Mysterious Diagnosis of Mysterious Havana Syndrome

A Case of an Overused Adjective, and an Unfalsified Hypothesis.

Recently I was asked a really good question by a very smart physicist blogger: how could Havana Syndrome be diagnosed if the directed energy attacks associated with these cases had not been documented?

Excellent question! It made me realize that as a civilian and MD who went through the process of being diagnosed with Havana Syndrome, I owe my readers to pull the veil off the diagnostic criteria of this specific Brain Injury.

So, I will provide a short and a long answers.

Here is the short one: How can mTBI (Mild Traumatic Brain Injury) be diagnosed if no one witnessed the concussion?

Now, for the long answer.

But first, can we please stop with the word “mysterious”? I never heard this adjective in reference to Havana Syndrome from an expert or a doctor, only from Government officials, or click-baiting journalists, including those of the much despised these days establishment-propping mainstream media. After using it the first dozen times, it became nothing but a fig leaf excusing incompetence, ignorance, or willful cover up.

Despite the claims from the armchair experts that the complaints of the victims of Havana Syndrome are general and non-specific, this couldn’t have been further from the truth.

First, sensation of various  deafening sounds, vibrations, head pressure, dizziness, incapacitation with sudden onset and equally sudden finale, is undeniably unique. And I can confirm it firsthand. Experientially it’s not comparable to anything else. This is not an episode of a vestibular migraine, as suggested by some. In fact, that would’ve been a functional condition. But what functional condition leaves you with objective findings constituting injury to the brain?

These objective findings are detailed in the paper by Hoffer et al., 2018 who found concussion-like symptoms, unique pattern in neurocognitive panels, and, most importantly, universal damage to vestibular organs in affected individuals. Three objective vestibular tests used were:

1. SVV (Subjective Visual Vertical). Despite the world “subjective”, the way the test is designed, it objectively measures the ability of a person to correct the direction of the line appearing under conditions making it impossible to detect true angular position of the chair the subject in.

2. Ocular VEMP (Vestibular Evoked Potential) - measures integrity of urticle (organ of gravity) and superior vestibular nerve.

3. Cervical VEMP - measures integrity of saccule (another organ of gravity) and inferior vestibular nerve.

All 25 symptomatic individuals participating in that study, medevac’d from Cuba, had at least 2 out of 3 vestibular test results severely abnormal, constituting injury to the otolithic organs (organs of gravity located in the inner ear), meaning physical injury to the brain. 

However, the diagnosis given to these (and also civilian patients who experienced AHI domestically) was not mTBI (which is synonymous to concussion, because:

1. There was no concussion

2. Complaints and Neurocognitive panel results didn’t match the one of mTBI

3. Prevalence of vestibular damage didn’t match.

So, the team lead by Dr Hoffer gave this unique never seen before type of brain injury a new name - Acquired Neurosensory Dysfunction, which was used in the title of the 2018 paper.

Shortly, articles Balaban et.al, Swanson et al., Verna et al., came out, further detailing additional diagnostic criteria of Havana Syndrome (e.g computerized eye conversion test, disruption of brain networks), but none of those additional findings invalidated original criteria suggested by Hoffer.

Today, there is a scientific and intelligence community consensus exists that there are 2 dozen diagnosed cases among federal employees, for which the most plausible explanation is intentional exposure to “directed pulsed radiofrequency energy from an external source”.

While many get confused by the word “plausible”, as far as science goes, this is as good as it gets. Just like the most plausible cause of Pneumococcal Pneumonia is Streptococcus pneumoniae. If you are of a different opinion, you can set the record straight by falsifying this hypothesis. In other words, show that a different agent causes the same constellation of complaints, symptoms, and objective findings, and you will be a recipient of worldwide standing ovation!

Just please, don’t call it mysterious! (See my article from 12-15-2022, Havana Syndrome: We’ll get to the bottom of this!)