Luc Montagnier, Co-discoverer of HIV, Dies Aged 89
French virologist Luc Montagnier, who had an important role in discovering the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which causes AIDS, died on Tuesday, February 8, 2022, as French news agency AFP reported on Thursday.
Montagnier, aged 89, died in Neuilly-sur-Seine, surrounded by his children, according to his collaborator, Doctor Gérard Guillaume.
He sacrificed much of his time for science; he shared half of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine with fellow French scientist Francoise Barre-Sinoussi for their role in discovering the virus (HIV).
Conspiracy Theory
Luc Montagnier was a French virologist credited as a co-discoverer of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
On Tuesday, February 8, 2022, Montagnier died in the American Hospital, in Neuilly-sur-Seine surrounded by his children, as Doctor Gérard Guillaume told French news outlet FranceSoir.
Montagnier was a biologist and also a virologist who "lived for science," says Guillaume.
Luc Montagnier was born on August 18, 1932. He was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology, with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Harald zur Hausen, for the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
The French virologist was appointed as a researcher at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and worked as a full-time professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.
During Coronavirus, the professor said that SARS-CoV-2, the causative virus, “was deliberately created and escaped from a laboratory,” according to Reuters.
Such an allegation has been rejected by other virologists.
After his conspiracy theory’s claim, Montagnier has been criticized by other academics for taking advantage of his Nobel prize to “spread dangerous health messages outside his field of knowledge,” according to the same source.
French or American?
At the Pasteur Institute, Montagnier, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, Jean-Claude Chermann, and other members of his group, had comprehensive experience “with retroviruses.”
The team examined samples taken from Rozenbaum's AIDS patients and finally detected the virus that later was known as (HIV) in a lymph node biopsy.
Montagnier and his group named it “lymphadenopathy-associated virus," or LAV, because at that time, they still did not know that it was the cause of AIDS, and they published, on May 20, 1983, their returns in the journal Science.
However, the question of whether the true discoverers of the virus were French or American, was more than an issue of esteem.
Based on a US government patent for the AIDS test, Gallo was the one who discovered the virus was at stake.
French and US governments tried to end the dispute by dividing the prestige of the discovery and the proceeds from the patent 50-50.
With this resolution, Montagnier and Gallo were named as co-discoverers of the virus.
However, the two professors did not stop disputing each other's claims until 1987.
Condemned
During his career, controversy followed Luc Montagnier. In 2017, according to Euro Weekly News, over a hundred French science and medicine academics revolted against Montagnier after he claimed that vaccines poison children.
The academics wrote an open letter that read: “We cannot accept that one of our colleagues uses his Nobel Prize to spread, outside the field of his competence, messages dangerous to health, disregarding the ethics that should govern science and medicine.”
He was also against Coronavirus vaccines and its use during the pandemic. Before his death, Montagnier was asked by a journalist the following question: “Should we be vaccinating during a pandemic?” He replied that “It’s unthinkable.”
He claimed that “the variants are the product of and result of the vaccination…the curve of vaccination is followed by the curve of death.”
His statement caused controversy among internet fact-checkers, like Reuters.
The Nobel Prize winner also said that "For those of you that have taken the third dose, go and take a test for AIDS. The results may surprise you. Then sue your government."
