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Comment by Synaesthesia | Hacker News Reader

Havana Syndrome. So what is it exactly? Nobody really knows, nor do we know what causes it.

So called "anomolous health incidents"

Are they caused by pesticides, toxins, ultrasound, microwave weapons? Are the Russians behind this?

Or maybe it's psychogenic in nature?

>in 2022, psychogenic explanations became predominant, for several reasons: no known weapons that could cause only the reported symptoms, no evidence of hostile attacks, the spread to numerous unrelated locations, and absence of damage to brain or body.[20][4][21]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havana_syndrome

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This article mentions multiple people with traumatic brain injuries, backed up by neurosurgeons. That isn't psychogenic, that's is pretty physical. The article even addresses that.

> There is a reason why the Havana Act only came into force in 2021: for the past eight years, Havana Syndrome has been the subject of intense controversy. Sociologists have suggested it is little more than a mass psychogenic illness, or perhaps the outbreak of mass hysteria. Such arguments have been undercut by multiple medical studies, including one conducted by an expert panel convened by the U.S. intelligence community. The final assessment of that investigation found that AHIs had “a unique combination of core characteristics that cannot be explained by known environmental or medical conditions and could be due to external stimuli.”

The traumatic brain injuries part is disputed.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/havana-syndrome-nih-study-1.71...

US intelligence community says they are there, the NIH does not seem to agree. The NIH doesn't dispute a possible weapon, just that there is visible brain damage.

I know nothing, at all, and am probably trivially wrong.

But their symptoms remind me vaguely of concussions in the NFL, and my understanding is, there is no way to find out if someone has CTE until after they're dead.

So I find it somewhat distasteful that the NIH brain scans were/are cited as a proof one way or the other.

I'm probably completely wrong on a possible hidden injury, and the "cited as proof" I'm complaining about is almost certainly that it was dryly included in a report, that they tried some scans, that didn't have any positive results: and that, of course, is the right tone and absolutely should be included in the report.

> So I find it somewhat distasteful that the NIH brain scans were/are cited as a proof one way or the other.

What the scans were matters too. Eg an MRI brain might be ‘normal’, but would a scan targeting the inner ear? A report from an MR looking for evidence of Meniere’s would be interesting.

> Greg Edgreen, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, set up the working group investigating Havana Syndrome for the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, from 2020 to 2023. The role gave him access to classified intelligence compiled not just by the Pentagon, but by other agencies within the U.S. intelligence community. In response to this investigation, Edgreen told 60 Minutes: “If I'm wrong about Russia being behind anomalous health incidents, I will come onto your show. And I will eat my tie.”

From the article, Edgreen's opinion seems to be based off of everyone reporting the syndrome having some tenuous connection to Russia, which is fairly terrible evidence. Maybe he has a better reason for believing it, I can't guess.

And that DIA investigation was presumably part of the House Intelligence Committee's assessment that ruled there was no credible evidenced of an attack.

Is it tenuous evidence when Russian agents were photographed at the scene?

Clumsy moves like this are a hallmark of Russian operations, for example, the UK poisonings.

I seem to have missed these photographs, but "Russian spies found to be in the same cities as US spies" doesn't seem like some huge bombshell.

> Maybe he has a better reason for believing it, I can't guess.

Did you even read what you responded to? He absolutely has "better reasons" for believing it.

>He absolutely has "better reasons" for believing it.

Does he? He certainly didn't share them, and I can only comment on what he did share, which was pretty flimsy.

We are told that no-one really knows what it is or what causes it. We, the public, cannot tell whether this is actually true.

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