The Master Detective, Still on the Case

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."