Time & Perspective Quote by Luc Montagnier

The line reads like triage spoken under fluorescent lights: urgent, provisional, and quietly political. Montagnier is trying to do two things at once. First, he affirms the moral and scientific emergency of AIDS - "our first priority" signals alignment with a crisis that, in the 1980s and early 1990s, was not just biomedical but also saturated with stigma, fear, and government hesitation. Second, he hedges, and that hedge is the real message: research is a moving target, funding is finite, and institutions need an exit strategy even while the fire is still burning.

"Two years' time" is a telling horizon. It is short enough to sound accountable, long enough to preserve flexibility. It frames AIDS research as potentially solvable, or at least rapidly transformable, which reassures funders and administrators who want deliverables rather than open-ended commitments. The phrase "we don't know where AIDS research will stand" performs humility, but it also smuggles in a budgetary argument: because uncertainty is baked in, diversification is rational. That logic can be read as pragmatic science management - or as a subtle bid to protect labs and careers from being too tightly tethered to one disease, one political moment, one grant pipeline.

The final clause, "thinking of activity on other diseases", is bureaucratic language with real stakes. It reframes urgency into portfolio planning, a reminder that even epochal epidemics must compete inside systems that reward adaptability. Montagnier isn't denying AIDS; he's negotiating the future, signaling that priority is not the same as permanence.