Havana Syndrome: U.S. and Canadian diplomats targeted with possible weapon causing brain injury and neurological symptoms

Perhaps the Cubans are still pissed about all those ticks the US airdropped onto them back in the 1960's?

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1630972815011610627

 

Washington Post article on findings

https://wapo.st/3kEuBGO

 

Gaffney crowing

https://twitter.com/user/status/1630975922592681984

 

The various 'sonic weapons' theories floating about always seemed pretty questionable imo. When the CIA is promoting it it's difficult to judge - maybe they'd cooked up some bizarre secret weapon themselves - but there was never much in the way of evidence to support that view.

When the whole US diplomatic service is asked to be on the lookout for symptoms that are pretty commonly occurring in the population, it's not that surprising lots of cases turned up.

 

I wouldn't have thought it would make a lot of sense for an adversarial country to target embassies in the way suggested. I'm sure a lot of effort goes in to trying to work out who are diplomats and who are intelligence officers (source: spy novels). Why risk losing track and having people replaced? I can't recall, but was it only US embassy staff affected? I'm pretty sure it was not confined to Cuba but mostly there.

Given the experience with Gulf War Illness, I'd have to wonder whether they used an accelerated / more extensive vaccination programme, similar to military service personnel, and perhaps these effects resulted from immune dysregulation. If that were true, then the first Gulf War might have been fortunately timed prior to widespread female military deployments, or the numbers might have been even worse.

 

I have followed this syndrome closely. I believe in the patients and there is much written on this in public papers.

This is a time of geo-political unrest. Governments will be doing all sorts of denials.

 

We can believe the patients without believing the explanations.
And of course the whole story was very convenient for the then US administration - appearing at just the desired time.

 

I believe the patients as well. The main reason I’m cranky about this is that this was one of Natalie Shure’s big crusades. If she “won” this one she will likely feel more emboldened about her MECFS views.

This is Natalie’s work https://www.s4me.info/threads/artic...includes-sharpe-garner-carson-and-more.30818/

 

I agree with others that 'believing patients' isn't the best way of thinking of this (did the patients even start making claims about sonic weapons? I thought that was others), and if you start rejecting views just because other people hold them, that's only going to make it easier for them to paint you as unreasonable imo.

People you passionately disagree with are going to be right about some things, and arguing against them when they're right is to their benefit.

I fear that can happen around ME/CFS when biopsychosocial ideas are presented in a very vague manner and patients can react too strongly against them without really going into the details, because of the history of what has happened there that most people are going to be unaware of, and so making critics of BPS approaches seem unreasonable to others.

 

Which only proves these people aren't serious. This was an intelligence assessment, not a scientific one, about a far-out hypothesis. And even disproving one hypothesis does not make another one true, this is blatant logical fallacy.

It shows the bankruptcy of the reasoning: "there is no confirmed evidence for this far-out hypothesis, thus proving my own unconfirmed far-out hypothesis, which is a default explanation that has no evidence and has been debunked many times".

Basically, the same old: "we don't know" = psychosomatic fairy tales. The facts are unclear here and have been hopelessly politicized and distorted. And it continues the trend where denying and dismissing health concerns is very political, and part of the dark aspects of human nature.

 

Evidence for a psychogenic cause does not seem to exist but somehow it's acceptable to believe in this cause while dismissing other possible causes because of a lack of reliable evidence.

Disappointing.

 

Even though they found no “smoking gun” they still believe from the evidence that something is wrong

Politico: Pentagon still probing what caused ‘Havana Syndrome,’ even after spy agencies found no smoking gun

Of course we can be almost certain the cause is different from ME/CFS, though it’s very useful for studying ME pathology and etiology to see that the symptoms are eerily similar?

People with Havana syndrome describe their “brain is broken” and they struggle doing exertion without severe pain afterwards. All of us have been saying this about our illnesses for many years. Crashes for many of us feel like an insane severe concussion or other major head trauma.

I’m wondering what can we learn from this, did the chronic immune activation after the triggering illness simply cause us permanent brain damage? After my triggering infection I felt like I had encephalitis and that my brain was going to explode for most of the following year. Super swollen lymph nodes in my neck and groin, etc.

Maybe the MRIs done in ME studies were not advanced enough or had too small cohort to reveal similar brain damage findings.

 

Maybe the single connecting pathology between Havana and ME/CFS is balance and vestibular damage to the inner ear and/or cerebellum white matter.

I’ve not talked about it here, but one very prominent ME symptom I have is that when I’m upright my brain and body seem to be constantly doing noticeable micro-adjustments to keep myself upright and to keep my balance. Never existed before ME. My torso and head constantly micro-wobble and adjust back to front (not side to side) in a battle to keep my torso balanced and my body upright.

It’s like some signaling mechanism doesn’t work or is giving the wrong info (vestibular inner ear possibly) and my body has to use other sources of info to maintain my balance and these other sources are nowhere near as accurate (like my eyes).

I feel this could be a big contributor to ME symptoms because your brain has to expend so much energy struggling to maintain your balance which it didn’t have to do before. This alone could cause many of the symptoms we experience.

 

Some more recent Havana syndrome testimonials and interviews

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-Lcfbr2y2w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxxbd2U7br0

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3QnpyRKZpM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8mwCrHuHYA

 

I have to review this in more detail but wondering how these more recent DTI MRI brain region findings and comparison to previous work connect to ME symptoms and overlap with Havana DTI findings

https://www.s4me.info/threads/diffu...-fatigue-syndrome-2021-thapaliya-et-al.21764/

 

The main conclusion:

All regions part of brain stem. How does this correlate to the findings in Havana syndrome that have primarily cerebellum damage?

 

The original Havana brain imaging study found issues primarily in the cerebellum

https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/n...ersonnel-developed-neurological-symptoms-cuba

 

I think I could be wrong… because medulla, pons, midbrain all control areas like breathing, sleep/wake cycle, temp regulation, vision, hearing, motor control, alertness, heart rate, blood pressure… all unconscious processes and definitely all very strongly linking to symptoms we experience.

Cerebellum primarily functions to maintain balance by making postural adjustments. Maybe I have some damage there from ME but others might not.

But in general if ME is the result of damage to brain stem areas for many of us, will there ever be a cure or treatment? They say for Havana there is none and will likely never be one.