culled from: News > Medscape Medical News https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/968296
Luc Montagnier, Nobel-Winning Virologist Who Discovered HIV, Dies at 89
Marcia Frellick
February 10, 2022
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.
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...
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 The New York Times...
The path to discover HIV started in Paris in the Viral Oncology Unit at the Pasteur Institute on January 3, 1983, according to The New York Times. On that day, Montagnier received a piece of lymph node that had been removed from a 33-year-old man with AIDS.
At that point there was no known cause, no known tests, and no known treatments for AIDS...
Montagnier's team found in the lymph-node sample a retrovirus never seen before. They first named it LAV, for lymphadenopathy-associated virus. The team reported the landmark results in the May 20, 1983, issue of the journal Science, concluding that further studies were needed to prove that LAV caused AIDS...
Joseph Ana.
Prof Joseph Ana
Lead Senior Fellow/ medical consultant.
Africa Center for Clinical Governance Research &
Patient Safety (ACCGR&PS)
P: +234 (0) 8063600642
E: info@hri-global.org
8 Amaku Street, State Housing & 20 Eta Agbor Road,
Calabar, Nigeria.
www.hri-global.org
HIFA profile: Joseph Ana is the Lead Consultant and Trainer at the Africa Centre for Clinical Governance Research and Patient Safety in Calabar, Nigeria, established by HRI Global (former HRIWA). In 2015 he won the NMA Award of Excellence for establishing 12-Pillar Clinical Governance, Quality and Safety initiative in Nigeria. He has been the pioneer Chairman of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) National Committee on Clinical Governance and Research since 2012. He is also Chairman of the Quality & Performance subcommittee of the Technical Working Group for the implementation of the Nigeria Health Act. He is a pioneer Trustee-Director of the NMF (Nigerian Medical Forum) which took the BMJ to West Africa in 1995. He is particularly interested in strengthening health systems for quality and safety in LMICs. He has written Five books on the 12-Pillar Clinical Governance for LMICs, including a TOOLS for Implementation. He established the Department of Clinical Governance, Servicom & e-health in the Cross River State Ministry of Health, Nigeria in 2007. Website: www.hri-global.org. Joseph is a member of the HIFA Steering Group and the HIFA working group on Community Health Workers.
Website: www.hri-global.com Joseph is a member of the HIFA Steering Group and the HIFA working group on Community Health Workers.
http://www.hifa.org/support/members/joseph-0
http://www.hifa.org/people/steering-group
Email: info@hri-global.org and jneana@yahoo.co.uk
