Havana Syndrome Demonstrates the Power of Suggestion
Researchers are finally learning why U.S. spies and diplomats are suffering from noise-related illness. The explanation seems to lie with neuroscience, not fiendish weaponry.
The pain isn’t just in the brain.
Source: Christoph Burgstedt/Science Photo LibraryIt started in November of 2016, with a young U.S. undercover agent in Havana hearing a piercing noise, then realizing that his ears wouldn’t stop ringing and that he’d lost some of his hearing. He told colleagues who remembered hearing weird noises, too. Soon, more than a dozen American diplomats and intelligence agents were reporting distressing symptoms — difficulty concentrating, headaches, insomnia, dizziness. Some heard weird noises, some didn’t.
For months, the Central Intelligence Agency and many media outlets thought the culprit was some sort of exotic microwave weapon, possibly wielded by Russian agents. But now, amid alarming reports of similar maladies affecting at least 200 people in foreign service posts from China to London to Colombia, scientists are starting to consider something more mundane — psychosomatic illness.