Montagnier, off the deep end

So this is one of your heroes Dogman?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensa...at-autism-one/

http://tinyurl.com/6p9btw6


It’s no surprise that Jenny McCarthy and Andrew Wakefield, leaders of the anti-vaccine movement, are
speaking at AutismOne. Much more surprising is the presence of Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier,
co-discoverer of the link between the HIV virus and AIDS. What is he doing at this festival of
pseudoscience?

Well, apparently Montagnier has gone off the deep end into pseudoscience himself. He claims that
his new group, Chronimed, has discovered in autistic children

“DNA sequences that emit, in certain conditions, electromagnetic waves. The analysis by
molecular biology techniques allows us to identify these electromagnetic waves as coming from …
bacterial species.”

What the heck? In what seems to be a desperate effort to stay relevant, Montagnier is promoting
wild theories with little scientific basis, and now he is taking advantage of vulnerable parents
(see his appeal here) to push a therapy of long-term antibiotic treatment for autistic children.

This is truly a wacky theory. Montagnier hasn’t been able to publish this in a proper journal, for
a very good reason: it’s nonsense. He claims that quantum field theory – an area of physics in
which he has no qualifications – explains how electromagnetic waves emanating from DNA can explain
not only autism, but also Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, Lyme
disease, and rheumatoid arthritis. Montagnier makes these claims and more in a self-published paper
that he posted on arXiv.

This isn’t Montagnier’s first crazy idea: just a year ago, he claimed that DNA molecules can
teleport between test tubes, also based on some kind of quantum hocus pocus. This crackpot claim
should have been ignored, and it would have been, if not for the fact that Montagnier is a Nobel
laureate. He’s also endorsed homeopathy, another quack treatment.

This is a sad coda to a brilliant medical career. Not only is Montagnier espousing junk science and
tarnishing his own reputation, but he is lending credibility to the AutismOne conference, which is a
festival of hucksters and snake-oil salesman, offering unproven, ineffective, and even harmful
treatments to vulnerable children and their parents.

Autism is a complex, difficult condition. Thousands of researchers are pouring their hearts and
souls into understanding the disease and developing new treatments. AutismOne does a terrible
disservice to autistic children by siphoning away time, energy, and money that could instead go into
real science. We can only hope that it will fade away.
--
-jw