Popular across the globe for his discovery of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) that causes AIDS, for which he subsequently garnered a Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine,

82-year-old French Virologist Luc Montagnier has since slipped into a series of controversies relating to his research. In Mumbai for the Health Sciences Innovation Conference, he spoke to

dna's Maitri Porecha about the mutations of HIV, his abandoned research on 'memory of water,' and the way forward for tackling the AIDS epidemic THIRTY YEARS HENCE THE

DISCOVERY OF HIV, WHERE DOES THE RESEARCH ON HIV VACCINES AND TREATMENT STAND? AIDS is still a very actual problem. There are treatments to control the disease but they do not cure. We are

the immune system and stay in the body. So strengthening the immune system through good nutrition and strong mindset is the key. At the beginning of the 20th century, the HIV existed but it

blew into an epidemic only by 1980s in US and Africa. We are yet to understand the factors that increased it's virulence. HOMEOPATHY IS NOT CONSIDERED A MAINSTREAM FORM OF MEDICINE

WHILE SOME EQUAL IT TO QUACKERY. Your work on water memory or is the proposed ability of water to retain a memory of substances previously dissolved even after an arbitrary number of serial

dilutions and bacterial dna that produce electromagnetic waves which may lead to possible detection of disorders was hailed by homeopathic communities but was critiqued by many others. Your

comments. My own work is not directly related to homeopathy, but we found a technology that helps detect latent infections by using high dilutions. We proved that we may get rid of the virus

but that it may stay in our body in a latent form through the technology of electtromagnetic waves and bacterial dna. I was researching on this subject for the past ten years including the

research in Jiatong University at Shanghai in China. The work has appeared in peer reviewed research papers. We are trying to expand the theory of water memory for medical applications.

Quantum physics has concrete medical applications to diagnose latent HIV or diseases not known to be of infectious origins, like brain diseases such as Alzheimers or Autism where traces of

bacterial infections have been discovered in the patients, thanks to the proposed technology. However, I am no more attached to Jiatong University. I quit because we could not raise enough

money to further the research. HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO DEAL WITH HIV, ESPECIALLY WITH CASES OF DRUG RESISTANCE EMERGING IN PATIENTS OF HIV/AIDS? WHAT IS THE LINE OF WORK YOU PROPOSE TO DO IN

THE FIELD OF HIV NOW ON? I am proposing to try to make a functional eradication technique in which a patient can stop the treatment without the virus becoming active again in the body. Many

drug companies and universities are a part of this venture. We want to expand but for that we need government and public support as well as a strategy in place. I am also looking to see if

there is the same co-factor in the emerging trend of HIV-2 as that of the more prevalent HIV-1. Less drugs work on HIV-2 and therefore it requires further study. HIV is the deadliest virus

known to the human kind. It has a strategy to escape immune system and attack the body. While Ebola is a simpler virus, HIV is fairly complicated. Ebola is being treated by injecting serum

of patient who has been controlling the virus into patients having active Ebola, but with HIV this is not possible. Above that, it is difficult for patients to take anti-retroviral therapy

drugs everyday. They are not very compliant. While the first line drugs are not expensive and widely used, second line drugs are expensive in developing countries.