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Sana'a: A Yemeni cleric claiming to cure HIV/Aids patients has said that he was threatened with assassination if he revealed secrets of his "invention" to the world.
The cleric, however, said "a good group" of friends he trusts will continue his efforts to rescue the world from the fatal disease, if he dies.
"Even if I get assassinated, the secrets will be with the group," Shaikh Abdul Majeed Al Zandani told a gathering of doctors, journalists and admirers of his ideas on curing using words of Allah and the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).
To reassure the audience, mostly from his Islamist party Islah, he said he had survived an assassination attempt 25 years ago when the assassin's gun failed to work despite being only a few metres away.
"I will never die except when Allah wants," he added.
Al Zandani said billions of dollars earned by companies all over the world selling "about 120 drugs which only slow the growth of the virus and do not cure permanently" was one of the reasons he withheld the secrets of his invention.
He said, "It is not a crime that a researcher asks for money in return for years of efforts and research."
Asked why he was not selling his knowhow to save millions of sufferers, he said he did not trust the West's patent system.
Most scientific thing
"If there are about 60 million Aids patients in the world, and if we say 20 million use medicines and if we say every dose costs about $10,000 (Dh36,700) at least, then calculate how much money will be made by those," said Al Zandani.
It would be a very profitable business if a company started making his medicine, he said.
"A patent will take about one or two years, and maybe after this I may be told it's not mine, it's somebody else's," he said expressing his unwillingness to apply for a patent.
Although he stressed that his invention is "a drug and not prayer", he said non-Muslim professors and researchers in the West would appreciate his medicine only if they understand the Prophet Mohammad's (PBUH) Hadiths.
"The Hadiths of the Prophet is the most scientific and accurate thing," he said
He blamed the Yemeni Ministry of Health for not not doing the required tests and ratifying his medicine.
He claimed 23 patients out of the 38 he treated had recovered from the disease.
A patent will take about one or two years, and maybe after this I may be told it's not mine, it's somebody else's."
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