CALGARY - When Dr. Luc Montagnier painstakingly teased out the source of the new mysterious AIDS syndrome in a Paris laboratory 25 years ago, the very concept of the disease sparked panic in many people.
But people have become complacent and infections are on the rise, even in many developed countries, because they trust science will develop a vaccine or cure that in reality may be many years away, Montagnier said Monday.
"It seems that the young generation has forgotten about prevention, because they think there are cures for HIV, that it's no big deal," the Nobel Prize winner said after giving a talk in Calgary.
"But it is, because HIV treatment is very heavy, has to be kept for the rest of their lives, and if they are young this is really a burden."
The rush for a cure, while important, should never overshadow the push for prevention, said Montagnier, who shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Francoise Barre-Sinoussi for identifying the virus that causes AIDS.
He disputes the idea that modern medicine makes AIDS a controllable disease. While a cocktail of drugs can keep people alive for decades, the punishing side effects can make life miserable, painful or even cause death, he added.
"In the long-term they may die not of AIDS, but of a side effect: cardiovascular, obesity and hypertension, brain disease," he said.
"It's still a very important disease, and it's not a chronic disease."
This attitude is even showing up in Alberta, where in a "baffling" trend, HIV infections have risen 20 per cent over the past two years, said Amanda Chapman, communications analyst for AIDS Calgary.
Montagnier's message of prevention is one the organization has continued to push, she said. People should control their own actions because they can't count on scientists making a breakthrough.
"Every single route they've taken has failed. Nothing has worked," she said.
"So it's really risky to say, `well, we think science is going to be able to find the answer for us', when, really, all you have to do is put on a condom."
Montagnier said it will be easier to find a cure for the disease rather than a preventative vaccine, but either option is still a long way off.
Attempts at finding a vaccine were pushed into clinical trials far too quickly and failed, he said. They were modelled on the way other viruses work, not on HIV's unique properties.
"A lot of money has been spent for nothing by using premature phase 3 trials with thousands of patients," he said. "At some point it should have been stopped because people are continuing on this same model, and they will fail, all the time."
It makes more sense to look at blasting all remnants of the disease once it has taken hold, he said.
Current treatments can reduce evidence of infection to nothing, but pockets of disease are hidden away and come surging back if medication is stopped. An attainable goal may be to attack those reservoirs, so that HIV becomes something that can be eradicated over a fixed period of time, rather than being a lifelong problem.
This could help countries in places with high infection rates such as some African countries, and fear of a lifelong disease means people don't even get tested, he said. A disease with a prospect of a cure wouldn't carry the same stigma.
"If they learn they can prevent the disease after infection, they will be more likely to be treated for the infection, they will change their perception."
