Throughout the past week, several state-owned newspapers published reports boasting the of the Egyptian military's invention of the first devices that can not only detect Hepatitis C and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), the virus that leads to AIDS, but can also cure them. The detection device is called C-Fast, and is a bomb detector that was reportedly further developed to detect an electromagnetic pulse that those diseases emit in patients' bodies. The curing device is called Complete Cure Device (CCD). It draws blood from the patient, breaks down the disease and returns the purified blood to the body. In a fanciful film presented on national TV on 25 February — that was later uploaded to social networks across the internet — not only were we shown the miraculous device that detects the diseases, but we were informed by the army doctor that there is another incredible tool that could cure the two diseases in addition to Psoriasis. The doctor on the film was addressing an AIDS patient, informing him that he used to have HIV, but now he is cured from the deadly disease forever. The patient gives thanks to God. However, both devices, invented by chief army engineer Ibrahim Abdel-Atti, are being rejected by specialists and experts and described as “shocking”. Military leaders have come in for ridicule on social networks such as Facebook, and Twitter after Abdel-Atti unveiled what he described as a “miraculous” set of devices that can detect and cure HIV, Hepatitis C along with other viruses. Wahid Doss head of National Liver Institute pointed out that he attended a demonstration of both devices, but “there was not convincing explanations about the technology used in it or how it operates.” “As it is at present, the device is proposed without any convincing technical and scientific basis, and until this is clearly provided it should be regarded as a potential fraud,” said Doss. None of the research behind the devices has been published in respected scientific or medical journals, he added. “What has been said is not scientific. Nothing has been published about the devices, and there is nothing mentioned at any of the international or medical conferences, and there is no single eminent professor around the project,” said Doss. Meanwhile, Gamal Shiha, head of the Association for Liver Patients Care, one of Egypt's prominent centres that worked with the military, said he was angry about the “hasty” announcements. He said only one of the devices, C-Fast, had undergone several tests. The other did not. Shiha said that C-Fast uses electromagnetic frequencies similar to those used in bomb detectors and radars and had been tested on more than 2,000 patients with a high success rate. “The technology of C-Fast is very effective, no doubt about that,” Shiha said. However, he dismissed claims that it detects HIV and that the other device cures viruses. Despite the scepticism, Health Ministry spokesman Mohammed Fathallah said the ministry approved the C-Fast device. “Former Health Minister Amr Helmi, originally a liver surgeon, approved the C-Fast two years ago, but no one at the ministry heard about the other device which is called CCD,” he said. Ihsan Hussein, a member of Abdel-Atti's research team, pointed out that CCD pulls blood from a patient, breaks down the disease and returns the purified blood back to the body. “It cures the disease in just 16 hours,” said Hussein. According to Doss, this is ridiculous. “What does this device do exactly? Scientifically it is impossible to take out all the unclean blood out from the patient to purify it in just 16 hours. Cleaning any patient's blood takes a long process and a long time too. Also, if the patient is emptied of all his blood, as claimed, then he will die, just like that,” argued Doss. The C-Fast device allegedly detects viruses via metal rod. The rod swings towards people who suffer from Hepatitis C, and remains still around those who do not. Abdel-Atti claimed the movement of the rod is generated by the presence of a specific electromagnetic frequency that emanates from a certain strain of Hepatitis C. “The device was experimented in over 2,000 cases across the country, without ever returning a false negative result. The device can detect the presence of HIV in patients with 100 per cent rate accuracy, whereas the device has proven its success in detecting Hepatitis C at a rate of 98 per cent accuracy,” said Abdel-Atti. Doss pointed out that back in the 1960s state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram published an article about an astounding scientific invention made by the military. The article was about the first “Arab-made airplane” — one that could reach Mach II. A few days later, another article was published about the creation of missiles that could reach outer space. “Almost everyone who read the news believed it, and believed that we were becoming a super power, until the 1967 War, when our army was defeated in only six days, and all of those inventions were seen as fiction,” said Doss. But perhaps the biggest blow to the claimed breakthrough came from Essam Heggy, scientific adviser to interim President Adli Mansour. He slammed the declaration as a scientific “scandal” for the nation, and the army as well. “Such a declaration could ruin the country's image,” said Heggy. It was rumoured that Heggi was expelled after his announcement. This was later denied. “Neither the president nor Defence Minister Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi knew about this medical announcement. Both were surprised,” said Heggy. Both were in the room when the initial announcement was made, and nationally broadcast. Since the announcement almost all scientists inside and outside Egypt are in a state of shock, Heggy added. It was reported in The Guardian newspaper that Massimo Pinzani, chair of Hepatology Department at University College London's Institute for Liver and Digestive Health, said he attended a demonstration of the devices during a visit to Egypt but was not provided with any scientific explanation of how they operate. “If the scientific basis for the concept could be proved, it could be a revolution in medicine,” Pinzani pointed out. “I was not allowed to use the device or try it myself,” he added. According to Pinzani, before being accepted the technology needs to be validated and endorsed by an independent panel of experts, and that he would be available to participate in a study once the validity of the technology was established. It was also reported in the newspapers that Said Hamid, head of the Pakistan Society for the Study of Liver Diseases, experimented with the device in Pakistan. He said it “worked accurately in our patients tested in a blind fashion. If validated further, the scanner would be potentially very useful in screening large populations or groups of people very cost-effectively.” Hamid pointed out that in a comparable case in 2009, Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier — the man who discovered HIV — also claimed that DNA molecules emitted electromagnetic waves. His research was ridiculed by fellow scientists as “pathological science”, and seen as an apology for homeopathy. Egypt's announcement has been seen by many as an attempt by the army to win further political support in a country that has one of the world's highest Hepatitis C infection rates and is suffering from endemic political instability. Physician and medical talk show host Khaled Montasser also said he was sceptical of the announced curing methods. “We have to follow the international scientific path by publishing these researches in scientific journals and demonstrating them at international medical conferences,” Montasser said.
