Hello, I’m Paul Franks, a Leeds-based, retired History teacher, and I’ve written a conspiracy-thriller called ‘A Dive Into Darkness’. 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 beyond.

In Episode Four of ‘A Dive Into Darkness’, ‘Race!’, I will tell you about the book I wrote in just four months during the summer of 2020.

Towards the end of June 2020, I have listened to the radio series, ‘A Big Disease With A Little Name’ and watched the ‘Origin of AIDS’ documentary on Youtube. I have also done a lot of online research into ‘African AIDS.’

I discover that in Kinshasa, Zaire, during the mid-1970s, the Congolese physician Kapita Bila noticed a troubling increase in patients consumed by bouts of diarrhoea and persistent tumours. John Ilife states in his book, ‘The African Aids Epidemic: A History’, that by 1983, Bila's records, alongside those of his colleagues and the blood samples of their patients, linked these signs of an emerging epidemic in equatorial Africa with the newly defined human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the disease it caused: acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Incidentally, Iliffe is wrong about this - HIV was not actually named until 1986 and, in 1983, no-one outside of a Paris laboratory, believed that a retrovirus was the cause of AIDS. I also examine the CDC’s Global Health Chronicles website, a history of the CDC's Early Response to AIDS, which contains several interviews dedicated to the CDC’s work in Africa in the 1980s.

The notion that early AIDS cases may have been documented in Kinshasa, Zaire in the mid-70s, tied in with Edward Hooper’s polio vaccine explanation of the origin of HIV, and gave me an idea for a book. The Ali-Foreman ‘Rumble In The Jungle’ fight had occurred in Kinshasa in 1974; what if that fight had turned out to be the super-spreader event that allowed HIV to move outside of Zaire, outside of Africa, and allowed it to be taken to the Americas, Europe and Asia? I quickly put together a 50-chapter outline for ‘Race!’ The book had two interweaving narratives.

Narrative One – It’s the summer of 2020. In laboratories all over the world, the race is on to develop a vaccine that will eliminate a killer disease and make its creators fantastically famous and incredibly rich. An American medical institution emerges as a shoe-in to win the race, and sign a multi-million pound NHS contract. When journalist Mark McKenzie discovers that this institution’s vaccination programmes have a murky past, he becomes involved in a race of his own to prevent medical history repeating itself. As a consequence, he puts his own life and the lives of his loved ones in danger, as the medical, business and political establishments join forces against him. Who will win the race!

Narrative Two: It’s September 1974 and Gerry Mackenzie, a sports journalist for a top London newspaper, heads off to Kinshasha, Zaire to cover the Ali-Foreman World Heavyweight boxing fight, the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’. 

During his time in Kinshasa, Mackenzie becomes ill and a story about sport becomes a story about an undiscovered epidemic, as he begins to uncover the horrifying truth about an unfolding medical disaster. Gerry’s story about this epidemic is forgotten for nearly 50 years, until another epidemic brings it out into the open. His journalist son’s quest to uncover the full story behind Gerry’s article leads him into a world where a pandemic’s origins were covered up, where black lives really did not seem to matter, where the protection of animals was non-existent, scientific and medical advisers knew best, and a ‘vaccine race’ had terrible consequences.

Three months of hard labour resulted in a 94,500 word epic! However, apart from friend and colleague, Bob Elliston, no-one else ever got to read ‘Race!’ By the time I had fine-tuned and edited it, I was already beginning to lose faith in the Hooper origin of HIV Hypothesis, outlined in Episode Three. However, I had got the bug – I had to fulfill an ambition and write a book, but it had to be a book good enough to be published. 

Thank you for listening to Episode Four of ‘A Dive Into Darkness.’ I hope you enjoyed it.

In the next episode, I will tell you how I came to the conclusion that there is no scientific proof that ‘HIV caused AIDS’ and that there has been a 40 year global conspiracy to cover up the truth. 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://www.amazon.co.uk/African-AIDS-Epidemic-History/dp/0821416898   ‘The African Aids Epidemic: A History. John Iliffe.

https://globalhealthchronicles.org/aids  CDC’s Global Health chronicles

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