Luc Montagnier



Luc Montagnier was a French virologist and 2008 Nobel Prize co-winner for his joint discovery of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. He was the co-founder of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention and co-director of the Program for International Viral Collaboration.

Homeopathy
Unfortunately, Montagnier became increasingly cranky in his old age and become a big supporter of homeopathy.

In 2009, he conducted an "experiment" on diluted DNA in which he claimed that the DNA emitted an electromagnetic signal after it diluted down to nothing. Although the brand-new journal (Interdisciplinary Sciences, Computational Life Sciences) claims to be peer reviewed, but at the time of publication Montagnier was chairman of the board, essentially assuring that anything he wrote would be published. He used his laptop with unspecified and varying software, and an unspecified amplifier to experiment, so it's 99.9% certain that he just picked up some white noise.

Along these lines, Montagnier also claimed that the DNA emits abnormal electromagnetic radiation in people with autism, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and multiple sclerosis.

Nevertheless, woo-meisters like Deepak Chopra and Dana Ullman have held this up as a vindication of homeopathic "theories" since Montagnier has become something of an outspoken apologist for homeopathy after he conducted this "experiment". If a Nobel-winner says it, it must be true!

The fact that the effect lasts a few picoseconds (trillionths of a second) has not been reproduced by other scientists, was self-published without peer-review, and according to Montagnier, the research "cannot extrapolate it to the products used in homeopathy".

Apparently, his homeopathic infallibility does not extend to knowing the applicability of his own research.

Montagnier has also spoken in support of immunologist Jacques Benveniste's "delusion[al]" research that resulted in the and the term "water memory".

Claiming the COVID virus was engineered
In 2020, Montagnier and co-author Jean Claude Perez hypothesized based on a genetic data analysis of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the that caused the COVID-19 pandemic, was semi-synthetic. The hypothesis was widely criticized by scientists because the gene sequences alleged to be synthetic occur widely within other coronaviruses in the wild. Another study, published the same year, clearly showed " that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus."

Joining the anti-vaccination movement
He was present at Autism One with such notable kooks as Andrew Wakefield, Jenny McCarthy, and Operation Rescue. In 2021, Montagnier falsely claimed that widespread COVID vaccination would create more virus variants, and called the massive vaccination effort a 'medical mistake'. He also stated that a process called antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) creates more serious COVID infections, however the problem ADE was already addressed during vaccine development.