BRUSSELS, May 22, 2007 (AFP) - Herge, who created the immortal boy reporter Tintin, may have died of AIDS as the result of a blood transfusion, a biographer claimed on Tuesday, the centenary of the Belgian cartoonist's birth.
Herge, real name Georges Remi, died in 1983 when "HIV was already known but not identifiable in blood," said Philippe Goddin, who will publish his biography in the autumn through a publisher controlled by Herge's family.
Due to a rare congenital illness, coproporphyria -- an enzyme disorder -- Herge had blood transfusions every week towards the end of his life.
"He began to suffer repeated infections, which didn't tally with his coproporphyria," or the other medical problems he suffered from, Goddin said in Tuesday's edition of the Brussels newspaper Le Soir.
His research led him to believe that the regular blood transfusions transfusions were "without doubt the origin of the flus, pneumonia and bronchitis which repeatedly hit Herge," and that he could have been an undiagnosed victim of AIDS.
Herge died, officially of leukemia, on March 3, 1983.
Belgium is issuing a special commemorative stamp to mark the centenary of its celebrated son.
Monday also saw the laying of a foundation stone for the first Herge Museum at Louvain-La-Neuve, 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Brussels.
And a special exhibition at city hall in Brussels will be open until June 3.
The first episode of a Spielberg film trilogy of the Tintin stories is expected in cinemas in 2009 or 2010.
Herge devised his pen name by reversing his initials.
070522
AF070515
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