He passed away at the Neuilly hospital at the age of 89 Luc Montagnierawarded with the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2008 thanks to his contribution in the discovery of the HIV virus.
A prominent member of the Pasteur Institute between 1972 and 2000, the scientist had however seen his influence in the scientific community diminish over the years due to some positions in clear antithesis to contemporary scientific studies and research.
Thin metal glasses, shining eyes and a face that was still a child at the age of 80, Montagnier defined himself as a “marginal figure” in a white coat, despite the international laurels that followed the delivery of the Nobel Prize.
«Icon» no vax
At the start of the Covid pandemic, Luc Montagnier has become an antivax reference figure. With his unscientific theories, the virologist claimed that it was vaccines that gave birth to the Sars-CoV-2 variants. Many scientists who have contested these claims, also contradicted by the fact that the main variants appeared before the vaccination campaign.
His repeated stances against vaccines had earned him, as early as November 2017, the ferocious and official condemnation of 106 members of the Academies of Science and Medicine. And they are not the only ones.
Previously, Montagnier had supported the “microbial trace” thesis, however subject to caution, to explain autism. You had taken up the unanimously rejected thesis of the French researcher Jacques Benveniste according to which water retains its imprint (the “memory”) of substances that are no longer there. He had also supported theories aboutemission of electromagnetic waves by DNA and promoted the papaya as a remedy for some diseases.
After leading the AIDS and Retrovirus Department of the Pasteur Institute from 1991 to 1997, and subsequently teaching at Queens College in New York until 2001, Professor Montagnier he had gradually been marginalized by the scientific community. \
The discovery of HIV and the quarrels with Robert Gallo
Born on 8 August 1932 in Chabris, in Indre (central France), the virologist Luc Montagnier since 1972 he has directed a laboratory specializing in retroviruses and oncoviruses (responsible for tumors), at the Institut Pasteur. At the beginning of 1983, together with his assistants Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Jean-Claude Chermann, isolates a new retrovirus – temporarily called LAV (Lymphadenopathy Associated Virus) – from a sample taken by Dr. Willy Rozenbaum from a sick young man in New York. According to Montaigner, it is the causative agent of the new disease. But the discovery is greeted with skepticism, particularly by the American Robert Gallo, great retrovirus specialist. “For a year we knew we had the right virus […]but no one believed us and our publications were refused », Montagnier declared 30 years later.
Luc Montagnier and Robert Gallo, co-discoverers of the HIV virus
JOHN MOTTERNIn April 1984, Margaret Heckler, US Secretary of Health, announced that Robert Gallo had found the “probable” cause of AIDS, a retrovirus called HTLV-III. The latter, however, was strictly identical to the LAV previously found by Montagnier’s team. The controversy is triggered: who is the real discoverer of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), Montagnier or Gallo? An important question, because the answer will depend on the royalties related to screening tests.
A provisional and diplomatic conclusion to the dispute comes in 1987: United States and France sign a compromise in which Gallo and Montagnier are officially described as “co-discoverers”. But the real epilogue comes 20 years later, with the award of the Nobel Prize for the discovery of HIV, not to Gallo, but to Montagnier and his partner Barré-Sinoussi.
Luc Montagnier receives the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2008
OLIVIER MORINMore recently, on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of its discovery, Montagnier had publicly declared: «We have not been able to eradicate the epidemic and not even the infection, since we do not yet know how to treat those who are infected. Antiretroviral drugs can effectively control HIV but not completely eliminate it from the body of those who are infected ».
Ironically, the definitive cure for the HIV virus Montagnier has discovered may now come through a vaccine.
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Source: Vanity Fair
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