The French virologist Luc Montagnier, PhD, who shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work in isolating the human immunodeficiency virus, has died at age 89, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported today.
Dr Luc Montagnier
Montagnier died on Tuesday in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, according to news reports.
Montagnier and colleague Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, PhD, shared the Nobel for their work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Ther achievement paved the way for HIV tests and antiretroviral drugs that allow patients to manage the virus as a chronic illness.
"Outlandish" Statements
While Montagnier's vital early discoveries on AIDS were celebrated, he was later dismissed by scientists "for his increasingly outlandish theories," notably, statements related to COVID-19, AFP reports.
Among his statements, the AFP says, were that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was laboratory-made and that vaccines were responsible for the appearance of variants.
He also suggested that autism is caused by infection and set up much-criticized experiments to prove it. He claimed antibiotics could cure the condition.
"And he believed that anyone with a good immune system could fight off HIV with the right diet," AFP reports.
"He was always controversial, but I had the greatest respect for the team he assembled," Donald P. Francis, who directed the AIDS laboratory at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, told
