AIDS and Its History Professor Luc Montagnier, who discovered the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in 1983, and Professor Peter Duesberg, who first mapped the genetic structure of such viruses, are to challenge the orthodox view that HIV is the exclusive cause of AIDS at an "alternative" AIDS conference in Amsterdam next month. Montagnier said last week at the Institute Pasteur in Paris, where he heads AIDS research, that infection with HIV did not necessarily lead to AIDS, and that in rare cases AIDS could develop in people who were not infected with HIV. He revealed that several promising lines of research and treatment were being explor