(born 1932), French AIDS research scientist. Since the outset of the controversy over who deserved the glory for first isolating the virus that causes AIDS—HIV (human immunodeficiency virus)—Luc Montagnier was confident that he and his coworkers at the Pasteur Institute would eventually receive the credit. It was not until 1992, however, that the competing claim of Robert Gallo of the United States National Cancer Institute was clearly repudiated. Born on Aug. 18, 1932, Luc Montagnier reached adolescence during World War II. He was educated at the Universities of Poitiers and Paris, earning degrees in science and medicine. He began his career as a research scientist in 1955, and joined the Pasteur Institute in Paris in 1972. Montagnier also served as president of the Administrative Council of the European Federation for AIDS Research. The conflict between Montagnier and Gallo dated back to 1984, when the American announced that his research team had isolated the AIDS virus and developed a test to screen blood for the new pathogen. Montagnier—who had earlier sent Gallo samples of a virus that French researchers had isolated—challenged the Gallo claim. Although Gallo responded that the French specimens had played only a minor role in the American breakthrough, it was later revealed that the two viruses—French and American—were nearly identical. Since HIV is highly variable depending upon its source, this duplication could be explained only by Gallo's use—either by accident or intent—of the French virus. A bitter dispute over the rival claims was resolved in 1987 when Gallo and Montagnier agreed to share credit and the United States government and Pasteur Institute agreed to split the royalties from the blood test. Beneath the surface, however, the conflict continued. In 1989 Chicago Tribune reporter John Crewdson wrote a lengthy account of the matter, prompting an investigation that supported Montagnier's primacy and led to charges of misconduct against Gallo. Meanwhile, Montagnier had plunged into other AIDS-related controversies. In August 1992 he questioned the significance of a report by a scientist at the University of California at Irvine that suggested the existence of a new virus causing an AIDS-like disease. More controversial was his suggestion that bacterial-like organisms called mycoplasmas might play a crucial part in the progression from HIV infection to symptomatic AIDS. Although by no means the sole proponent of this theory, Montagnier recognized that his was a minority view. “Some people say, ‘Let's focus on the virus, let's strike at it, and when we have succeeded, the disease will be cured.' I find this hypothesis too simplistic, given that it is precisely when the virus is least virulent . . . that the unexplained deterioration of the immune system takes place.” |