The researchers said they were not trying to determine the cause of the illness, which the U.S. government now calls an “abnormal health incident” (AHI). NIH researchers also disproved speculation following extensive media coverage that U.S. officials were attacked by an unknown foreign enemy using some type of newly invented pulsed energy. I didn't try. weapon.
Instead, the focus was on the patient's health, including whether there were any signs of injury or brain damage.
The new findings threaten to reignite a controversy over a now global medical mystery that has led to a series of inconclusive investigations, confounded the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency, and heightened tensions between the United States and Cuba. The NIH study is unlikely to resolve political debates, but it could heighten doubts in the scientific and intelligence community about the existence of an unknown enemy targeting government officials with exotic weapons.
Researchers stressed that the patients who volunteered for the study, which began in 2018, did have severe and potentially debilitating symptoms.
“These symptoms are real, they feel it, and we acknowledge it,” said Leighton Chan, lead author of one of the papers. “One-third of the cases he's not functioning or having a hard time functioning.”
The researchers believe their findings should be taken as good news, as these patients showed no evidence of brain damage and many are already showing signs of improvement.
Two previous studies, also published in JAMA, reported that brain scans of some patients showed abnormal features compared to controls. The NIH report said the new data did not support previous findings.
True symptoms, cause unknown
The JAMA paper seeks to explain the rash disease, which received its nickname after a number of State Department employees reported mysterious symptoms while stationed at or near the U.S. Embassy in Havana in late 2016. It's the latest effort by medical and national security experts.
Patients reported intrusive sounds and pressure in the head, followed by a wide range of symptoms including dizziness, pain, blurred vision, ringing in the ears, fatigue, nausea, and cognitive impairment. Some people report hearing a buzzing or high-pitched sound just before they feel sick.
As media reports proliferated, some national security officials speculated that Russia or some other adversary had developed a secret pulse-energy weapon. Havana Syndrome has since spread globally, with reports in Europe and Asia of U.S. officials suffering from a variety of symptoms due to what then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson described as “targeted attacks.”
The medical mystery had immediate and long-lasting political consequences. The Trump administration responded in 2017 by expelling Cuban diplomats and reversing Obama's policy of engagement with the communist-ruled island.
The State Department and intelligence agencies began a multiyear effort to find the alleged culprit. However, the search for the criminal ended in vain. In March 2023, intelligence agencies confirmed that there was no foreign enemy behind the phenomenon and that AHI was not caused by energy weapons or electronic surveillance that may have unintentionally made people sick. It was concluded that the incident did not occur as a by-product of other activities such as.
Intelligence officials said they continue to welcome new ideas and evidence. For example, if information emerges that a foreign adversary is developing technology for energy weapons, that could cause analysts to adjust their assessments.
Further investigation has raised further questions about whether there was any type of attack. But the politics of Havana syndrome make skepticism difficult. And the initial JAMA investigation and two other government-sponsored investigations fueled speculation that patients were attacked with weapons that emit pulses of electromagnetic energy.
From 2018 to 2021, the NIH The research team recruited federal employees and their adult family members who reported AHI. They continued collecting data until 2022. Eighty-six of the volunteers underwent psychological tests, as well as vision, hearing, balance and blood markers, and 81 of them also underwent MRI scans to look for brain damage. The results were then compared to a control group.
“When we tested cognitive function, we didn't see any such deficits,” said Robert Reed, associate director of the National Intrepid Center of Excellence at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and co-investigator on the study. Louis French, a neuropsychologist, said: “What we're seeing here in some cases is people who, for various reasons, have ongoing symptoms that are being reported, but when you look at this objectively, it doesn't actually happen.”
The lack of signs of brain damage does not exclude the possibility of external adverse events causing the symptoms, said Carlo Pierpaoli, lead author of the neuroimaging paper.
In a sign that research still hasn't settled the question, JAMA also led two previous studies that found that AHI “may be plausibly explained by exposure to directional pulsed radiofrequency waves.” published an editorial by David Relman, a professor of medicine at Stanford University. energy. “
“Although advanced neuroimaging techniques were used in the NIH study, current MRI techniques are either insensitive to the types of potentially transient cellular and local physiological perturbations that characterize AHI, or Or the timing may be inappropriate,” Relman wrote in an editorial.
Mark Zeid, an attorney who represents current and former federal employees and their families who say they are afflicted by AHI, also cast doubt on the new study.
“Frankly, they have revealed little other than the claim that they could not identify differences between the AHI and non-AHI populations,” Zaid said in a statement. “No doubt the intelligence community will point to these studies and say, 'Look, like we said, there's nothing there.' But lack of evidence is not evidence.”
