Egyptian "liberals" spin conspiracy theory around US medical research center

MEMRI summarizes an article from Egyptian Al Wafd daily:

On January 27, 2012, the Egyptian daily Al-Wafd published an investigative article on the Naval Medical Research Unit Three (NAMRU-3), a U.S. Navy biomedical research laboratory located in the Al-'Abbassia area in Cairo. The article, titled "NAMRU – The Pentagon's Unit for Killing Egyptians in Al-'Abbassia," claims that NAMRU handles pathogens that could "exterminate the entire Egyptian nation," and that it conducts research aimed at manipulating the Egyptians' genes in order to alter them and cause deformities. The article also alleges that NAMRU is conducting experiments on Egyptian children; that it might be responsible for an increase in infertility, impotence, retardation, and disabilities among the people; and that the data it collects is used to design harmful foods, seeds, and drugs that are developed in America and then sold cheaply to the Egyptians. The daily states that the unit operates freely in Egypt, with the approval of the authorities but without their supervision.

NAMRU's mission statement is to "Study, monitor, and detect emerging and re-emerging disease threats of military and public health importance; develop mitigation strategies against these threats in partnership with host nations and international and U.S. agencies in CENTCOM, EUCOM, and AFRICOM areas of responsibility."

Here are details from the Al Wafd article:

'Your health is in the hands of the American Department of Defense.' This is revealed by the following [facts], gathered from documents of the Pentagon's research unit NAMRU-3, which is the largest American military research unit in the Middle East.

Entering the NAMRU headquarters, you feel you have stepped into a horror film. The place is silent and shrouded in secrecy. Doctors and [other] employees [move about in] white robes, gloves, and caps, and sometimes also masks. The organisms they work with are a kind of bacterial biological weapon, which, if deployed, could exterminate the entire Egyptian nation, or any other nation.

Since the establishment of the NAMRU unit in Egypt, dozens of new and mutated viral diseases have been discovered. This indicates that these pathogens are imported. No research or medical [institute] has infiltrated Egypt to a greater extent than NAMRU, which controls the secrets of the viruses that are used in [weapons of] mass destruction and biological weapons...

NAMRU sees the Egyptian children as an opportunity to test new medicines. In its reports, it notes that the Egyptian children have the best immune systems, even in comparison with soldiers in the American army. NAMRU monitors our children when they are still fetuses by stationing American doctors and researchers in health centers in the [country's] villages, so they can come into contact with pregnant mothers, and the information [these doctors and researchers collect] is linked into NAMRU's network of databanks. [NAMRU] caused a stir when its doctors tried to conduct an experimental study on children in Al-Bahira, claiming they wished to develop a serum from diarrhea for a new vaccination. [As part of this effort,] gifts and money were handed out to the [children's] families in Farshut, Umm Al-Laban, Kum Al-Qanatir, and other villages in central Abu Homs, but the families adamantly refused to turn their children into lab rats...

This incident raised questions, which remained unanswered, over whether American hands in NAMRU were behind the increase in infertility, mental retardation, and disability among Egyptians born in recent years... as well as [instances of] impotence. [This, considering] the dangerous genetic information that NAMRU has collected on the Egyptians, especially patients in the Al-'Abbasia Hospital, and its ability to disrupt [the Egyptians'] natural genes and immune systems; [and also considering the fact] that it sends [Egypt] medicines, seeds, and fodder for animals, and is involved in all experiments [conducted in Egypt] in the fields of agriculture, livestock, water, food, etc.

NAMRU-3 controls the Egyptians' health, for better or worse, and has in its possession all the Egyptian genetic specifications and compounds and their hereditary traits, alongside an arsenal of components for lethal biological weapons, which it can hand over to Israel or any country hostile to Egypt if it ever becomes angry with the Egyptian people, in order to utterly destroy them.

As Barry Rubin notes in an excellent article, this bizarre conspiracy theory is not coming from the Muslim Brotherhood - but from the people considered "liberal" in the Egyptian elections! These people are the ones that Westerners were hoping would win because they supposedly reflect Western values.

In other words, the Egyptian "moderates" are almost as screwed up and anti-Western as the conservatives are.

And this does not bode well for the future of Egypt.