Some will keep the image of the talented researcher, Nobel Prize in Medicine, acquired late in 2008 for his discovery of the AIDS virus in 1983. Others his controversial statements on the origins of the Covid-19 epidemic and the vaccination campaign massive. Biologist Luc Montagnier, professor emeritus at the Institut Pasteur, died Tuesday at the American hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris, at the age of 89.
The information was published by the conspiracy site FranceSoir, which the scientist was close to in recent months. It was then taken up on Twitter by many anti-vax and anti-pass activists, like the lawyer Fabrice Di Vizio, demanding a presidential tribute in passing. The mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, Jean-Christophe Fromantin, finally confirmed this Thursday afternoon the information to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The very controversial Professor Didier Raoult, still at the head of the Marseille IHU, was among the first to salute the memory of a “man whose originality, independence and discoveries on RNA have allowed the creation of the laboratory which isolated and identified the AIDS virus”. And to conclude, as a parallel with his own career: “This earned him glory, the Nobel Prize, and the incredible hostility of his colleagues. The attention paid to his latest hypotheses was disproportionate.”
A prestigious past, then a long drift
Yet it is indeed on this dichotomy that the character of Montagnier rests entirely. The biologist, RNA specialist who began his career in the 1950s at the Faculty of Sciences in Paris, before pursuing it at the CNRS and then at the Institut Pasteur (from which he is now disowned), is both the author of one of the major discoveries of the last century, as well as the winner of a multitude of awards, including the CNRS Silver Medal, the Lasker Prize for Medicine, the Gairdner Prize, and many more. A long and rich career rewarded by the State with the obtaining of the ranks of Commander of the National Order of Merit and Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor.
But at the end of his life, the man was ostracized from the scientific community. Is right. The first alerts date back to the very beginning of the 21st century, with the promotion of a treatment based on fermented papaya against Parkinson’s disease to Pope John Paul II. The slippage is much more serious, in 2009, the day after his Nobel Prize, when in an interview, he declares that the body defends itself better against the AIDS virus with a good immune system, accompanied by good antioxidant nutrition. What arouse the ire of his colleagues. At the same time, he gives substance to the theory of DNA teleportation, according to which it can imprint an electromagnetic imprint on water molecules. In 2012, he believes that the causes of autism should be sought in the environment and bacterial infections.
The coup de grace comes five years later, in 2017, during the transition from three to eleven compulsory vaccines. On this occasion, and in the company of his colleague Henri Joyeux, Luc Montagnier establishes a link between vaccination and sudden infant death syndrome, which affects several hundred babies in France each year. An exit that the academy of medicine and pharmacy do not let pass. “The comments they made, which are sure to cause trouble for parents of young children, are unfounded and must be denied. The National Academies of Medicine and Pharmacy emphasize the emotional nature of the facts reported and strongly protest against statements that have no scientific basis. The divorce is consummated.
Targeted tributes
His positions on the Covid-19 were thus hardly surprising. Luc Montagnier first said that the SARS-CoV-2 virus had been manipulated and had sequences from HIV. He then spoke out against vaccination, raising possible – but unproven – risks of developing Creutzfeldt-Jakob-like diseases. Evoking here and there the risks of aluminum used as an adjuvant, which is not the case in vaccines against Covid-19, and in particular those with messenger RNA like Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. According to Luc Montagnier, the variants (Alpha, Delta, Omicron…) finally came from injections. “The new variants are the production, the result of the vaccinations and therefore you always see in the countries, even for India now it’s the same, you have the curve of vaccinations and the curve of deaths now which follows”, indicated the former professor of medicine. He signs, on the occasion of the pandemic, a sadly noticed appearance in the conspiratorial documentary “Hold-Up”.
Few personalities from the political class have so far reacted to his disappearance. With the logical exception of far-right personalities, and those close to the anti-vaccine, anti-restriction movement, such as Florian Philippot, and the leader of Debout la France, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan. The latter spoke on Twitter of the disappearance of “one of the greatest French scientists (…) We will miss his courage, his freedom of thought and speech during the Covid crisis”. Neither the Academy of Medicine nor the Institut Pasteur have so far reacted to the announcement of his death, which came only a few days after the first tests of an AIDS vaccine using RNA technology. messenger. An immense hope in the face of the virus which he had therefore helped to identify.