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 book and its four-year writing process, from inspiration to publication, and all points in between.

In Episode Fifteen of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, ‘CMV and Kaposi’s Sarcoma’, I will explore in more detail the close association between CMV and one of the two main marker diseases of ‘early’ AIDS, Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS). KS is a type of cancer that forms in the lining of blood vessels and lymph vessels. The cancer forms growths of cells, called lesions, on the skin. The lesions often form on the face, arms and legs. The lesions may look pink, red, purple or brown. It was generally found in old men of mediterranean origin, often taking benign form. It’s appearance in gay males in virulent form was one of the mysteries of ‘early’ AIDS. It rarely appeared in IVDU’s or hemophiliacs. Why did KS affect gay males and not the other two main affected demographics? I’ll give you a member of the CDC’s Task Force’s answer in a future episode.

On p65 of ‘And The Band Played On’, it states that ‘African KS had been linked to a herpes virus, CMV’. I googled KS/CMV to see what I could find and I discovered there were half a dozen papers from Gaetano Giraldo dating back to the early 1970s exploring the connection. In his 1978 paper, ‘Antibody patterns to herpesviruses in Kaposi's sarcoma. II. Serological association of American Kaposi's sarcoma with cytomegalovirus’ he writes, the prominent finding of this extended serologic analysis on American and African Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) patients and appropriately matched control groups is the detection of a specific serologic association of cytomegalovirus (CMV) with American KS patients. All American KS sera contained CMV antibodies and the result is strongly reminiscent of the data obtained previously for European KS’.

One of the paper’s co-authors is Bijan Safai, described by the head of the CDC’s AIDS Task Force, James Curran, as ‘an outstanding expert in Kaposi's sarcoma at Memorial-Sloan Kettering’. In 1980, Safai published this paper, ‘Association of Kaposi's Sarcoma with Second Primary Malignancies’, in which he stated, ‘The initial search for virus particles resulted in the isolation of a cytomegalovirus (CMV) in a KS tissue culture cell line. Subsequent analyses have revealed a specific serologic association with KS and CMV.’ Presciently as far as AIDS was concerned, Safai goes further and outlines in a diagram how CMV might produce cancers. Persistent heavy infection, combined with persistent heterogenic stimulation, would produce increased synthesis of defective virus particles, leading to multiple cell tropism, resulting in multiple cancers.

In the late 1970s / early 1980s, gay males were taking lots of drugs, drinking alcohol, and sniffing amyl nitrites, ‘poppers’, on an industrial scale. Poppers cause vasodilation, widening of blood vessels, and, as I explained earlier, KS is a type of cancer that forms in the lining of blood vessels and lymph vessels. It seemed obvious to me that KS and Poppers, like lung cancer and cigarettes, were connected and I wasn’t the only one, as I was to find out.

Safai’s paper concluded, ‘Our study has confirmed a significant association between KS and second primary malignancies of the lymphoreticular system, in which CMV frequently remains in a latent form. This would seem to strengthen the probability of related etiopathogenic mechanisms between the two neoplasms.’

Safai was a co-author of the ‘National Case-Control Study of Kaposi's Sarcoma and Pneumocystis carinii Pneumonia in Homosexual Men: Part 1, Epidemiologic Results’, in which CMV appears a grand total of zero times. In ‘How To Survive A Plague’, p26, gay Greenwich Village medical scientist, infectious diseases expert, and a doctor with over a 1,000 gay male patients, Joseph Sonneband recalls how there was ‘an overwhelming epidemic of CMV in his gay patients in the late 1970s/ and early 1980s and he wrote several papers outlining why he believed CMV was a likely cause of AIDS. However, he could not answer the question, ‘what might KS and CMV have in common?’ If only he’d read the Giraldo/ Safai papers. If only Safai had told him. According to France on p43, Sonneband’s business partner, Mathilde Krim, mystified by the KS cases, called Safai who told her about the AIDS cases on his ward but failed to mention the ‘specific serologic association with KS and CMV’. Why not?

Thank you for listening to Episode Fifteen of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please tell your friends about it. In Episode Sixteen of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, I will tell you about another close association, that between CMV and the other main marker disease of ‘early’ AIDS, PCP pneumonia.

Till the next time, goodbye and happy reading.

‘A Dive Into Darkness’ is available both as an ebook and paperback, with Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

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

James Curran interview

https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/1097-0142%2819800315%2945%3A6%3C1472%3A%3AAID-CNCR2820450629%3E3.0.CO%3B2-A Safai paper

https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Survive-Plague-Activists-Scientists/dp/1509839402 ‘How To Survive A Plague’, David France

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Band-Played-Politics-People-Epidemic/dp/0312374631 ‘And The Band Played On’, Randy Shilts.

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