Egypt's army making a fool of itself this Monday

Last February, the Egyptian army announced that it had developed an incredible device that could diagnose and cure hepatitis C, AIDS and perhaps cancer - all without touching the patient.

On Monday, the army will start treating patients with it.

The miracle device was not described in any major scientific or medical journals. Instead, the paper describing it was published in the World Academy for Science, Engineering and Technology (WASET).'

Egypt Independent did a little checking on that esteemed journal:

As part of the investigation, Egypt Independent's editors made up an obviously incoherent research paper: a merge of plagiarized material from previously published papers on mathematics and some Wikipedia articles. The paper was then sent to the academic journal called World Academy for Science, Engineering and Technology (WASET). In less than 24 hours, the paper was accepted and WASET congratulated the author.

After the good news reached our inbox, WASET, registered in Azerbaijan and ran from Turkey, prompted us to pay a fee of EUR 400 so that the paper gets published and potentially presented in conferences that the author would be invited to. While we did not do that, social media websites abound with complaints from enthusiastic scientists and researchers who have sent their papers to WASET, got published and were asked to pay a fee for an upcoming conference which they did, only to receive nothing in return.

Nature magazine blogged about the device in March:

The miracle machine apparently diagnoses and treats patients non-invasively. The videos shown in the press release show a handheld device with a protruding antenna that follows patients as they walk around the room. Abdul Atti says that the device somehow remotely draws blood from the patient, destroys the virus, and returns it as “nutrients” to the patient. “”I will take it away from him as a disease and give it back to him in the form of a cure,” he said.

...There are several warning bells that leave little room for anything other than skepticism about this claimed discovery.

1) Such a discovery, if it was true, would have possibly been one of the biggest breakthroughs in history. This would have easily been published in one of the highest impact journals, such as Nature, Science or Cell. Instead, this paper appears in a little known journal with no impact factor called World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, which is listed as a potential predatory publisher, publishing hoaxes and poorly peer reviewed or non-reviewed papers.

2) The paper is poorly written. The language is poor, details are lacking, there is no proof of principle offered and no logical explanations. They just talk about tests on patients without even outlining the steps taken before starting to experiment on humans. There is no clear explanation of the processes followed either.

3) The researchers claim they have received a patent for their invention. However, a quick search shows that the patent review team commented that the “description undoubtedly lacks a clear and complete disclosure of the claimed invention and cannot be allowed under Article 5 PCT.” They claim in the paper that they have patented their invention, but that is a lie.

4) With a little basic understanding of science, one cannot help but be completely skeptic about how the device works due to the large number of question marks surrounding it. The device is claimed to work remotely through electromagnetic waves. Somehow it is the first process that uses biological electromagnetic frequencies (EMF) to detect signature marks of the viruses. This is something unheard of in any of the past science literature, yet there is nothing offered in the paper on the research or the principles used.

Then, there’s the question of how is the blood drawn out of the body, and then inserted back in again afterwards? How does it recognize the signature of the virus with the incredible 100% accuracy claimed? So many unanswered questions.

All in all, the paper does not follow any scientific methodology, jumping straight to clinical tests that they claim to have performed using the new device.

This is just a few of the problems with the paper, the research, and the methodology attached to this outrageous claims. The research is too poor to even be taken in consideration.

For now, this is not science. I do not know what this can even be called.

How about "a hoax?"

In May, an Egyptian doctor went to a science exhibition and debunked the device in about ten seconds:

There was a group of people surrounding a young man's whose only job was to present and test the device. One man held a C-Fast device while another held a bit of plastic on which was written "Virus C". I understood that there is a Virus C sample in the bit of plastic.

The antenna really did move towards the bit of plastic. The man would move the bit of plastic and the antenna would move in its direction. I asked them, in front of the crowd, to do the experiment again while the man holding the C-Fast had his eyes closed. He agreed without hesitation and they did the experiment again in front of the crowd. The man moved the bit of plastic and the antenna didn't move in its direction. He moved it left and right and the antenna didn't move. In the end it moved to the left. I asked the man to open his eyes so that he could see where the antenna was and where the bit of plastic was - both in completely different directions.

I did this because I know that the device works according to the ideomotor effect, a psychological phenomenon whereby a subject makes unconscious physical responses to thoughts, i.e. the device user moves his hand very slightly and imperceptibly and the antenna moves towards the target. The device will not therefore work if the user is unable to see the moving target.

The young man responded to me saying that the device requires two weeks training and that he was only trained on it while his eyes were open.

According to Egyptian paper Youm7 and translated here:

• 70,000 applied for treatment by email
• The device treated 1000 patients till now. Including judges, deputy ministers and doctors
• Treatment started in Abbasseya hospital (not clear which one) and Almaza military hospital. 100% of cases of HIV were cured. 97% of Hepatitis C.
• Foreign patients will be received in special hospitals until a tourist resort is dedicated to foreigners with HIV
• Every day 30 doctors are trained on using the devices. By June 30 a trained doctor will operate each device.
• Another source said the device treated 50 Hepatitis C cases and 30 HIV.

Unfortunately, thousands of Egyptians who are seriously ill are betting their lives on a worthless plastic and metal gadget.

There is a tiny ray of hope for Egypt's Hepatitis-C sufferers, though, in this story from March:

Gilead Sciences, facing mounting criticism over the high price of its new hepatitis C pill Sovaldi, has offered to supply the medicine to Egypt at a 99 percent discount to the U.S. price.

While the drug will still cost $900 for a 12-week course of treatment, that is a fraction of the $84,000 charged for a course of treatment in the United States.

The high price tag in America prompted questions from U.S. lawmakers on Friday, after U.S. health insurers said they were seeking help from state health officials to foot the bill.

Gilead said it was "pleased to have finalized an agreement" for the introduction of Sovaldi in Egypt, which has the highest prevalence rate of hepatitis C in the world.

"We believe Sovaldi could have a major impact on public health in Egypt by significantly increasing the number of people who can be cured of hepatitis C," Gregg Alton, head of corporate and medical affairs at Gilead, said in an emailed statement.

Does Egypt realize that the device is worthless and it negotiated this deal to save face by curing some Hep-C victims, pretending that the Complete Cure Device is what is really curing them?

Official Egyptian media continues to insist that the CCD is legitimate.

Whatever happens, Egypt will become the laughingstock of the world this Monday.