Luc Montagnier accused “molecular biologists” of having inserted DNA sequences from HIV into a coronavirus, “probably” as part of their work to find a vaccine against AIDS.

Along with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Harald Zur Hause, Montagnier won the 2008 Nobel Prize for Medicine for the discovery of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

Montagnier made the revelation during an interview with a French news channel. He said that coronavirus could be a result of an experiment to produce a vaccination against HIV gone wrong.

The French virologist has based his claim on the fact that the coronavirus genomic sequence shows elements of HIV, which makes it suspicious for it to have evolved “naturally.” He further alleged that coronavirus could be a result of an industrial accident that may have taken place at China’s Wuhan lab studying coronaviruses in bats since the 2000s.

However, many experts have dismissed Montagnier’s claim and said that many other organisms have the same so-called “unique” protein sequence insertions and not just HIV. Several studies conducted so far to analyze the genetic make-up of coronavirus has shown that it has a natural origin and is not a man-made entity.

One of the studies conducted by a postdoctoral fellow at McMaster University revealed that the very short sequences studied in coronavirus are very similar to that of HIV. However, studying and comparing small protein segments can often result in false positives and no conclusions can be made on the basis of such data.