Opinion Despite dubious forays in recent times, Luc Montagnier will be recognised as a modern medicine great

In 2018, facing criticism for his maverick theories — DNA can be “teleported” by electromagnetic waves picked up by water, for instance — a defiant Luc Montagnier told Le Monde: “I don’t have to be ashamed of what I am doing. The discovery of the AIDS virus has saved millions of lives. I have authority.” His peers reacted to such assertions with dismay. But not even his worst detractor will contest Montagnier’s claim that the discovery of AIDS assures him a place in the galaxy of medicine’s greats.

In his autobiographical essay for the 2008 Nobel Prize, Montagnier — who passed away on Tuesday — describes how watching his grandfather suffer cancer moved him to study medicine. In 1983, he was approached by a Paris clinician to examine a patient who was showing early signs of the mysterious new illness that was ballooning into a public health crisis. Montagnier was amongst the few virologists, who suspected that the disease — then described as the “gay plague” in several quarters — was caused by a retrovirus, a pathogen that slips into the host’s DNA and takes control of it. His team’s research paved the way for the development of HIV tests and AIDS therapies. But Montagnier got embroiled in a bitter conflict with the American virologist Robert Gallo, with whom he had once shared notes — and camaraderie. Gallo had examined samples from the same patient as Montagnier and also concluded that the disease was caused by a retrovirus. Debate turned into a public spat over who had discovered HIV and acrimonious litigation over the patent on a crucial blood test on AIDs patients ensued. The matter required the intervention of the US and French presidents.

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In recent times, Montagnier earned the ire of his peers for questioning Covid vaccination and peddling pseudoscience. But the world will know him better as the virologist whose work unravelled HIV and led to removing misinformation on AIDS.

This editorial first appeared in the print edition on February 12, 2022 under the title ‘The AIDS healer’.