Nobel Laureate Luc Montagnier hits a new low: Age of Autism rallies to defend him
From Orac at http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/06/27/luc-montagnier-hits-a-new-low-age-of-autism-rallies-to-defend-him/
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Remember Luc Montagnier? Sure, you do. He’s the Nobel Laureate whose identification of the virus that causes AIDS garnered him plaudits, laurels, and, of course, the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Unfortunately, since winning the Nobel Prize, from a scientific standpoint, Montagnier’s been on a downward spiral. Sadly, it didn’t take long after his Nobel acceptance speech for disturbing signs of crankery and quackery to appear. For instance, Montagnier published a paper that implied that DNA could teleport, using this study, whose results were almost certainly the result of contaminants in Montagnier’s PCR reactions, as support for the principles of homeopathy. On another occasion, Montagnier appeared in an HIV/AIDS denialist film and appeared to be saying that HIV can be cleared “naturally” with diet and supplements. Worse, of late Montagnier has been turning his talents to the treatment of autistic children. Indeed, he’s run highly unethical study of long term antibiotics as a treatment for autism. His low point came a month ago, when he actually presented his work at that yearly autism “biomed” quackfest, Autism One. Let’s face it. As a scientist, it’s really hard to go from winning the Nobel Prize to the ignominy of presenting to a quack conference in such a short period of time, but somehow Montagnier managed it. I thought that was as low as Montagnier could fall.
I was wrong. What to my wondering eyes should appear yesterday on that wretched hive of scum, antivaccinationism, and autism “biomed” quackery, Age of Autism? I saw a post urging AoA readers to write to the President of Cameroon defending Luc Montagnier:
A recent article in Nature shows that the vaccine industry has been closing ranks against Dr. Luc Montagnier ever since his brilliant lecture at AutismOne last month. In particular, 35 Nobel Laureates, led by one who sells commercial products to the vaccine industry, sent a letter to the President of Cameroon protesting Dr. Montagnier’s leadership position on a national research organization dedicated to HIV research. Robert Gallo, the man who tried to steal credit for Dr. Montagnier’s discovery of HIV and is now being funded by the Gates Foundation to develop an HIV vaccine, wrote a similar letter attacking him to the Cameroonian President. Please send the below letter to the Office of the President of Cameroon, Paul Biya, to defend Dr. Montagnier!
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As I said, this letter has to be seen to be believed, and I want you to take a minute to take in the utter depth of antivaccine cranberry contained therein. Yes, AoA really seems to believe that Montagnier is being attacked by shills and minions of the antivaccine industry, led by Roberts, who to AoA is a shill and minion of the vaccine industry because his company sells restriction enzymes and other reagents to vaccine manufacturers, just as it does to thousands of labs in universities all over the world, and Robert Gallo, who is a shill and minion of the vaccine industry because he’s working on an HIV vaccine—just as, I note, Montagnier is as well. So what makes Gallo “bad” and Montagnier “good”? They’re both working on vaccines! Well, obviously, it must be the connection between Gallo and the other dark lord of vaccination besides Paul Offit, Bill Gates.
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It is a long post, but you really should read the whole thing. It details Montagnier falls into quackery and the hilariously paranoid ramblings of the anti-vaccine mothership "Age of Autism".
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