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http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/2008/200812/20081208/article_383662.htm
Nobel winner believes AIDS can be defeated
Created: 2008-12-8 1:19:26
A FRENCH scientist who shared this year's Nobel prize for medicine said he believed the transmission of AIDS could be eliminated within years.
Luc Montagnier, director of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, on Saturday told a news conference together with this year's other winners for medicine that halting the transmission of AIDS would make it a disease much like others.
"Our job, of course, is to find complementary treatment to eradicate the infection. I think it's not impossible to do it within a few years," Montagnier said.
"So I hope to see in my lifetime the eradication of, not the AIDS epidemic, but at least the infection," the 76-year-old said. Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi of the Institut Pasteur shared half of the 2008 prize for discovering the virus that has killed 25 million people since the early 1980s.
There is no cure for AIDS, which infects an estimated 33 million globally, but cocktails of drugs can control the virus and keep patients healthy.
Montagnier said he hoped a therapeutic vaccine could be developed within about four to five years, noting he and colleagues had already been working on this for a decade.
German scientist Harald zur Hausen of the University of Duesseldorf won the other half of the 10-million-Swedish-crown (US$1.2 million) award for finding the cause of cervical cancer.
Barre-Sinoussi, who had come from Senegal following a meeting with the African country's president, feared the global financial crisis could lead some countries to water down their commitment to the fight against diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis or malaria, so it was important Nobel winners tried to use their influence.
The three are in Stockholm for "Nobel Week."
Luc Montagnier, director of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, on Saturday told a news conference together with this year's other winners for medicine that halting the transmission of AIDS would make it a disease much like others.
"Our job, of course, is to find complementary treatment to eradicate the infection. I think it's not impossible to do it within a few years," Montagnier said.
"So I hope to see in my lifetime the eradication of, not the AIDS epidemic, but at least the infection," the 76-year-old said. Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi of the Institut Pasteur shared half of the 2008 prize for discovering the virus that has killed 25 million people since the early 1980s.
There is no cure for AIDS, which infects an estimated 33 million globally, but cocktails of drugs can control the virus and keep patients healthy.
Montagnier said he hoped a therapeutic vaccine could be developed within about four to five years, noting he and colleagues had already been working on this for a decade.
German scientist Harald zur Hausen of the University of Duesseldorf won the other half of the 10-million-Swedish-crown (US$1.2 million) award for finding the cause of cervical cancer.
Barre-Sinoussi, who had come from Senegal following a meeting with the African country's president, feared the global financial crisis could lead some countries to water down their commitment to the fight against diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis or malaria, so it was important Nobel winners tried to use their influence.
The three are in Stockholm for "Nobel Week."
Agencies
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