraldo in 1972 when a CMV strain was isolated from a KS tissue biopsy in culture The author’s counter arguments were as follows - the CMV isolated by the CDC does not appear to represent a new, more virulent strain. To which I would respond that there did not have to be a new, more virulent strain to cause this damage. According to ‘And The Band Played On’ p132/133, blood sampling of IVDUs by the CDC revealed that although many were infected with CMV (87%), the viral strains were all different. Shilts, who was the CDC’s mouthpiece, states that the lack of a new virulent strain lent weight to the Don Francis ‘new pathogen’ hypothesis and that the CMV causes AIDS hypothesis was now eliminated. This was total moonshine, and shows a lack of knowledge about, and an underestimation of, CMV. - Patients who are immunosuppressed for other reasons (e.g., steroids) also have a high incidence of CMV infection; thus the immunosuppression seen in these patients may have another etiology which secondarily allows for CMV reactivation. My response to this is that it is a nonsensical argument. AIDS is a syndrome caused by immunosuppression, hence the name. CMV can cause immunosuppression and exploit it too. - CMV is not a new infectious agent and homosexuality as a lifestyle has been around for centuries, so this hypothesis does not explain why AIDS is apparently new. This was the worst argument of all, to which I respond with the tobacco/lung cancer analogy. The Spanish introduced tobacco to Europeans in about 1528 and for 400 years lung cancer was still rare. Once industrial-scale production and consumption of cigarettes occurred in the first decades of the twentieth century, lung cancer cases rose exponentially around the planet. Michael Callen, an honest, heroic and realistic sexually active gay male, who was right about what was causing AIDS from day one, stated he ‘felt part of the most extraordinary sexual experiment in human history. Never before in human history had so many men had so much sex with so many other men who were having sex.’ Just like lung cancer and cigarettes, AIDS, as Callen knew very well, was the result of a changed lifestyle, not the product of a new infectious agent. The clustering of early AIDS cases in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, was no coincidence, it was due to the fact that Manhattan and the Castro were gay ghettoes where large numbers of homosexuals moved into or visited each year, and the bathhouses found in these areas were amplification systems for the immunodeficiency syndrome. As JR Thompson, a mathematical modeler and someone whose work I will study in depth in a future episode, stated in the 1980s: ‘An argument is made that, so far from being a disease which is unstoppable in its epidemic consequences, AIDS has produced an epidemic, which owes its present virulence to sociological configurations of rather recent existence. Instead of a vigorous attack on the transmission chain of the epidemic, the emphasis of public health policy has been on finding a vaccine and/or a cure of the disease which produces the epidemic. By means of a simple model, it is argued that by simply closing businesses catering to high contact rate a**l sex, e.g sexually oriented bathhouses, the American public health establishment might have avoided most of the tragic consequences of the present epidemic.’ Thank you for listening to Episode Twenty-Six of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please tell your friends about it. In Episode Twenty-Seven of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, I will do a deep dive into the CDC’s KSOI Task Force Case-Control study and uncover clear evidence of conspiracy and cover up. Till the next time, goodbye and happy reading. A reminder that ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ is available both as an ebook and paperback, with Barnes & Noble and Amazon, and all the references/links connected with this podcast can be found at my ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ Substack page. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-dive-into-darkness-paul-franks/1145527746?ean=9781917129855 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dive-Into-Darkness-Paul-Franks-ebook/dp/B0D32DP97S https://www.amazon.co.uk/Band-Played-Politics-People-Epidemic/dp/0285640194 ‘And The Band Played On’ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2596573/pdf/yjbm00111-0058.pdf ‘The Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome: Current Status’ https://cascades.substack.com/publish/posts My Substack site, ‘A Dive Into Darkness’ Michael Callen 4 mins 20 – 4 mins 40. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82150696.pdf AIDS: THE MISMANAGEMENT OF AN EPIDEMIC, JR Thompson This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cascades.substack.com

    7 min
See All (34)

About

Hello, I’m Paul Franks, a Leeds-based, retired History teacher, and I’ve written a conspiracy-thriller called ‘A Dive Into Darkness’. I’ll tell you everything you need to know about the story behind the story, the four-year research and writing process, from inspiration to publication, and all points in between. cascades.substack.com

Information

To listen to explicit episodes, sign in.

Stay up to date with this show

Sign in or sign up to follow shows, save episodes and get the latest updates.
Select a country or region

Africa, Middle East, and India

Asia Pacific

Europe

Latin America and the Caribbean

The United States and Canada