An Open Letter to the Diplomats With "Havana Syndrome"

You deserve better than this. You deserve better than a life of uncertainty and frustration that you’ve been forced to endure.

It’s a sonic weapon. It’s microwaves. It’s insecticide. The Russians are behind it. It’s the Chinese. No, it’s the Cubans. It’s crickets. It’s mass suggestion.

These are just some of the explanations that have been put forth by scientists to account for the mysterious outbreak of illness among Canadian and American diplomats stationed in Cuba and their families since 2016.

It’s enough to make your head spin and erode your confidence in experts. How can so many scientists reach such vastly different conclusions? There has never been so much confusion, and you now don’t know who or what to believe.

Here is my advice: Follow mainstream science and the scientific method. When you follow this advice, two clear culprits emerge: mass hysteria and a redefinition of everyday aches and pains as Havana Syndrome-related.

Now I know what you’re thinking. This explanation is ridiculous because scientists have found brain damage and inner ear trauma. But it’s not true. These claims have not been demonstrated.

Part of the problem is that most people are not experts on sonic devices, microwave weapons, or insecticide fumigation—and this includes journalists and many scientists in other fields. We live in a world where we must rely on experts—especially medical specialists. But what happens when a small group of scientists leads us astray? That is exactly what has happened here.

One of the biggest impediments to understanding what happened is the involvement of the Journal of the American Medical Association. It is one of the world’s premier medical journals, but it won’t be for long if their editors keep exercising errors in judgment like they have in this case.

In 2018, they published an article that should never have passed a peer review—but it did. One of the scientists who reviewed the study had devised some of the tests that were used in it. He rejected it, and they published it anyway.

While they included two critical commentaries, many media outlets ignored them. Among the problems—they got the threshold for impairment wrong—and I mean really wrong—to the point where many healthy people would have qualified as having been impaired.

They also showed an alarming lack of understanding of mass hysteria, equating it with feigning and collusion. It is difficult to believe that such a respected journal could get something so basic, so wrong, but they did. This is not an opinion. Facts are not a partisan issue. These observations are indisputable.

In the 2019 JAMA study, the authors were forced to acknowledge that they couldn’t rule out the possibility that the differences in brain scans between the affected diplomats and the controls could have been caused by individual variation alone! Yes, there were brain anomalies, but many common conditions can cause similar anomalies—from depression to migraines, and yes, even extreme stress. Brain changes do not equate to brain damage. Furthermore, 12 of those affected had pre-existing histories of concussion, compared to none in the healthy controls.

To date, there have been four studies of either U.S. or Canadian embassy diplomats who reported falling ill in Cuba under mysterious circumstances. The most recent suggests that the culprit is insecticide fumigation. There are so many problems with this study, it is hard to know where to begin.

If it’s true, where is the outbreak of concussion-like symptoms across Cuba and around the world? Supposedly, both embassies had been heavily sprayed at intervals—but other buildings in Cuba and around the world have also. How come non-diplomats working at the embassies and in the affected buildings weren’t affected? What happened to all of those people hearing noises and falling sick? How come the Canadian illness experiences were different than the Americans? It doesn’t make sense.

The Number-One Suspect: Combat Syndromes

There is no need to propose exotic explanations when the facts point in the same direction: mass psychogenic illness. The symptoms of Havana Syndrome parallel those found in returning service veterans suffering from combat stress. In every major American conflict over the past 100 years, coinciding with advancements in modern medicine, doctors have noted clusters of unexplained symptoms in soldiers exposed to the trauma of war.

A classic example is "shell shock." During the First World War, doctors noticed a debilitating condition among some soldiers. It was called "shell shock," as it was believed to have been caused by the blast waves from exploding ordinance. It soon became apparent that many of those affected had been nowhere near an exploding artillery shell.

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A hallmark feature of shell shock—neurological abnormalities, which were typically described as concussion-like symptoms. Doctors were initially baffled, and like today, they began to search for exotic explanations. One theory held that shell shock was caused by shock waves from bullets whizzing near their heads, resulting in brain tears. Over time, with accumulating evidence pointing in the same direction, a consensus emerged: Shell shock was a psychological condition caused by the stress and trauma of war.

The Link With Cuba

How does this relate to the embassy staff in Cuba? The diplomats who fell ill were living in a hostile, foreign country where they were under continuous surveillance. There is a long history of American diplomats being harassed by Cuban agents, further stoking tensions.

It was within this atmosphere of fear that they began to hear alarming stories of sonic attacks. New staff who were being stationed in Cuba were primed to be the next targets of these imaginary attacks when they were played recordings of previous "attacks"—recordings that turned out to be the mating calls of crickets. The rest is history as the power of suggestion took over, along with the redefining of everyday aches and pains as attack related.

A final observation: People involved in all four studies have remarked that to label victims as suffering from mass psychogenic illness, aka mass hysteria, is an insult. Recently, a prominent Canadian psychiatrist expressed this position, writing that it is insulting to label the affected diplomats as suffering from “mass hysteria.” This position is based more on emotion and ignorance than reality. It would be an insult not to consider it when it offers the best explanation for the events in question.

Mass psychogenic illness is neither a sign of weakness nor a mental disorder; it is a collective stress response. It happens to normal, healthy people. Everyone is susceptible, regardless of occupation, nationality, or education. The argument by this psychiatrist is simple: It cannot be mass hysteria, because researchers have found brain lesions and ear damage. He notes that these claims are credible as they were published in peer-reviewed journals.

They may have been published in peer-reviewed journals, but the peer-review process is not infallible. The four studies of the embassy diplomats have not shown brain damage and ear injury. They have shown brain anomalies—anomalies that can be caused by an array of conditions, many of them normal—including stress. I would encourage every scientist looking into this to read the studies. They are examples of too much speculation and too little science.

So what is the best course of action? Stop telling the diplomats that they are suffering from brain trauma and ear damage. With a reduction in anxiety, patients suffering from mass psychogenic illness typically improve over time.