[오늘의 인물] Luc Montagnier
Today (the 1st) is ‘World AIDS Day’. Many people have a fear of AIDS.
The development of antiviral drugs targeting the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the virus that causes AIDS, has become hope for patients. AIDS diagnosis in the 1980s was a ‘death sentence’, but today it has become a manageable chronic disease.
Drug development was made possible by the discovery of HIV. Dr. Luc Montagnier, head of viral oncology at the Institut Pasteur in France, discovered HIV. In 1983, a new virus was identified by culturing lymph node tissue from an AIDS patient, which was HIV.
The following year a debate arose about the ‘first discoverer’. The lymph node tissue used in the study by Dr. Montagnier was also delivered to Robert Gallo, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health. He too discovered a new virus. After a lengthy debate, Dr. Montagnier was recognized as the first discoverer and received the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Dr. Montagnier, who died at the age of 89 in February of this year, took a sad step. He developed a conspiracy theory that the Corona 19 virus was artificially created in a laboratory. He went further and acted as an opponent of the Corona 19 vaccine. He was criticized by the medical and scientific communities for claiming that getting a booster shot for Corona 19 would infect HIV.
Dr. Montagnier left behind the achievement of accelerating the appearance of an AIDS treatment, but in the corona city, he caused confusion with claims without scientific basis and distanced himself from the mainstream scientific community. He came to be remembered as a scholar who received conflicting reviews as ‘a deserter who left outstanding achievements’.