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According to this article (in French) on the (usually respectable) website, Capital, Robert Vachy discovered an drug named Amovir which destroys viral envelopes. According to the article, the anti-viral drug was tested at the Pasteur Institute back in 1996 and was found to kill 99.99% of viruses tested. Jean-Claude Chermmann, one of the co-discoverers of HIV, claimed that "Mr. Vachy has a new and very promising drug."

I am highly skeptical of the claims in this article for the following reasons:

  1. There seems to be no scientific publication neither by Robert Vachy nor about Amovir. There are however some answer to his readers' comments at Inserm (a national institutde of medical research) and a few patents in his name.
  2. The article was updated with some comments by the Pasteur Institute stating that Mr. Vachy submitted two antiviral molecules for testing back in 1996, and both were shown to be antiviral during in vitro testing, but neither were able to prevent replication of HIV.

Is there any evidence that Amovir (or any drug produced by Robert Vachy) is an effective anti-viral drug?

ChrisR
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  • By the way, I checked for "Amovir" and "Vachy" in a large historical set of scientific publications (over nine million items from this past century) and got exactly zero hits. – ChrisR Oct 07 '14 at 11:26
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    I note that your first reason for being skeptical isn't actually a reason; it would be good to tie that fact back to your skepticism. – Oddthinking Oct 07 '14 at 11:59
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    Would a better question be, "Does Amovir exist?" – JasonR Oct 07 '14 at 20:01
  • update 2023: there is now a (super sketchy, since 2020) website announcing something called 'Amovir' that is something related to Herpes: https://bioamovir.org/produits.htm -- the link to the capital aritcle is dead, though, and still no Vachy publications in relevant fields – bukwyrm Jul 03 '23 at 11:13

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