Pioneering HIV Researcher Luc Montagnier Dies At 89

France 24 reports:

French researcher Luc Montagnier, who has died at 89, shared the Nobel medicine prize for his vital early discoveries on AIDS, but was later dismissed by the scientific community for his increasingly outlandish theories, notably on Covid-19. Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi shared the Nobel in 2008 for their work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris in isolating the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

Montagnier had a bitter rivalry with US scientist Robert Gallo in his ground-breaking work in identifying HIV at the virology department he created in Paris in 1972. Both are co-credited with discovering that HIV causes AIDS, and their rival claims led for several years to a legal and even diplomatic dispute between France and the United States. The Nobel jury made no mention of Gallo in its citation.

The New York Times reports:



For all the glory Dr. Montagnier earned in discovering the virus, today known as H.I.V., in later years he distanced himself from colleagues by dabbling in maverick experiments that challenged the basic tenets of science. Most recently he was an outspoken opponent of coronavirus vaccines.

After his work with H.I.V., Dr. Montagnier veered into nontraditional experiments, shocking and infuriating colleagues. One experiment, published in 2009 in a journal he founded, claimed that DNA emitted electromagnetic radiation. He suggested that some bacterial DNA continue to emit signals long after an infection is cleared.

Dr. Montagnier set off another uproar among scientists when, speaking at a conference on autism in 2012, he suggested that long-term antibiotics could be successful in treating that illness.