Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/080392/08039927.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 4KB | 80 lines

                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 34

INVINCIBLE AIDS

The Master Detective, Still on the Case


The French scientist who isolated the original AIDS virus is
hotly pursuing yet another microscopic culprit

By Frederick Ungeheuer/Paris


    The mood of despair in Amsterdam last week was not shared by the
small, stocky Frenchman who is one of the leading pioneers of
AIDS research. By rights, Dr. Luc Montagnier ought to be alarmed
by the suggestion that AIDS might occur without the HIV virus.
After all, it was his team at the Pasteur Institute nine years
ago that first isolated the infectious agent known as HIV.

    But Montagnier knows his virus. He knows firsthand that it
alters its genetic code as often as Madonna changes her persona,
and thus could easily hide from a blood test. And when
perplexed scientists turned to him for answers to the unsettling
questions raised in Amsterdam, he delivered his views with the
stoic self-assurance that has become his trademark.

    No, "contrary to what American researchers think," he was
not persuaded by the evidence that there must be a new virus.
No, he did not believe the HIV-free infections supported the
dubious theory that HIV is innocent of causing AIDS. And yes,
he is still optimistic that effective vaccines will be found,
probably before the year 2000. He, for one, does not plan to be
working on AIDS for the rest of his career. But then, who knows?
"Dogmatism is a deadly sin in science," says Montagnier.

    In a field that is filled with prickly egos, the
59-year-old Parisian is a rarity: an unassuming professional who
has faced controversy and emerged with his reputation enhanced.
His Old World charm served him well in the difficult years from
1983 to 1987, when he was locked in a battle with Robert Gallo
of the U.S. National Cancer Institute for the glory and the
rewards that came with the discovery of the AIDS virus.

    Gallo, one of the world's most famous -- and ambitious --
scientists, probably did not know that the virus he isolated was
a contaminant that came from a sample sent to him by
Montagnier's lab. But Gallo grabbed the spotlight and tried to
deny the significance of the French achievement -- until the
facts came out and Montagnier got the credit he deserved. A
pained smile plays over Montagnier's face as he recalls the
years of bitter charges and countercharges. "The whole
scientific community followed Gallo," he says. "We knew we were
right, even if we were the only people in the world to know it."

    An accountant's son who excelled in Greek and Latin in
college during the German occupation, Montagnier is no stranger
to adversity. He faced it again in 1990, when he supported a
controversial theory that mycoplasma, a bacterium-like organism,
is the trigger that turns a slow-growing population of AIDS
viruses into mass killers. According to Montagnier, the
explosion of sexual activity in the U.S. during the 1970s
fostered the spread of a hardy, drug-resistant strain of
mycoplasma. HIV, meanwhile, lay dormant in Africa. The AIDS
epidemic began, Montagnier speculates, when the two microbes got
together, perhaps in Haiti.

    The Pasteur Institute is currently testing a promising new
AIDS vaccine, but Montagnier travels around the world more and
more these days, a much sought-after participant in
international conferences. Whenever he returns to Paris, he goes
back to his mycoplasmas -- feeling, as he puts it, "like a cat
that has let the mice run free while it was away."