The strange symptoms reported by US diplomatic personnel at various locations around the globe got the name ‘Havana Syndrome’ because it first surfaced in Havana in 2016. They complained of headaches, dizziness, nausea, hearing sounds, and difficulties with thinking and sleep;.
But repeated efforts to try and identify any kind of systematic pattern that might lead to a diagnosis of the cause have come up short, with various alternative theories being postulated ranging from the benign (that the sounds were caused by crickets) to sinister (that the diplomats were being targeted as part of some kind of technological warfare). But none of the theories covered all the cases.
The results of the latest investigation by the National Institutes of Health’s over nearly five-years led nowhere. The good news is that they find no evidence of brain injuries. The bad news is that we still do not know what may have been going on.
“These individuals have real symptoms and are going through a very tough time,” said Dr. Leighton Chan, NIH’s chief of rehabilitation medicine, who helped lead the research. “They can be quite profound, disabling and difficult to treat.”
Yet sophisticated MRI scans detected no significant differences in brain volume, structure or white matter — signs of injury or degeneration — when Havana syndrome patients were compared to healthy government workers with similar jobs, including some in the same embassy. Nor were there significant differences in cognitive and other tests, according to findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
While that couldn’t rule out some transient injury when symptoms began, researchers said it’s good news that they couldn’t spot long-term markers on brain scans that are typical after trauma or stroke.
A subset, about 28%, of Havana syndrome cases were diagnosed with a balance problem called persistent postural-perceptual dizziness, or PPPD. Linked to inner-ear problems as well as severe stress, it results when certain brain networks show no injury but don’t communicate properly. French called it a “maladaptive response,” much like how people who’ve slouched to alleviate back pain can have posture trouble even after the pain is gone.
The Havana syndrome participants reported more fatigue, posttraumatic stress symptoms and depression.
Large numbers of people sharing symptoms that cannot be diagnosed precisely is not uncommon. What is really puzzling is the common thread of US diplomatic personnel being affected. The lack of concrete evidence of damage has had some speculating that the cause may be psychogenic, a kind of mass delusion. Not surprisingly, those who reported the symptoms are taking umbrage at the suggestion that they are imagining them.
I wonder if toxic mold is an issue here? I had my toxic mold time about 20 years ago, at which time there was tremendous insurance company backed resistance to any research into mold effects, and denial that any symptoms could be related to mold in buildings. If a building has roof leaks, it is likely to have mold. The listed symptoms all sound very familiar. Mold victims I know personally seemed to recover in about a year after ending exposure. How good is building maintenance at embassies?
The lack of concrete evidence of damage has had some speculating that the cause may be psychogenic, a kind of mass delusion.
This may be so, but in the absence of some actual “mechanism” causing some people at a certain workplace to be “deluded” but not others, it kinda sounds like a doctor giving up and falling back on “you’re imagining things.”
Another possibility is that US intelligence know a good bit more about this than they’re admitting, but presently have to keep playing dumb to keep our enemy(ies) from knowing how much we know, how we came by the info, and what we might soon be doing about it.
There seems to be some misconceptions going around about what could be causing something like this. Yes, it’s vaguely possible that a lot of people are simply making things up. Very unlikely but possible. But it’s not some binary thing, it doesn’t have to be EITHER an external cause OR lying. They’re reporting stress and depression which can both do a number on you and you don’t have to make anything up for that to happen.
I feel like this is similar to the Satanic Panic. I think most people weren’t lying about what they reported. They were just decieved by others and their perceptions began to match what they expected to see. It’s a bit harder to get symptoms to show like in this case but consider that this story has been spread so well that we all know about it and I’m guessing none of us have anything to do with embassies. I sure don’t.
It may seem to be a symptom but I think there’s a good chance that the best thing we could do for all these people is treat them for the stress, depression, and fatigue they’re reporting. And don’t tell them they’re imagining things, let them tell us that if they end up thinking that later on.
Reminds me of the Seattle windshield pitting epidemic (1954).
From Wikipedia: It was characterized by widespread observation of previously unnoticed windshield holes, pits and dings, leading residents to believe that a common causative agent was at work. It was originally thought to be the work of vandals, but the rate of pitting was so great that residents began to attribute it to everything from sand flea eggs to nuclear bomb testing.
Whatever the ultimate cause is, I could never buy the ‘high tech enemy weapon’ theory. Why would any actor spend money and resources to develop and deploy a novel weapon whose only effect is to cause mild illness? Why target embassy workers? What would even be the point?
More on this topic from my favourite skeptic podcast. Skeptoid.
Quote form episode 761, “Unfortunately, the reporters who trumpeted “microwave weapon” as having been identified as the cause of Havana Syndrome ignored that it was only one of five possible causes discussed in the paper — the last of which was “Psychological and social factors”, the only one that checks all the boxes, and the one broadly agreed upon as the true explanation”.
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4761 & https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4603
Trickster Goddess: I remember hearing what I considered to be credible rumors that the USSR were, in the 1980s at least, working on some sort of “radio frequency (RF) weapons”. I read of an incident at a nuclear-physics research facility in eastern Czechoslovakia, in which a grad student walked into the path of some sort of radio-wave beam and dropped dead instantly. Within days of that, some Red Army folks showed up, tore down half of the building, and carted the machinery off to one of their bases, where they were (allegedly at least) developing an RF weapon that was killing cows at a rather long range.
I have no idea what became of such experiments, or whether this sort of RF-beam weapon is feasible or effective. Maybe the experiments are still ongoing? I can certainly see the Russians continuing to develop something like this if they thought it had any chance of working (and thus bringing both glory and profits to whoever gets to claim credit for it).
Raging Bee: Even if Russians are still experimenting on such a thing, it would make more sense to be doing it in more controlled circumstances like, say, on a group of prisoners than out in the field.
While I can believe that some cases might be based in psychological effects, the evidence suggests that Havana Syndrome is caused by some pathology of the inner ear or the nerves of the auditory system.
It’s nice that they don’t have brain damage, but the symptoms suggest that they could have a parasitic nematode infection via mosquito bites, or been exposed to some chemical that is known to damage your hearing, such as toluene or benzene.
@8: Good point. OTOH, maybe the Russians are confident enough in their weapon to use it for petty harassment of US diplomatic personnel, perhaps to test our reaction. From what I’ve heard, Russians have a long history of inhospitable and harassing treatment of foreign diplomatic personnel. My dad knew someone who had worked for the Dutch or Belgian embassy in Moscow, and he told quite a few anecdotes of crappy lodgings, crappy service, and just plain deliberately pissy treatment from the host country’s officials.