Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Update: Havana Syndrome

Episode Date: March 8, 2022

Havana Syndrome has been in the news lately, so we've brought an update. The CIA has continued to look into people experiencing the symptoms of this strange illness and have found . . . there is some sort of cause after all? So enjoy the full episode explaining the history of Havana Syndrome, and what we've learned in recent weeks. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers https://taxpayers.bandcamp.com/

We're going to try something a little new this week on Sobbing. It's high everybody. High, special, special introduction. We're going to try something a little bit new this week on Sobbing. By doing something a little bit old, isn't that interesting? What a twist. Or a boroughs. We are going to play for you an episode we did about something called Havana Syndrome. And then we are going to return with you after a said episode to give you some updates on some new developments in this, I mean pretty close to a medical mystery. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's basically, and, and remains, we haven't solved it all yet.

Yes. So enjoy this episode and hopefully you will dig it and then we'll talk to you at the end with a little bit of new information. Thanks Saw bones is a show about medical history and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. We came across a pharmacy with a door and that's lost it out. We pushed on through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around Some medicines, some medicines that escalate my cop for the mouth

Hello everybody, welcome to Salbo, it's a marital tour of Miss Guy to Medicine I'm your co-host Justin McAroy And I'm Sydney McAroy Sydney, what do you got on the docket for me today? What do you got? I'm ready to learn I got my thinking cap on. I got my stinking cap off. I don't even know why I bought it.

Honestly, it seems like you're gonna get a lot of use out of a stinking cap, but I didn't even think through it. Well, when you go into Spencer's, you hate to leave empty handed. Yeah, that's true. And my drinking cap, that's my back pocket, because the week kid is just around the corner. But for right now, my thinking cap is on.

And my shrinking cap has not been invented yet. I have some diagrams, I'd like to say here. Okay, let's just, Dr. Zalinsky and I have made a lot of progress on the shrinking cap. Let's just do this episode of sobbing. That sounds like a good start. Let's do that.

So there's a lot of stuff going on currently, event-wise, related to medicine. But we've done episodes on most of that stuff. So, I know, we got some emails like you should talk about Ivermectin. There is an episode on Ivermectin, if you'd like to listen to that. It does not treat or cure COVID, please do not take it for COVID. Please do not take a horse horse medicines ever for anything ever. So that's covered in another episode. Masks should be worn and are great, and we did that in another episode.

We put that in a book. Been banging on that one for a while. But that's out there. So I found something else in the news that there was some recent reports about that I didn't know anything about. It has nothing to do with COVID, not that it's not important to keep talking about COVID, but we'll take a break this week. And thank you, Paige, for sending us an email to bring it to my attention that like, hey, this might make a good episode, because I read an article about it and it didn't occur to me immediately. But Justin, have you heard of Havana syndrome?

When you do this, it's always a little bit tricky because like, you know, you talk to him. Before I asked you the other day, have you heard of Havana syndrome? Never. Okay. And first of all, I don't really want to keep calling it that even though like, I wanted to put that name out there because if you've heard of this, that is what it's most well known as. And so I want context, you know. And that is what,

if you read, if you read any of the recent news articles about it, reports about it, that's what they are calling it, not the article. So this is what they're talking about. We should probably try to call them anomalous health incidents, but that seems... You know that's less catchy though. Well, they didn't, first of all, they didn't have it all happened in Havana. So even though the first ones I'll talk to you about happened in Havana, they did not all happen in Havana. And second, I just don't think it's nice to name diseases after

places. That's true. You know, like, are you ever going to take a vacation to the Ebola river? No. Right, That's not fair. No. You know, that the river is saddled with that forever. I probably wouldn't do that anyway. I mean, I don't travel much right now at all Sydney. I don't know if you've heard, but I don't mean now. I just mean generally, like you try and you shouldn't, if you can, don't name things after places. It's hard to trust them once at all. Right, because in the place gets that connotation forever and it might not be something that, you know, that you want. Got it. Right. So anyway, can we keep calling it that with the understanding that we

shouldn't be calling it that because I'm a mum. I don't have a better. I was a normal, a normal, no health incidents. Well, anomalous health incident also isn't specific to this. You could say a lot of things are anomalous health incidents like that. This is my problem with it, the language isn't specific. And I don't have like a better name. Did it start it? For it. Maybe we can just start with Havana's syndrome and the move from there.

I already called it that. My apologies to Havana. Recently it was reported that Vice President Kamala Harris had her, she had to, she was doing an overseas trip and it was briefly delayed. Just like there was a pause. It was like a couple hours, so not a big incident in the grand scheme of things for the vice president. But the reason that it was delayed is a little more interesting.

There were some, what were reported as anomalous health incidents that occurred in Hanoi, which is where she was headed from Singapore. And so because of these incidents, they paused the trip, decided there was no concern for the vice president or any of her staff. It did not affect anyone associated with the vice president. And so she continued on her trip. But because of that, Havana Syndrome was putting the news and trending. And so she continued on her trip. But because of that, Havana, syndrome was putting the news and trending. And now here we are. Because I had no idea what it was. I'd never heard of it. I never heard of the phrase. So it only dates back to 2016. That's why I feel weird. It feels weird to me that I'm not more aware of this because it has all happened in recent years. And there was a lot of, I think media coverage of it initially, perhaps, it seems like.

So in 2016, there was a diplomat at the American Embassy in Cuba who had an odd health incident. Okay. It occurred when she was actually in her home, not in the embassy itself, but in her home there in Havana. And she was standing in her kitchen and she began to experience this severe headache and pressure in her head. A lot of these descriptions will sound like waves of pressure.

Okay. She didn't think much of it, tried to, now it's a headache, I'll sleep it off. But the next morning, it was still there, and she also began to have some memory issues, some vertigo balance type issues, some trouble walking, and processing information. She mentioned she couldn't read a serial box that morning,

like the back of a serial box. These sorts of non-specific, you know, very upsetting symptoms, but not really pointing to one specific thing. The symptoms persisted, but she didn't tell anybody at first because she didn't, she liked her job. Yeah, she didn't want to get to home. But she would eventually learn that she was not alone, because around this same time period, three CIA officers in Cuba would have similar symptoms. And this is all towards the end of 2016 and into 2017.

And they would send actually a couple people would go back to the US and they sent a couple of replacements CIA officers, who also had these symptoms. Many tended to describe this in a similar sort of progression. You have some sort of pressure, like I said, some people said it was like waves of pressure in your head or just an intense pressure in your head. But many said that right before that started, they also had an auditory symptom,

meaning they heard something. They heard a very strange sound. And the sound was described sometimes like machine-like, like a grinding type of sound, a coarse sound, a rough sound. Other people described it like a buzzing, like cicadas. It was compared to a bunch of crickets or cicadas or something like that several times. Like that horrible bird you showed me.

What does that sound like? Remember it, it's kind of like a machine gun. That does sound machine gun like. What was it called? The shoe bill. Shoe bill. Oh god. Oh god, don't Google that one. The shoe bill, Stork.

Bad shoe bill bird. It's shoe bill. Don't look. Don't look. You should look at that. It's a squeaky bird. I like this bird. This bird has personality.

This bird's going to places. This bird has a point of view. Anyway, back to Havana Center. So they would have this sound, and then they would have this pressure. And then some of these neurological symptoms that I described are pretty similar, although some had more severe issues than others. And for some, it persisted much longer. Whereas for others, it was very transient, right?

So like kind of a range in terms of that. The CIA and the State Department as these individuals started coming forward and kind of reporting to their bosses, their spear officers, whatever, like this is happening. They started trying to like put together what could, what is this, what do we need to like investigate, where could this be coming from, is this something someone's doing? Is it some sort of espionage attack type thing? Like poison, toxin. Yeah, is this something someone's doing or is this just some weird random illness?

The prank is that the Joker, you know? This one kind of sounds like the Joker. And what's the thing is that's really interesting about this is that at the same time, this sort of mysterious thing was happening in Havana, you have to understand like, this is the end of 2016 and 2017. Trump has just been elected president and then assumes the president. With his guy again. Yeah.

That we're done talking about this. It's going to be a long time before we get over all that. Plus Castro had just died in late 2016, right? Soon after the American election. I wasn't aware that it happened. It was a heck of a way to break it. You could go ahead. You didn't know that happened back in 2016. One big break, let's listen to our own problems. Home front didn't we? Well, yeah. Didn One main great class of cinch and had our own problems, home front in way. Well, yeah. Didn't notice what castra. A lot of time is a lap since then for you to.

Shut it off. Anyway, so. Is there a new castra? There was for a while. Then I, are you really asking me about the article situation? I don't want to get to in the leans. Anyway, so nobody knew what this meant for Cuban-American relationships, relation, like,

at that time. Which didn't exist for quite some time. I do know this. And had changed, hopefully, in a positive direction, many thought under the Obama presidency. And then with Trump assuming the presidency, there was a lot of thought. I think, like, there was one quote I read in an article where they, the last meeting between representatives from the Obama administration with officials from Cuba were like, listen, these new people are nothing like us.

So we don't know. Good luck. Godspeed. We don't know. There was a lot was up in the air at the point. And I am not an expert on international affairs, but I think it is fair to say that this was a very tenuous relationship anyway. Nobody knew exactly where it was going to go, and this shifted a lot. And in the middle of all this, all of a sudden we have all of

these CIA and State Department people from the US who are in Havana who are having these weird debilitating symptoms. Okay. So they brought an ENT specialist from the US to evaluate the victims. They didn't want to go with anybody who was in Havana because they didn't, they didn't trust anybody. I mean, it's the CIA. They don't, they didn't trust anybody there. They wanted somebody from the US who was a specialist to come in. He evaluated them and he said, like, I think I am seeing some degree of brain damage in

these individuals. It was called at one point, and this phrase would kind of stick with it, a concussion without a concussion. The results of a concussion without any concussion having occurred, right? Because they didn't experience any head trauma. Throughout the spring and summer of that year of 2017, the number of cases kept climbing

as they're trying to figure out, what do we do about this, what sort of treatments or therapy, what can happen, what's causing it. Nobody really knew, and there were more people experiencing these, depending on who you asked, either symptoms or attacks, is what some begin to refer to the mask. Right. When they talked to, when they briefed agents and diplomats as to what to do about this, here's what's going on and here's what you can do, they would

tell them things like, quote, get off the X, meaning we think you are standing in a targeted spot, so move and get away from whatever is attacking you. Right, right? This is a wild story. This does not, this sounds like a movie. This does not sound like real life. This is not real, yeah. One was told like try to get behind a concrete wall. Because we don't know where it's coming, like maybe that'll stop it?

Yes. So obviously they were being instructed as if this was some sort of attacking mechanism of some sort that was targeting them. Not necessarily that it was an illness that was already, you know, like it was something outside external that you could get away from as opposed to something already in their body, like a toxin or a poison or some other sort of illness of some sort. So anyway, as the symptoms persisted and for some progress to things like hearing loss,

there was one victim of this that had to use a hearing aid eventually. The decision was made that we need to take these people out of Havana, send them somewhere to get like comprehensive evaluations, testing, and put together, like, from a team of doctors, what the heck is happening? So they were all sent to the Center for Brain, Injury, and Repair at the University of Pennsylvania. And a team of doctors was tasked with, like, analyze that, get all the data, analyze it, come up with, like, what in the world could cause this, whatever this syndrome is, whatever is happening in these individuals.

Meanwhile, the number of attacks grew to 21. And first, like, they're, they're beginning to develop. And this is sort of other than the fact that it is, you know, when there is an illness, it's important to figure out what it is and what's causing it and how do we treat or prevent or whatever. On the other part of this is like the international situation. As these attack numbers were growing, the US sort of retaliated in a sense, although against who I don't know or for what, they kind of would retaliate by ordering Cuban officials

out of their embassy in the US. So like, well, there were two more attacks. So we're sending two more Cuban diplomats back to Cuba. And oh, there were even more attacks. So we're just, we're gonna order 15 of your Cuban officials back to Cuba. You know what I mean? Like this was sort of the US policy of the way of showing

like if this continues, there will be repercussions and these were the repercussions. There were also in the same time, and this story is like a slower burn. It took a while to develop. There were 12 Canadian officials who also, according to the US at the time, experienced symptoms, initially, Canada was kind of like, hey, we're actually pretty cool with Cuba. Like, we don't have beef. I know you guys have beef, but we're not trying to be part of that. So we don't really want any of this mess. Now later, there would be, like, these Canadian officials would be evaluated and there would be like financial reimbursement

for their pain and suffering and the treatment. So like there was stuff going on, but like initially it was very much an America Cuba thing. But there were some Canadians caught in the proverbial crossfire? Yeah, there were Canadian two experience. I understand. I understand targeting Americans for sure,

but like Canadians now they've gone too far. Have you seen their flavors of KD? Have you seen all the different flavors of KD these people have? Have you even seen Martin Short? You know, Shania Twain. I know. I love Canada. You don't have to convince me.

Which maybe that was part of the initial reaction from Canada. Like everybody loves us. Nobody would do this. This can't be right. This can't be right. It's going to be aliens. But it wasn't just American officials. It was also Canadian officials. Then on top of all that, an American official working in China at the American Consulate there reported similar symptoms. And then everybody really started becoming concerned.

It led to the examination of like 15 individuals in China who may have been affected. And so that really people started to sort of freak out over what was going on. Eventually the team in Pennsylvania, the team of doctors that was examining all the original victims of the symptoms, would publish their findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA, so respected medical journal. And they concluded that not everybody they evaluated

did have symptoms. Like for instance, of the 15 individuals in China, they said only one, they really thought fit the same syndrome. So like some of these people were having something like that, but didn't fall within the umbrella of what they considered what anomalous health incident of anocentral, whatever you call it. It's an anomalous, but not an anomalous,

but an anomalous enough. Not anomalous in this way, and almost in a different way. But that they had suffered somehow some sort of traumatic brain injury, some sort of concussion. It affected their neural pathways. They called it a brain network disorder.

And they, there was a lot of theorizing at that point from them and other medical entities and government entities as to what might cause that specific pattern of brain network disorder. But nobody, like they didn't give a definitive reason, right? And you have to also know like in this evaluation, they looked for toxins, they looked for poisons, they looked for other sorts of like contagious illnesses all those other things that you might

Try to rule out they looked for all that stuff and they couldn't find a distinct causative agent You know that they could conclusively blame it on right But there were a lot of theories And that's what I want to tell you about next. But first, let's go to the building. I was just kidding. Let's go.

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But there were a lot of interesting, and again, like none of this, this all sounds like science fiction. It doesn't. Yeah, none of this sounds real. But these were the theories that people started coming up with. Okay. A directed beam of microwave radiation was the first thought.

Yeah. So there was some sort of device. People thought like it could be small enough that it could be in a van, maybe like parked outside the places where individuals work. And I should say, as far as where were people when this happened, they were either in their homes, in the embassy, or in hotels in the area. There were a couple of hotels specifically that had repeated attacks at those hotels.

And it's important to note that all the other people around them, generally speaking, I'll give you one example where this wasn't true, but generally speaking, all the other people around them, generally speaking, I'll give you one example where this wasn't true, but generally speaking, all the other people around them did not experience any symptoms. It was just that one person. So it would have to be a very targeted beam of microwave radiation. Also, radio frequency slash microwave radiation was another theory. So different kinds of, you know, this is the physics stuff. Different kinds of beams that can be pointed at people

and cause some sort of brain damage, basically. There were also, some people were like, well, I still think it was like a toxin, like an organophosphate poisoning kind of thing, although that was thought to be pretty unlikely because they should have found, they did extensive testing on all these individuals and never found any evidence of that. There was an argument made that some pieces of the puzzle that like we're putting together

as the constellation of symptoms should not be included, specifically the sound. So this really threw people like, what is this sound they're hearing this, whether it's a machine light or the cicada type or whatever. There was one paper published that said actually it is, they're just crickets. There's a specific type of it was either a Jamaican field cricket or an indie short-tailed cricket that it that was in the area at the time and makes a very loud distinctive noise and they thought this is what they were hearing. Like, they just happened to hear that and then had those symptoms and connected the two

when if they had just asked somebody else in the room, like, are you hearing that? They would have said, oh yeah, I hear that. I know. And the people who wrote the paper said, now we don't know what the rest of this is all about. We're just saying that we think the sound actually was crickets.

That is a mile. Somebody proposed some sort of sonic weapon or an ultrasound signal. There was the idea that maybe this is a mass psychogenic illness, which we've talked about examples of those on the show before. But it is true as they pointed out. And there's a whole book written from like an expert on mass-psychogenic illness and an expert in neurology

who like make their case in an entire book that this is a mass-psychogenic illness and this is not an attack of any kind. We've covered things like that. Like if you remember like the dancing plague, that's one of those, or we have that. The laughing epidemic or laughing plague, they call it yes, that there are some of these

where especially considering that like their argument is as this progressed, a lot of the agents who experienced it and officials who experienced it had been briefed on it prior to experiencing it. And the thought is that, and again, this is not, and I don't know the answer, had been briefed on it prior to experiencing it. Yeah. And the thought is that, and again, this is not, and I don't, I don't know the answer. And when you suggest this, there are people who get very angry. So I'm just putting that out there.

This is an incredibly controversial point. Um, because the doctors from the University of Pennsylvania said, absolutely not. It is not mass-sacgigenicomist. It is absolutely not that. It is something physical. We just don't know what it is. But these other professionals said, no, no, no, we really do think that's what it is.

And these people are experiencing these symptoms. Their description is real. They are feeling this way. They are having these symptoms. We just see a different cause. And, you know, it's psychogenic in nature. So this is not to say that anybody is lying. It's very different than Malangreen.

These are not people who are intentionally trying to lie and get out of work. Many of these people love their jobs and were veterans of many years in that job and had no reason to wanna leave it. So because of all this, the CDC was instructed by Congress to investigate in 2018. And the report that followed, which was called the Cuba unexplained events investigation

final report, which you can find now because nothing good. They did, there was like a FOIA request that I found the result of, eventually, that unearth the entire report, but they really didn't arrive at a final conclusion. What they said was like the symptoms, the history, it's also spread out because a lot of people didn't come forward right after they experienced the symptoms at first. Like, they would hear about other people having similar

symptoms and then come forward and say, actually, I had that three months ago or whatever. It became very difficult to, when you start doing what you'd want to do in this case is a retrospective case study. You have these things that happen in the past and you do a case study where you just explain each report on it and try to draw conclusions based on that. The problem with that is there's a lot of bias in those. Our memories are not perfect.

Trying to put together when you knew what and when you experienced what. And do you think it sounded just like a cicada because you later heard somebody else say that and then, you know, I mean, that's just the... I'm sure, like you said, you're being briefed on these things. You're probably like pretty vigilant for that right? Hyper vigilant for that. Yes exactly and so they they said you know, we can't identify a mechanism We we don't know we they did put a case definition together like We do think we know what whatever this is what it looks like

There are two phases they felt. The first had headache, pressure, confusion, the auditory symptom, whatever it is. Vision, issues, balance issues, nausea. And then at some point later on, you would continue to have some of the balance issues, and maybe they would worsen or inner ear type issues, and then some cognitive effects, like memory issues or processing issues, that kind of thing. They said they went over everybody and said not everybody who has reported these symptoms

actually fits this definition, but some of them do. Then they shrugged and said, I mean, we need more data. We could set up like a prospective case study where if new cases come in, we could study them as they come in, but we don't really know what to do. As you're saying, as you tell, is this doing permanent sort of damage or is this more of a transient thing?

It was different for different individuals. For some it was transient. For some, they continued, even if the majority of their symptoms ease, they continued to have occasional headaches or fatigue or hearing problems forever. So it was variable. After the initial cases in Havana, the US government finally decided to reduce its diplomatic presence in Havana. So we were sending Cuban diplomats back to Cuba at this point. The government

decides in August of 2017, we need to pull our people out of the embassy there, not all of them, but a lot of them. So they greatly reduced the number of diplomats there. And Trump even made a statement at that point that he thought Cuba was responsible for the attacks in October. Now, was that the opinion of the US government well researched by some of our top people? Or was it just Trump on the toilet? Just fired one off. It could have been tweeting for all I know. And then the Canadian diplomats would then eventually be evaluated

and have evidence of some of these same sorts of things. And they actually reduced their diplomatic presence there in 2019. And a lot of the reason that this was happening, and again, it's a very complicated time because the, I don't think anybody would say the Trump administration had the same views as the Obama administration on will anything and definitely not Cuba and what to do next. But because of this, there was this argument, this sort of like theme, our people aren't safe there.

And if we can't protect them, what are we doing there? And if we're getting harmed, get our people out of there. That became like a recurring theme through a lot of these, especially like with Rex Tillerson. That was a lot of Rex Tillerson's argument. Well, we'll just get him out of there. Why are we even there? Just bring him all home.

Forget it, forget it. We need to get out of Havana. As this is happening, cases are going to continue to occur outside of Havana. So American diplomats, members of the intelligence community, members of the US military are beginning to report attacks starting in late 2017 all over the world, Moscow, Poland, Georgia, Taiwan, Australia, Colombia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Austria, all over the place.

Which is why Havana Syndrome is not completely accurate. We have all of these reports from all over the place. The most worrisome in terms of the US government came in 2019 when a White House official experienced similar symptoms when they were walking their dog where they lived in their Virginia suburb of DC. And then in November of 2020, another incident occurred, very close on the ellipse, the lawn that's like to the south of the White House, another incident

occurred there. And so this became very concerning, right, to US officials. Like, now we're having people experiencing these symptoms that, I mean, at least the Trump administration felt was an attack of some sort with some sort of weapon that we don't know about that close to the White House. Obviously, at that point, there was a lot of concern. There was this one, too, like anonymous account of a military official in some country that was not identified, but it was a country that was noted to have a strong Russian intelligence presence as well. This is where that connection will come.

Where he claims that he pulled into an intersection, and while he was waiting at a red light, he began to experience these symptoms very intensely, like the pressure and the pain. It all hit him all at once, and his two-year-old was in the back seat, it just started screaming. And he sped out of the intersection

and all the symptoms went away and his two-year-old was fine. That's weird. This is also weird. This past year, we have noted, like in 2021, there have been several different incidents in Vienna. So it seems to be that was the new hotspot, so to speak. But then even more recently, there were a couple cases in Berlin and now, Hanoi just this past week.

So what is happening, obviously Trump blamed Cuba. Cuba adamantly denied that they were doing any of this. And a lot of people at the time sort of said like, this isn't, I guess, and I don't, again, this is not my area of expertise, but I guess the idea of them, like attacking American officials and diplomats to harm them was less common, like that is a less common thing. Like there's definitely, I guess all the spies spy on each other, like everybody's listening to each other. Everybody's watching each other. Like collecting info on each other is just sort of accepted within the S&G.

There are always either, they're either paying someone to the scorpion straight wins or change, or they are, they are spying on each other. But the idea that they were targeting with this sort of intent to harm, I guess, seemed less common. And so a lot of people weren't convinced that Cuba was doing anything,

and the Cuban officials said, absolutely, we're not doing anything. Yeah. There was also Cuba helped the US for a while try to investigate whether there was like a third party involved, like another country who was coming into Havana and harming American diplomats and officials. You mean the Russians right because it's definitely the Russians. So Russia was, everyone's leading, initially the Russian, China were thrown out as the

two possible perpetrators. Russia was what everybody seemed to think. Yeah, they like to get a little spice here. Well, in terms of like why they thought it was Russia, I can't find anybody who's arguing anything more than, well, it just seems like Russia. It feels like Russia. It feels like Russia. It feels like Russia.

I mean, like that was really what it seems like a lot of people in the intelligence community were saying, like, well, I mean, it kind of feels like Russia. I mean, that was really what it seems like a lot of people in the intelligence community were saying, like, well, I mean, it kind of feels like Russia. But there's no evidence of any of this because we don't even know that it was a thing being done, right? Like, we don't have a weapon that we're looking for, a device. There were all these theories of like, well, maybe it was like a listening device that is malfunctioning

and causing problems. So maybe that's why nobody knows about it because like, well, yeah, we got bugs all over the place, but we're not trying to hurt you, but maybe it's a bug that also hurts you, but you didn't know this all seems like a stretch. But like, it's being, all these countries are being accused of doing something when we don't even know 100% that something was done. Right. Right. Last December, the CIA had an official task force created to investigate the incidents

in response largely to the ones that happened in, you know, DC, because that was so upsetting to everybody. And this has been, sorry to sell the acronym. The act. Yeah. That was passed. So yes, so the CIA has a task force.

This past December was created. This has been expanded since then. People have been added from the State Department and other federal agencies to help Biden has made this one of his priorities too. And in June, the helping American victims afflicted by neurological attacks. Havana. Act.

Was passing Congress. No, we can say the Havana syndrome is not a reference to the Cuban capital, rather A. The act that was passed, yes. To provide financial assistance to those affected by it. And I think this was like bipartisan full support, like past unanimously or some of them, like huge support, anyway.

So, you know, I don't know what, you know, I tried to read this as like a physician with like a, from that medical standpoint, what does this sound like? Yeah. I am not familiar with any of these kinds of devices or weapons or whatever you'd want to call them that could cause that. I'm not saying that's impossible because it's outside my area, but certainly I've never read or seen that. There were, I should mention that a lot

of the doctors who felt like there was like some sort of damage that had occurred like actual like you could see. They did these functional MRIs and saw these changes and that's how they based it. They said, well, I mean, we're seeing like damaged neural pathways on these MRIs. So this isn't, you know, we know something happened because we can see it, right? That was a lot of the basis. What's tough is that the people who wrote the book about mass psychogenic illness, that their argument was very much that, well, you can see those changes though after trauma, like after emotional trauma, after psychological trauma, people who experience mass psychogenic illness also

have these changes on MRI because the brain is really complex, really complicated. And if you are experiencing these symptoms, and especially if you become convinced that you have been attacked by something, You have a traumatic effect on you. It has a traumatic effect on the brain. I mean, like, it's all linked, right? Like, the way we feel and our mental health and our physical health and the things we experience physically as well as emotionally, it's all connected. And so to tease it out with one imaging study or, I mean, it's very difficult.

It's, so it's tough. and that's not me arguing that it is mass-sacrogenic illness because I don't know. I don't know. I will say that from the accounts of the individuals who had these experiences and I think the vast majority are anonymous because some of them might still be working in those super secret jobs. They are really experiencing something. They are really having, they really did have symptoms or really continue to have some sorts of symptoms. That I do not doubt. Now, what caused them, I have no, it's a mystery. It's a very strange mystery, but it's this weird mysterious thing that happened and has continuing to happen and has hugely impacted American foreign policy. Yeah, we don't know.

And we don't have a medical explanation for it. Maybe something will come from all these investigations that are happening this year, but I don't know. That's so strange. It's very strange. And I would say that we have more pressing matters to attend to what with the pandemic. Yeah, but I don't know.

Maybe this laser is like the scariest thing. You know, are you scared now? No, I'm scared. You make a blast with this thing. It's a van beam. I read, I read like one article where it was like a civilian saying that they had had some symptoms and that they called like the government to say like,

hey, I had those two and they were like, we're not really interested in any civilians who are. So like, I don't know. And I wanted to catch, well, I mean, then you could start to get into like, then the waters would get truly muddy, right? Because then you could, maybe you could have a hybrid where it is like a real thing that is

happening and also a mass psychogenic illness like. Well, but I mean, it was really weird because it seems to be very targeted at intelligence officials, military officers. It was like a one was a doctor, but he was also employed by I don't the embassy or the CIA somebody, he was associated. So like everybody who is part of these studies is affiliated somehow with the government, but there may be accounts of people who aren't. Oh, well, and some were family members. I should say that that's not entirely true. Somewhere the family members who were in the area

of people who were affected. But like, I don't know, it's a very, obviously we have a lot more questions than answers with this, but that what that is that's why it's in the news. It was something to think about there's something to think about and talk about and discuss that isn't COVID for a little bit. How about as we mentioned at the beginning before we wrap up here we didn't want to talk about this has been back in the news again. Havana Syndrome. We saw it popping up in headlines, especially since, for various reasons, diplomacy has taken a forefront in the global conversation recently. And Havana Syndrome has been popping up. That's true, Justin. I mentioned that we,

in very recent months, have had more investigation, more interest into looking into the causes of Havana syndrome. In October, as I mentioned, President Biden signed the Helping American Victims Afflicted by Neurological Attacks Act. Can you, remember, I already said this. It's a Vanna. It's a Vanna. Okay, go ahead. Now you know it.

Now you know it now. It's really good. Yeah, that was really good. The clean one. I don't know. To provide for compensation for people who have experienced the symptoms. And then they had like a special committee looking into possible causes, like investigating it.

It was an effort from multiple agencies, like the Department of Defense and the CIA and all these groups were looking into like what is behind it. And in part, if you really think about it, you know, this is sort of predictable. If you're going to compensate people who have experienced this, you have to define who those people are. Right. Right. So part of that, part of the job of this, I don't want to say detective group. But that's what they are, it's okay. It's like a Scooby Doo gang.

Yes, basically. Mystery solving crew. Yeah. Part of their job was going to be to say, actually, you didn't have that because otherwise, you have to give everybody benefits who said they had it. Right, everybody can have it. I'm not gonna prove it because we don't really understand it.

Exactly. So, I feel like this pop back into the news recently because of that controversy. You started hearing some reports about what the CIA was thinking about this and some people got upset about those results. Because it's all kind of preliminary, too, it's important to say. So the first thing that emerged, there were some stories that the CIA was reporting that they did not feel that this was any sort of coordinated attack. Okay.

Specifically, as we had talked about, there was a lot of thought like, man, this is very timely. Doesn't this seem like something Russia would do? And everybody sort of thought like, yeah, this is very timely. Doesn't this seem like something Russia would do? And everybody sort of thought, like, yeah, this feels... Feels Russian. ...feels Russian. And the CIA is kind of like, eh, we don't really think that this is anything like this.

This isn't some coordinated conspiracy or attack from another country or something like that. Like, they feel like that was not it. Now a lot of people were immediately like, yeah, the CIA doesn't know what they're talking about. Basically, they felt like, in part, it undermined their experience. They're having these symptoms and to have that. I should note, the CIA wasn't saying this doesn't exist.

It was deciding who did and did not have that. And I should know, the CIA wasn't saying this doesn't exist. It was deciding who did and did not have it. They had done this investigation has involved, you know, interviewing thousands of people who are experiencing symptoms and a lot of people, um, according to the report, and I am just, I am just telling you what is being reported. I have not interviewed any of these people. I am not, I am not sharing my medical opinion. This is just purely what has been released. The feeling was that many, many, many of those people, their symptoms could be attributed to something else,

to another medical condition, something environmental, something, right? So a lot of them were kind of removed from the pool of possible victims. Now, they did say there were cases of people who experienced something that they could not attribute to another medical condition or some sort of like psychosocial stress or something. They're, I mean, that was part of it.

We're not saying this isn't real. We're just saying that some people, in our opinion, the majority of people who are experiencing this, you could attribute it to something else. And there still is a subset of people we can't explain. And we do not believe that whatever is causing it, the subset of people is that it's some sort of coordinated attack. Okay. Which would be different, I guess, than like one off sort of, I don't even use word terror as element, but I mean, I guess that's what we're talking about, like a lone wolf. Whoa.

I don't know. You're saying it's a lone wolf? I'm not saying it's a lone wolf. I'm waiting for a lone wolf on the show for over 300 episodes. I'm not saying that. I am saying that just because it's not a whole country doing it doesn't mean somebody's not doing something,

does that make sense? Yes, I guess so. It could also be skunkworks, you know, real black ops stuff. So part of wolves maybe. So the thought is that maybe there really is some sort of electro-magnetic weapon that is being used. As I say, I know how this sounds.

Is it some sort of directed energy device? Energy, maybe a a death rate. We're not necessarily ruling that out at this point. Okay. Okay. We're still kind of there, just because we don't think that Russia is attacking us in whole doesn't mean that that's not happening. And I was reading, I was like, is this something that has happened before. And like, I guess there were times like where the Soviets were attacking the US Embassy with like microwave radiation. So I guess that is something that

can happen. But that is kind of that was the controversy that's come out in the news. So the CIA sort of came out and said, it isn't a big conspiracy. And a lot of these cases probably are not an anomalous health incident there, something that we can explain. And then a lot of people got upset about that and felt like it was being sort of brushed under the rug maybe or underestimated. And then there was some clarity that like there's still stuff we don't understand. There still could be some sort of directed energy weapon. You are talking about cool stuff Sydney. I don't know what's wrong with you. It just feels very sci-fi and fake and I know it's not.

I'm just saying like as I say it, which I think is what a lot of the victims of this are struggling with. When you say that out loud, people look at you and go, I'm sorry, what? Say again. What do you think? Like a Sonic screwdriver attacked you? Like, what are you saying?

But they haven't ruled that out just because it sounds far fetched, doesn't mean, I mean, look at the times we're living it. Yeah, right. This should. So those are sort of the updates. They're still, I mean, right. This trip. So those are sort of the updates. They're still, I mean, they're still looking into this stuff. Like, it's not like they concluded the whole investigation

and everything was done. I guess that 60 minutes did a big, I didn't watch 60 minutes for this. I'm sorry. I don't have 60 minutes to go watch 60 minutes. I think it's like 44. So it'd be really? Yeah, because commercial breaks.

But there was like a big 60-minute report because in addition to these new things being released from the CIA There were also a number of White House employees White House officials under the Trump administration who have since come forward and said Like I experienced some of this stuff in the White House like Like, I experienced, I mean, like, I think there was something going on that we weren't addressing. So, you know, that's scary. So there you have it.

Hey, thanks so much for listening to our podcast. We hope you've enjoyed yourself. Thanks to taxpayers for the use of their own medicines as the intro and outro of our program. Thanks to taxpayers for the use of their own medicines as the intro and outro of our program We got a book it's called the Solbund's book find paperback Or hardback wherever find books are sold We appreciate you picking up a copy of that if you haven't already it's an audio book too if you want to listen to finally Experience the thrill of listening to sitting and I talk about medical history. Please get vaccinated Yeah, if you haven't feeling a vaccine just will just like go grab that real quick and then call

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And I encourage you to keep up the hard work. I talked to people into the vaccine yesterday. Nice job, sir. So don't give up. That's right folks, you finally got me. But don't give up and wear mask. Case numbers are rising out there. Wear mask, get your vaccine, encourage others.

That's going to do it for us this week on Salbones. Be sure to dress again next week. Till then, my name is Justin McRod. I'm Sydney McRod. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright!