It’s no
fault of reporters and investigators that as they generate more information on
the Havana health mystery, we no greater understanding of what happened to U.S.
diplomats, much less how it happened.
This ProPublica
piece by Tim Golden goes far beyond any other journalistic
account, describing the sequence of events in Havana, the U.S. Embassy’s
reaction, and apparent disagreement between the FBI and the CIA. Golden reports
on an aspect that until now has not been covered: the experience of the Canadians in Havana,
which affected fewer people and is apparently different than that of the
Americans. His article makes clear that U.S. reluctance to collaborate with
Cuban investigators is based on suspicion that Cuba may be the perpetrator. He
also reports that the FBI consulted an insect expert at Barry University in
Florida whose assessment was that the recordings made in Havana sounded “like
cicadas,” which is kind of funny considering the snickering that greeted the
same statement when Cuban investigators made it.
An article in the
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) gives the results of the
authors’ review of the medical records, and basically describes patients with
concussion-like symptoms but no concussion. Or, in their words, they “appeared to have
sustained injury to widespread brain networks without an associated
history of head trauma.” Neither the symptoms nor the circumstances were
uniform across the 21 affected persons, and among those who reported sounds,
they described different kinds of sounds, from high-pitched squeals to the
repetitive thud you experience when driving fast with a car window slightly
open. The authors discount the hypothesis of “mass psychogenic illness.” A
summary in Science magazine is here.
Oddly, the article says that the
diplomats were exposed to “an unknown energy source” without offering evidence
that this is the case. In the podcast cited below, one of the authors avers
that the “energy source” concept was merely their “best guess.”
An
accompanying JAMA editorial is a somewhat
easier-to-read guide to a case where a “unifying explanation for the
symptoms…remains elusive.” The concussion analogy, it says, “may be unnecessary as many of the
symptoms described also occur in other medical, neurological, or psychiatric
conditions.” The “similarities among the 21 cases,” it argues, “merit
consideration of a common medical, environmental, or psychological event as the
potential cause.”
The
Guardian sums up the science debate in this article and in
this very useful 30-minute podcast, where
one of the JAMA authors, a skeptical scientist, and a Cuban investigator are
interviewed. Dr. Douglas Smith of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the
JAMA authors, says that “almost
all” of those affected reported hearing sounds, “a range of audible phenomena.”
He adds that the authors “do not think that the audible phenomenon caused any
kind of injury to the brain,” and the “audible phenomenon was more a side
effect of something else.” If the psychogenic hypothesis interests you, you
will want to listen to Dr. Robert Bartholomew, starting about 10 minutes in.
Meanwhile,
the State Department has formed an “Accountability
Review Board” to investigate the matter; these boards are established by regulation to conduct “thorough and independent review of security-related
incidents”
in diplomatic missions.
Good
luck to them. But as the State Department leadership approaches a decision on
the future posture of our Havana embassy, now with a skeleton staff and a chief
of mission on a short-term assignment, it seems increasingly possible that the
investigations may yield nothing that clarifies what happened, how it happened,
or who if anyone was behind it.
