Thursday Rants and Rave: #S02EP02 What we really know about Reem Hamed “Special episode”

Hello and welcome back to a special episode of the Thursday Rants and Rave Podcast.

It's been a year since I last posted an episode.

I wasn’t able to publish any since then because, just a month after that solitary episode, we witnessed a genocide unfolding before our eyes—a genocide that still hasn’t ended. I found it impossible to write or search for episodes while the war on Gaza was ongoing.

I tried to shift my focus to Gaza-related content for the podcast, but I'll be honest—I couldn’t complete it. It wasn't due to procrastination, but rather burnout. I feel a sense of shame admitting this, especially knowing that I’m safe in Egypt, unlike the Palestinians in Gaza.

Nevertheless, I'm back to podcasting because I feel it's necessary to release this specific episode. Something happened last week that compelled me to return to podcasting in Arabic, in an attempt to clarify certain issues and prevent another wave of misinformation. “Shout out to dear fellow blogger and podcaster Israa El-Sakaa who you should follow her podcast if you understand Arabic”

Tonight's episode is not a rant but rather a factual discussion. I believe it’s crucial to clarify some points about an incident that took place in Paris two weeks ago.

Here is what I said in Arabic, it is not a rant.

A young Egyptian PhD student named Reem Hamed passed away in Paris on August 22nd, and now many Egyptians and Arabs believe she was killed.

Here’s what we really know about the late Reem Hamed—may Allah bless her soul and bring patience to her family, especially her mother.

Reem Hamed in a photo from February 2021 "Hamed's FB account"

Reem passed away on the evening of Thursday, August 22, 2024, in Paris circumstances that remain unclear, according to her family and the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates stated that it is closely monitoring the ongoing investigations into the death of the Egyptian researcher, Reem Hamed.

The ministry noted that, upon being notified of Hamed's death, the Egyptian Consulate General in Paris immediately contacted French authorities to seek information about the investigation.

The ministry has also instructed the consulate to expedite the process of obtaining a death certificate and arranging for the repatriation of Hamed's body to Egypt once the investigation is complete. According to French law, Reem’s body will not be released or returned to Egypt until the investigations have concluded.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry does not typically issue statements about every Egyptian who dies abroad, but in this case, it felt compelled to do so because, 24 hours before the statement, news of Hamed's death had become the number one topic on social media.

Following the news of her death, alleged posts from her Facebook account, in which she expressed suspicions of being under surveillance in France, went viral. One such post read:

“I, Reem Hamed, a PhD student in France, acknowledge that I am under surveillance and being coerced into not reporting it. This is due to their involvement in espionage and the use of political directives within the workplace. I refuse to work under these conditions. Recently, I have been threatened with my life, and the driving force behind this is the head of the unit I work in.”

These alleged posts, along with others mentioning suspicious neighbours, were later removed from her Facebook account.

On the other hand, Reem’s LinkedIn profile paints a different picture. It reflects the life of a typical, dedicated researcher and PhD student, sharing posts from other universities. There are no posts indicating paranoia. Her last LinkedIn post, made two weeks ago, was a repost of an announcement for a PhD program vacancy in neuroscience at another French university, shared on August 16, 2024—six days before her death.

On August 17, 2024, Reem posted a religious message on her Facebook account, where she expressed feeling pressured and weak.

However, she also reaffirmed her belief that, in times of weakness, one must remain calm through faith in God.

Unsurprisingly, it was the alleged posts about surveillance and threats that captured the attention of tabloid news websites and social media. Some social media users speculated that suspicious circumstances surrounded her death. The hashtag “#The_right_of_Reem_Hamed” in Arabic went viral on both Facebook and Twitter in few hours.

Nader Hamed, the deceased researcher’s brother, has urged social media users to refrain from discussing any details related to her death until confirmed information is available. He emphasized that there is currently no criminal evidence and that any speculation could potentially harm Reem's rights.

Nader also announced that the family had hired lawyer Seif El-Masry to defend their rights while the French authorities investigate her death. He reiterated the family's request that no potentially harmful or unverified information be published and warned that they reserve the right to pursue legal action against those who defame her or spread unverified details.

Unfortunately, the warning came too late, as it did not stop the spread of rumours and conspiracy theories.

There’s a conspiracy theory circulating that Reem Hamed was a researcher in nuclear energy and fell victim to the so-called "Egyptian nuclear energy scientists’ curse," which supposedly ends the lives of such researchers in strange circumstances—often attributed to the Israeli Mossad. Reem is now being compared to late Egyptian scientists who also died under mysterious circumstances, such as the pioneers Dr Sameera Mousa, Dr Yahia El-Mashad, and Dr Said S. Bedair.

While this conspiracy theory has roots, we’ll set it aside for now. Another widely circulated post claims that the late Reem Hamed worked on the Human Genome Project and supposedly proved that Egyptian genes are not mixed with Jewish genes. The post, which spread like wildfire on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media networks, stated:

“They want to prove that they are the true inhabitants of Egypt and that we have no roots here. That's why they assassinated her—this is the summary and the truth.”

Once again, the theory points to Israel, and as the saying goes, there’s no smoke without fire—especially with Israel’s alt-right Jewish settlers openly calling on social media for the occupation of not only Sinai but also the East Nile Bank as part of their “Greater Israel” ambitions. They might think this rhetoric hasn’t reached us, but it has.

Now, here are the facts we have at this time:

Reem graduated from the Biotechnology Department at the Faculty of Agriculture, Cairo University, in 2018. She also obtained a diploma in Bioinformatics from Ain Shams University, a field that involves using technology to study genomics and genetics. In 2020, Reem received a scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in Genomics at the Institute for Integrative Biology of the Cell at Université Paris-Saclay in France.

She studied there from September 2020 to August 2022.

Afterwards, she received another scholarship to pursue a PhD in Genomics at the same institute in October 2022. The late researcher worked as part of a research group supervised by Professor Carl Mann, a specialist in "cellular senescence and its relationship to cancer," according to the official website of the Institute for Integrative Biology of the Cell. Reem Hamed’s research focused on "cellular senescence and genome stability" as well as "epigenetics," a field that studies how cells regulate gene activity without altering the DNA sequence.

According to Reem Hamed’s profile on the Scientific Arab Forum (SAF), her research specifically aimed to determine if high inflammation is common in ageing fibroblasts and to compare different cells to identify what controls these differences. Fibroblasts are a type of cell found in connective tissues throughout the body. They play a key role in maintaining the structure and function of tissues by producing proteins like collagen, which helps keep tissues strong and flexible.

Most studies on inflammation in ageing cells use a few specific human cell lines, like those from embryonic lungs or fetal foreskins. These cells often show high levels of inflammation when they age due to DNA damage. While various pathways and factors regulate this inflammation, we still don’t fully understand them.

Veteran Egyptian scientists say that Hamed’s research, while important in its field, was relatively safe. She wasn’t a rocket scientist or nuclear scientist.

On August 22, 2024, the body of the 29-year-old Egyptian researcher was found outside the dormitory where she was staying. She had been living at “Résidence Le Bosquet” in Les Ulis, a southwestern suburb of Paris, France, where her body was discovered. Some reports suggest her body was found outside her dorm, while others say it was outside the residence building. I won’t share more unofficial details.

According to some news reports, she had just returned to France after spending a vacation with her family in Egypt.

As much as I respect her family’s wishes, I feel compelled to say that it is not uncommon for researchers and scientists to suffer from immense mental pressure due to their studies, work, and the environment they live in.

Aside from all this, we cannot ignore the fact that Reem Hamed was a veiled, Egyptian, brown young woman living alone in Paris during the resurgence of the French alt-right.

This will not be the last post about Reem Hamed, as I am waiting for the official reports from France.

Now, I would like to share with you the story of another scientist, the American mathematician and Nobel Laureate John Nash.

You may know him from the 2001 Academy Award-winning biopic A Beautiful Mind, where Russell Crowe portrayed Nash.

Nash was a mathematical genius, but he suffered from mental illness starting in the late 1950s after he accepted work with the U.S. Department of Defense in cryptography during the Cold War. His mental illness began with paranoia, as he believed communist agents were following him, and it eventually developed into schizophrenia, leading to nearly a decade in mental institutions.

By 1970, Nash had stopped taking medication and was never admitted to a mental hospital again. In 1994, he won the Nobel Prize in Economics. Sadly, Nash and his wife, Alicia, died in a car accident in May 2015 when their taxi driver—an Egyptian man—lost control of the car, which hit a guard rail, killing both passengers.

Nash’s story is a powerful example of how even the most brilliant minds can suffer from mental illness, especially under the immense pressure that comes with high-stakes academic and government work.

This comparison isn't to suggest anything specific about Reem Hamed’s case, as we are still waiting for official reports, but it does highlight the challenges faced by researchers and scientists, including the mental strain they can endure.

Again, it is not the end of Reem’s story.

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I want to thank all those amazing listeners who are kind enough to listen to my rants in Arabic and the amazing readers who are kind enough to read those very long posts in English.