HIV discoverer Montagny dies and in his later years is accused of "losing his way" to science

French virologist Luc Montagnier died Wednesday in a hospital on the outskirts of Paris at the age of 89. Montagny was one of the co-discoverers of HIV and was one of the first scientists to suggest that AIDS might be caused by infectious pathogens, for which he won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

But in his later years Montani published many outlandish theories that were refuted by the scientific community, and in the past two years he has become a public boycott of the new crown vaccine, expanding the controversy.

Since 1972, Montagny has led the Department of Viral Oncology at the Institut Pasteur in France, where the team he led discovered the virus that causes AIDS.

In May 1983, Montagny's team published its first research paper in the journal Science on L.A.V., a lymphadenopathy-related virus that causes AIDS. In 1986, L.A.V. was officially named H.I.V., the human immunodeficiency virus.

In 2008, Montagny and Francoise Barre Sinoussi of the Institut Pasteur in France, along with German scientist Harald zur Hausen, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

However, after winning the Nobel Prize, Montani's research turned to unconventional experiments, and many of his subsequent remarks have stunned the scientific community and been criticized by his peers.

In a 2009 experiment published in a scientific journal he founded claiming that DNA emits electromagnetic radiation; in an American documentary released that same year, Montagny threw out the idea that a good immune system could get rid of HIV "in a matter of weeks."

Montagni's controversial views also include the use of fermented papaya to cure Pope John Paul II of Parkinson's disease, treating autism with antibiotics, and he also said the diseases all originated in bacteria.

In 2010, Montagny took up a professorship at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, studying DNA signal emission. After living in Shanghai for two years, he returned to Paris.

In 2014, Mark Weinberg, then president of the International AIDS Association, said in an interview: "Montagny won the Nobel Prize at the right time to do the right thing, but his subsequent scientific ideas were not recognized by his peers and did not stand the test of time." ”

After the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, Montagni said in a podcast published by the French medical website Tourquoidocteur that genetic studies of the new crown virus in mathematical models showed that the new crown virus carries the genes of AIDS. However, this claim was quickly refuted by the scientific community. At that time, French researchers told the first financial reporter that Montagny had "lost its way" to science.

In May last year, Montagny spoke out against the vaccine plan in a video posted on a French website, calling it an "unacceptable mistake" because the vaccine could cause the virus to mutate. As recently as January, he published an article stating: "In the absence of any evidence that vaccines are effective in stopping the spread of pathogens, government mandatory vaccination is unreasonable and contrary to the public interest." ”

But Montani's pioneering achievements on AIDS still influence efforts to fight the disease today. In 2002, Montagny announced with Dr. Robert Gallo, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, that he would jointly develop an AIDS vaccine. The two had previously struggled for decades over the issue of HIV patent rights.

According to WHO, 38 million people worldwide are currently living with HIV. But HIV is considered one of the most difficult viruses to fight with a vaccine because HIV can evolve into different strains to evade the immune system.

In February, the mRNA AIDS vaccine has completed its first human vaccination with the mRNA bio-platform technology, which plays an important role in the development of the new crown vaccine, which was partnered by Moderna and the International AIDS Vaccine Action Organization (IAVI) in the United States, and is expected to reverse the previous failure of all AIDS vaccine development failures.