Extremely eye news reporter Zhang Yang
On February 8, Local time in France, French virologist Luke Montanier, who won the Nobel Prize for discovering the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV, which we often call AIDS), died at the age of 89.
Luke Montagnier
In 2008, Montagnier shared half of that year's Nobel Prize in Medicine with French scientist Françoise Barré-Sinusi for their role in discovering the virus, and the other half was awarded to Harard Hausen, a German scientist who studies cervical cancer.
Montanier was later alienated from mainstream scientific circles for proposing a series of outlandish theories, and was heavily criticized by his peers for publishing views opposing the COVID-19 vaccine.
He competed with his American counterparts for the right to discover HIV and eventually won the Nobel Prize
AIDS, or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, first attracted public attention in 1981 when U.S. doctors noted unusual deaths among young gay men in California and New York.
Montanier's virology department, the Institut Pasteur, which Montagnat created in Paris, began to study the virus, while the American scientist Robert Gallo was also studying it, and the two competed fiercely for a long time.
Montanier's team managed to isolate HIV from the lymph nodes of an AIDS patient and published a paper on the discovery in the journal Science in 1983. Robert Gallo made a similar finding, concluding that the virus causes AIDS.
The debate about who first discovered HIV sparked years of heated debate. According to the French 24 Hours news website, "Both have been praised for their HIV discovery, but their rivalry has led to a years-long legal and even diplomatic dispute between France and the United States." ”
Dr. Montagnier (left) receives the Nobel Prize from King Karl XVI Gustav of Sweden in Stockholm in 2008
But Gallo admitted in 1991 that the virus he discovered came from the previous year's Pasteur Institute, and the two publicly agreed in 2002 that Montanier's team had first discovered HIV, but Gallo had first discovered that it caused AIDS.
In 1986, Montanier shared the American Lasker Prize with Gallo and Myron Essex. The Lasker Prize for Medicine is the most prestigious biomedical award in the United States and has long been regarded as a bellwether for the Nobel Prize.
However, when the Nobel Prize was awarded in 2008, the organizing committee did not mention Gallo, which also caused great controversy at the time.
Publishing bizarre scientific theories and gradually moving away from mainstream scientific circles
Born in 1932 in the central French town of Chabris, Montagnier began working at the Institut des Sciences in Paris in 1955. He moved to the Pasteur Institute in 1972, where he headed after his work on HIV, and then to Queen's College, City University of New York in 1997.
But in the late 1990s, Montanier drifted away from mainstream science because he came up with a series of less scientific theories that sparked one controversy after another.
He has repeatedly argued that autism is caused by infections and has built highly critical experiments to prove it, claiming that antibiotics can cure the condition.
He also claimed that water has the ability to retain material memories, which has shocked many of his peers.
He also believes that anyone with a good immune system can fight HIV with the right diet.
Montagnier supports the theory that DNA leaves electromagnetic traces in water, arguing that such electromagnetic traces can be used to diagnose AIDS and Lyme disease, and supports the therapeutic effect of fermented papaya on Parkinson's disease.
Montanier (left) and his colleagues in 1984
Inappropriate speech during the COVID-19 pandemic and isolation by peers
Most incredibly, Montagnier has repeatedly spoken out against vaccines. In his public speech, he accused children of not being vaccinated, and in 2017, 106 members of the Academy of Science and Medicine jointly reprimanded him.
The French daily Le Figaro described his journey from principal investigator to marginal figure as a "slow scientific shipwreck." But he still stands by his opinion, telling Le Monde in 2018: "The discovery of HIV has saved millions of lives, and I am the authority." ”
According to Reuters, during the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020, Montagnier once again caused controversy. He said he believes the coronavirus was made in Chinese laboratories and that the COVID-19 vaccine is the reason for the emergence of various COVID-19 variants.
These theories were scoffed at by virologists and epidemiologists, which made him more isolated and unpopular among his peers, but became a hero in the eyes of French anti-vaccine activists.
He died on Tuesday at an American hospital in Neue-sur-Seine, the news was first reported by local French media, saying he was "surrounded by his children" at the time. Later, the local authorities officially confirmed his death.
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