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 Fourteen of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, ‘CMV and AIDS’, I will reveal a series of ‘firsts’, and other details, which should have made CMV a prime suspect in the search for the cause of AIDS. Perhaps would have done if it had not been for the conviction of Don Francis, formulated in July 1981, that AIDS was caused by a new pathogen, most likely a retrovirus.

In February 1981, a paper revealed that CMV had been found in 94% of homosexual patients attending a San Francisco VD clinic, as opposed to 54% of heterosexual men and 43% of male volunteer male blood donors. The authors of the paper featured in the 1983 BBC documentary about AIDS, ‘Killer In The Village.’ A similar percentage – 92% - was discovered at a London hospital’s STD clinic in 1982.

In June 1981, a paper stated that ‘Acute CMV infection is associated with a reversal in the normal ratio of helper to suppressor T lymphocytes with relative and absolute decreases in T helper cells and corresponding increases in T suppressor cells.’ Exactly what happened with AIDS patients. The paper also noted that ‘During convalescence, helper T lymphocytes increase, suppressor T lymphocytes decrease.’  What if there was no convalescence?

Four days later, the CDC’s MMWR bulletin included the first national / international report of the new immune deficiency epidemic in male homosexuals. ‘In the period October 1980-May 1981, 5 young men, all active homosexuals, were treated for biopsy-confirmed PCP pneumonia at 3 different hospitals in Los Angeles, California. Two of the patients died. All 5 patients had laboratory-confirmed previous or current cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection and candidal mucosal infection.’

A month later another MMWR carried a report on the new Kaposi’s Sarcoma / PCP pneumonia epidemic in gay males. The results of tests for cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection were available for 12 patients. All 12 had serological evidence of past or present CMV infection. In 3 patients for whom culture results were available, CMV was isolated from blood, urine and/or lung of all 3.’ Even more revealing was the sentence: ‘A specific serologic association with CMV infection has been demonstrated among American and European patients with Kaposi’s sarcoma.’ Of which more in the next episode.

The CDC’s Task Force National Case-Control Study of Kaposi's Sarcoma and Pneumocystis carinii Pneumonia in Homosexual Men: Part 2 Laboratory Results, which was buried for eighteen months, showed that evidence of CMV infection had been found in 165/167 subjects, Cultures of patients' urine and throat swab specimens yielded cytomegalovirus more frequently than those of the combined controls, 13 (25%) of 52 patients having an isolation made from one or more sites, versus 9 (7%) of 124 combined controls. Analysis was done on CMV isolates obtained from ten patients and ten controls. Results suggested that each isolate represented a different strain of CMV.

A paper reporting on the first blood transfusion AIDS case, that of a baby, states that at the time of death the donor was suffering from ‘disseminated cytomegalovirus infection’. The baby itself tested positive for CMV, although this fact was hidden from the American public.

The first Hemophilia-associated AIDS case in the USA, an elderly man in Denver, was also suffering from a CMV infection.

During the interval between October 1981 and June 1983, 10 autopsies of patients with AIDS were studied in the Laboratory of Pathology, NIH. There were CMV inclusions in the autopsy lungs of all but I patient.

Thank you for listening to Episode Fourteen of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please tell your friends about it. I will tell you more about the association between CMV and Kaposi’s sarcoma in Episode Fifteen of ‘A Dive Into Darkness.’  

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  

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6260871/  ‘Prevalence of cytomegalovirus infection in homosexual men’

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p01z2lbp/horizon-19821983-killer-in-the-village  BBC documentary

https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC1046298&blobtype=pdf  ‘Antibodies to CMV in homosexual and heterosexual men attending an STD clinic.’

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6262407/ ‘Analysis of T lymphocyte subsets in cytomegalovirus mononucleosis’

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/june_5.htm  ‘Pneumocystis Pneumonia --- Los Angeles’

https://cssh.northeastern.edu/pandemic-teaching-initiative/wp-content/uploads/sites/43/2020/09/1981.07.03.Morbidity_Mortality.pdf 

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6309049/ 

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1916399/pdf/amjpathol00192-0119.pdf Autopsy Pathology in the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome 

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