Nobel-Winning Discoverer Of HIV Luc Montagnier Dies Aged 89

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 11th February, 2022) Luc Montagnier, a French virologist awarded with the Nobel prize for Medicine for co-discovering the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), has died at the age of 89, French education and Research Minister Frederique Vidal said Thursday.

"With the death of Luc Montagnier, France loses a great researcher, (the laureate) of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2008, co-discoverer of the AIDS-associated virus together with Francoise Barre-Sinoussi," the minister tweeted.

Montagnier's death on Tuesday at an American hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, west of Paris, was reported Wednesday by the France Soir daily and confirmed to BFMTV on Thursday by the town's administration.

Officials say they have his death certificate.

The discovery of HIV paved the way for the testing and treatment of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).

Montagnier was a controversial figure in the scientific community because of his claims that a strong immune system could shake off HIV in a matter of weeks, that autism had a bacterial basis and could be treated with antibiotics and, more recently, that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 was made from HIV in a lab.