Merged US may close Cuba Embassy over 'health attacks'

[dann]

Podcast:

Bryan Cook, an Audio Engineer with over a decade of experience, and Dr. Sam Hauser AuD.- an Audiologist specializing in hearing research, ponder the biggest questions about Havana Syndrome in this episode. They discuss the symptoms of Havana syndrome, the long term effects it has for government employees and theories on Havana Syndrome’s origin!

During this episode, you will learn about:
[00:52] What you're in for on today's episode
[01:10] The first case of the Havana Syndrome
[03:24] Official diagnosis: Phase 1 & Phase 2
[07:50] Testing for Havana Syndrome
[09:07] Could they be victims of an attack?
[12:35] Spreading from Cuba to more cities
[13:37] Theories on who might be attacking these government employees
[15:20] Is it a microwave attack?
[19:30] Is it the Call of the Indies short-tail cricket?
[20:51] Is it chemical?
[21:17] Is it mass hysteria?
[22:33] The Helping American Victims Affected by Neurological Attacks Act
[25:35] What would Dr. Sam do if someone came in with these symptoms?
[28:23] Episode wrap up and calls to action
Havana Syndrome: A sonic attack or just a weird anomalous health incident? (Audio Boom, Feb 22, 2022 - 29:22 min.)

 

[dann]

Some of the headlines appearing after the 60 Minutes show are incredible! Havana Syndrome Clearly Caused by Directed Energy Weapon (New American Journal, Feb 21, 2022)

This guy wrote a novel about rayguns, he has seen them on Star Trek, and he knows about ray weapons used to "zap the electronic equipment on the Soviet airplanes used by the Iraqi Air Force," so when people on 60 Minutes claim they are the victims of a raygun attack, it must be true! (It doesn't seem to concern him that some of those people were using functional "electronic equipment" to record the sounds while their brains were allegedly fried:

In my novel, I had surmised that the device would ultimately end up being reduced to something the size of a hand-held phaser like the ones used on the original “Star Trek” series.
(...)
We know that a larger version of this technology exists. A weapon to mimic the electromagnetic pulse effects of an atmospheric nuclear blast was used to zap the electronic equipment on the Soviet airplanes used by the Iraqi Air Force, which crippled the planes in the airport in Bagdad during the first Gulf War and in Operation Iron Hammer in 2003.
(...)
Someone, somewhere now has a smaller version of the device, and is testing it or using it on U.S. intelligence personnel.
One of the spies interviewed on “60 Minutes” mentions noticing a suspicious white van when he was hit with a noise that crippled and partially blinded him, causing brain damage and ending his career. Another agent even recorded the sound of the device that crippled and sickened him.
Clearly such a device now exists, and much of the research for it was conducted by the U.S. Navy in Pensacola starting at least 30 years ago.

'I can imagine it, and somebody who got sick saw a white van. What other proof do you need?!'

 

[Bob001]

.....
No it is not a mistake. It is a well known phenomena previously called mass hysteria. That term was replaced with a less offensive term, mass psychogenic illness. There are also a number of other formal terms used.
....

.....
Now I'll have to ask you to put in a little effort, Bob001. Tell us how it would be possible to have all of those suitcase- or tractor-trailer-unit-sized microwave-energy transmitters pointed directly at the heads of the parents and at the heads of two children in a hotel room - not in Cuba, but in the USA. (Or at the head of somebody walking down the stairs from a building at the White House site.) Tell us how the hostile enemy managed to fry the brains of those two adults and two children without leaving the least visible marks on their skin.
.....

I am neither a doctor nor an engineer. I don't pretend to know what's happening here. But I do know that medicine has a long history of dismissing real illnesses and conditions as psychiatric disorders when they couldn't be diagnosed easily. And microwave weapons in some forms do exist, and have been deployed in combat and for crowd control. I don't understand the eagerness to disparage and discount responsible senior officials who believe -- often with medical evidence -- that they have been targeted and injured, rather than at least recognize the possibility that something could be happening that we aren't yet able to identify. If these claims haven't been proven beyond doubt, neither have they been indisputably debunked.

Some have dismissed the incidents as psychogenic illness, what used to be called mass hysteria; the only noises that can be recorded are local insects. However, extensive brain scans of the victims found signs of injury, described as “a new syndrome….that resembles persistent concussion” in a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2018.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidh...report-is-not-being-released/?sh=71ee79645482

Food for thought:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jun/02/microwave-weapons-havana-syndrome-experts
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michae...ave-weapons-are-undetectable/?sh=4078999ccc3f
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/defense-department-microwave-weapon-detector

 

[TurkeysGhost]

I am neither a doctor nor an engineer. I don't pretend to know what's happening here. But I do know that medicine has a long history of dismissing real illnesses and conditions as psychiatric disorders when they couldn't be diagnosed easily. And microwave weapons in some forms do exist, and have been deployed in combat and for crowd control. I don't understand the eagerness to disparage and discount responsible senior officials who believe -- often with medical evidence -- that they have been targeted and injured, rather than at least recognize the possibility that something could be happening that we aren't yet able to identify. If these claims haven't been proven beyond doubt, neither have they been indisputably debunked.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidh...report-is-not-being-released/?sh=71ee79645482

Food for thought:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jun/02/microwave-weapons-havana-syndrome-experts
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michae...ave-weapons-are-undetectable/?sh=4078999ccc3f
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/defense-department-microwave-weapon-detector

Hope springs eternal that CIA ghouls are actually getting their brains melted. I don't think it's likely, but I want to believe.

 

[Bob001]

Hope springs eternal that CIA ghouls are actually getting their brains melted. I don't think it's likely, but I want to believe.

Except most of the alleged victims aren't CIA ghouls. They're just workaday Americans doing their jobs.

 

[xjx388]

I am neither a doctor nor an engineer. I don't pretend to know what's happening here. But I do know that medicine has a long history of dismissing real illnesses and conditions as psychiatric disorders when they couldn't be diagnosed easily. And microwave weapons in some forms do exist, and have been deployed in combat and for crowd control. I don't understand the eagerness to disparage and discount responsible senior officials who believe -- often with medical evidence -- that they have been targeted and injured, rather than at least recognize the possibility that something could be happening that we aren't yet able to identify. If these claims haven't been proven beyond doubt, neither have they been indisputably debunked.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidh...report-is-not-being-released/?sh=71ee79645482

Food for thought:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jun/02/microwave-weapons-havana-syndrome-experts
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michae...ave-weapons-are-undetectable/?sh=4078999ccc3f
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/defense-department-microwave-weapon-detector

I think you are missing the subtext here: "The corrupt American government is using these stories in order to create lies and exaggerations as an excuse to cut off relations with the noble and competent Cuban government because of America's long-simmering opposition to Communism."

I think the reality is pretty clear: Something happened to some of these people. We just don't know what, exactly. The kind of brain damage documented doesn't just happen as a result of aging or even standard head injuries. It could be pesticides; it could be unknown "microwave" weapons; it could be poisonings . . . we really don't have a clue. I just don't think it's fair to the victims to write it all off as some Mass Hysteria type of thing.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

I think you are missing the subtext here: "The corrupt American government is using these stories in order to create lies and exaggerations as an excuse to cut off relations with the noble and competent Cuban government because of America's long-simmering opposition to Communism."

I think the reality is pretty clear: Something happened to some of these people. We just don't know what, exactly. The kind of brain damage documented doesn't just happen as a result of aging or even standard head injuries. It could be pesticides; it could be unknown "microwave" weapons; it could be poisonings . . . we really don't have a clue. I just don't think it's fair to the victims to write it all off as some Mass Hysteria type of thing.

Might not be fair indeed, and it is wildly reckless and unfair to speculate that any issues are the result of any intentional weapon.

 

[dann]

I am neither a doctor nor an engineer. I don't pretend to know what's happening here. But I do know that medicine has a long history of dismissing real illnesses and conditions as psychiatric disorders when they couldn't be diagnosed easily. And microwave weapons in some forms do exist, and have been deployed in combat and for crowd control. I don't understand the eagerness to disparage and discount responsible senior officials who believe -- often with medical evidence -- that they have been targeted and injured, rather than at least recognize the possibility that something could be happening that we aren't yet able to identify. If these claims haven't been proven beyond doubt, neither have they been indisputably debunked.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidh...report-is-not-being-released/?sh=71ee79645482

Food for thought:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jun/02/microwave-weapons-havana-syndrome-experts
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michae...ave-weapons-are-undetectable/?sh=4078999ccc3f
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/defense-department-microwave-weapon-detector

No, you're not a doctor, and I'm not a doctor, but Dr. David Relman is a doctor:

David A. Relman, MD is the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor in Medicine, and Professor of Microbiology & Immunology, and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He is also Chief of Infectious Diseases at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System in Palo Alto, California.
David A. Relman's profile, Stanford Profiles (Stanford)

However, he is not a specialist in anything that is relevant to the study of the 'Havana Syndrome', and yet he was put in charge of the NAS study, for some reason. He is certainly not an engineer, so what do you think of this particular expert's argument for the 'syndrome' being caused by microwaves?

I have seen all your links before. Yes, microwave weapons do exist and have been used for crowd control, but did they do what the alleged microwave weapons in the 'Havana Syndrome' narrative are claimed to have done? Come back when you can present an article that, as a minimum, documents the existence of a microwave weapon that could do what the alleged microwave weapon in the 'Havana Syndrome' fairy tales is claimed to do!

I hope that you are aware that the idea still rests on the recorded sounds of crickets, aren't you?! (cf. David Relman's argument!)

This was the argument for the attack idea from the very beginning, ultrasound, but it fell out of favor when the sound turned out to be crickets, which was the point when the microwave idea became popular. (Cicadas are pretty high-pitched, but the sound is obviously not ultra!)

You seem to be unaware or in denial of the fact that the vast majority of the attack claims have actually "been indisputably debunked." What remains is a small handful of cases where the attack claim rests on the onset story: the cicada-sound - with or without recordings! This is what your "responsible senior officials" base their claims on. The claims of all the other no doubt just as "responsible senior officials" have been dismissed.

And it is not true that your "responsible senior officials" often have "medical evidence -- that they have been targeted and injured." There is no such evidence. Evidence of being targeted with what exactly? Injured how exactly? There is only evidence of what has been called brain anomalies, which is very different from brain injuries - even though the mass media latched on to that idea very early on. The "immaculate concussion" sounds very good, it's a brand-new term in medicine, but it is based on no medical evidence whatsoever and is as religious as the etymology of the term.

 

[dann]

I think you are missing the subtext here: "The corrupt American government is using these stories in order to create lies and exaggerations as an excuse to cut off relations with the noble and competent Cuban government because of America's long-simmering opposition to Communism."

Yes, indeed - except that it was never merely 'simmering'. The current lies were used to justify intensifying the blockade in the middle of a pandemic. The Cubans know this. Some of them have relatives and loved ones who died because of this. But there's another thread about the other problems Cubans are facing.

I think the reality is pretty clear: Something happened to some of these people. We just don't know what, exactly. The kind of brain damage documented doesn't just happen as a result of aging or even standard head injuries. It could be pesticides; it could be unknown "microwave" weapons; it could be poisonings . . . we really don't have a clue. I just don't think it's fair to the victims to write it all off as some Mass Hysteria type of thing.

We know what happened to them. Patient Zero imagined that he was under attack and spread his story to the rest of the community at the U.S. embassy in Havana - and to his Canadian neighbors, too. Thanks to the internet, the story spread to the U.S. intelligence community and diplomats in the rest of the world, and it really gained momentum several years later when they were all told to be on the lookout for the kind of everyday symptoms that everybody experiences at one time or another. They have now put a lid on that part of it after having scared the **** out of millions of people to the extent where people feared to be stationed abroad: 'Sorry, folks. False alarm. There was no attack.'

Except in Cuba! That story is still useful, and a lot of researchers have invested their careers in the attack idea.

Tell us more about exactly what kind of documented brain damage you are talking about!
And while you're at it, you should read up on MPI. It doesn't mean what you seem to think it means, i.e. 'writing something off'.

I hope that you are aware that the vast majority of cases have now 'been written off' as not caused by any kind of attack. Those as well as the rest of them seem to be receiving the kind of treatment that is recommended for MPI sufferers. See Marc Polymeropoulos's description of his therapy sessions, for instance.

 

[dann]

"One of the spies interviewed on “60 Minutes” mentions noticing a suspicious white van."

The Active Denial System (ADS) is a non-lethal directed-energy weapon developed by the U.S. military, designed for area denial, perimeter security and crowd control.
Raytheon had marketed a reduced-range version of this technology.
The ADS works by firing a high-powered (100 kW output power)[13] beam of 95 GHz waves at a target, which corresponds to a wavelength of 3.2 mm. The ADS millimeter wave energy works on a principle similar to a microwave oven, exciting the water and fat molecules in the skin, and instantly heating them via dielectric heating.
Active Denial System (Wikipedia)

This is the smaller version:


However, it's called Silent Guardian (TM). I don't know who sells the one that sounds like crickets.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I am neither a doctor nor an engineer. I don't pretend to know what's happening here. But I do know that medicine has a long history of dismissing real illnesses and conditions as psychiatric disorders when they couldn't be diagnosed easily. And microwave weapons in some forms do exist, and have been deployed in combat and for crowd control. I don't understand the eagerness to disparage and discount responsible senior officials who believe -- often with medical evidence -- that they have been targeted and injured, rather than at least recognize the possibility that something could be happening that we aren't yet able to identify. If these claims haven't been proven beyond doubt, neither have they been indisputably debunked.


https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidh...report-is-not-being-released/?sh=71ee79645482

Food for thought:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jun/02/microwave-weapons-havana-syndrome-experts
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michae...ave-weapons-are-undetectable/?sh=4078999ccc3f
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/danvergano/defense-department-microwave-weapon-detector

Here's the actual study: 2018; JAMA; Havana Syndrome page 5 second column titled MRI findings.

It's copy protected so you'll have to look for yourself.

They looked at 21 people, no controls and I don't see any peer review to quote from. In the MRIs only 3 people showed abnormalities, 2 mild, 1 moderate. All could be explained by other causes.

The majority of the evaluations relied on self-reported subjective symptoms.

There is nothing there that can't be explained by mass psychogenic illness. That Forbes report is pure exaggerated BS, typical of news business model of selling sensation.

 

[xjx388]

Might not be fair indeed, and it is wildly reckless and unfair to speculate that any issues are the result of any intentional weapon.

I can agree with that when such speculation comes from official sources.

But the answer “we don’t know,” is neither sexy nor satisfying.

 

[xjx388]

Yes, indeed - except that it was never merely 'simmering'. The current lies were used to justify intensifying the blockade in the middle of a pandemic. The Cubans know this. Some of them have relatives and loved ones who died because of this. But there's another thread about the other problems Cubans are facing.




We know what happened to them. Patient Zero imagined that he was under attack and spread his story to the rest of the community at the U.S. embassy in Havana - and to his Canadian neighbors, too. Thanks to the internet, the story spread to the U.S. intelligence community and diplomats in the rest of the world, and it really gained momentum several years later when they were all told to be on the lookout for the kind of everyday symptoms that everybody experiences at one time or another. They have now put a lid on that part of it after having scared the **** out of millions of people to the extent where people feared to be stationed abroad: 'Sorry, folks. False alarm. There was no attack.'

Except in Cuba! That story is still useful, and a lot of researchers have invested their careers in the attack idea.

Tell us more about exactly what kind of documented brain damage you are talking about!
And while you're at it, you should read up on MPI. It doesn't mean what you seem to think it means, i.e. 'writing something off'.

I hope that you are aware that the vast majority of cases have now 'been written off' as not caused by any kind of attack. Those as well as the rest of them seem to be receiving the kind of treatment that is recommended for MPI sufferers. See Marc Polymeropoulos's description of his therapy sessions, for instance.

You know perfectly well about the documented brain damage. It’s been cited in this thread several times.

I don’t think anyone “imagined” anything, especially not the people with documented damage.

I don’t know what happened. You don’t, despite your certainty, know what happened. None of the scientists involved in studying this even know what happened. Maybe nothing happened. But there is good evidence that something happened to at least some people. It may not have been an attack at all. It may have been a chemical attack.

We don’t know. But that doesn’t fit the “America bad; Cuba good,” narrative.

 

[xjx388]

Here's the actual study: 2018; JAMA; Havana Syndrome page 5 second column titled MRI findings.

It's copy protected so you'll have to look for yourself.

They looked at 21 people, no controls and I don't see any peer review to quote from. In the MRIs only 3 people showed abnormalities, 2 mild, 1 moderate. All could be explained by other causes.

The majority of the evaluations relied on self-reported subjective symptoms.

There is nothing there that can't be explained by mass psychogenic illness. That Forbes report is pure exaggerated BS, typical of news business model of selling sensation.

Perhaps you missed this study?

https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/n...ersonnel-developed-neurological-symptoms-cuba

Actual brain abnormalities of the type documented in this study are not explainable by MPI. There’s nothing in their histories that would explain why affected individuals brains show abnormalities that are not present in a similar control group.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

You know perfectly well about the documented brain damage. It’s been cited in this thread several times.

I don’t think anyone “imagined” anything, especially not the people with documented damage.

I don’t know what happened. You don’t, despite your certainty, know what happened. None of the scientists involved in studying this even know what happened. Maybe nothing happened. But there is good evidence that something happened to at least some people. It may not have been an attack at all. It may have been a chemical attack.

We don’t know. But that doesn’t fit the “America bad; Cuba good,” narrative.

If by documented damage you are referring to news reports, that is not documented damage.

If you or anyone has some actual evidence besides the 2018 JAMA study report which does not show any consistent documented evidence of real damage please direct me to the post number.

What else to you have?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Perhaps you missed this study?

https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/n...ersonnel-developed-neurological-symptoms-cuba

Actual brain abnormalities of the type documented in this study are not explainable by MPI. There’s nothing in their histories that would explain why affected individuals brains show abnormalities that are not present in a similar control group.

I'll look at it.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

From the paper:

Among the 40 patients included, 12 had a remote history of concussion, all with resolution of symptoms prior to directional phenomena exposure, and all 12 were included.

Past concussions were not described for any of the control group.

Among the 40 patients included, 28 were referred for further vestibular and/or oculomotor evaluations as part of clinical care and had clinical data available for correlations with neuroimaging findings.

We don't know what this means but one can conclude these were selected patients out of some larger group with complaints of Havana Syndrome. We need to know how big that total group was in order to assess just how selected the study group was.


Did you look at the discussion?

If you just read the first paragraph it looks like they found real differences in the 'exposed' group.

Advanced brain neuroimaging of a group of US government personnel potentially exposed to directional phenomena while working in Havana, Cuba, showed significant differences in whole brain white matter volume, regional gray and white matter volume, cerebellar tissue microstructural integrity, and functional connectivity in the auditory and visuospatial subnetworks compared with controls. These findings suggest that there may be differences in brain structure involving several different brain regions as well as in some functional brain networks.

Have you read anything about Bad Pharma from Ben Goldacre? It's not the usual CT crap or anything like that. Instead he describes how only positive studies are published given a slanted view that leaves out negative findings. He pushed for and has gotten some success requiring researchers list their studies before they've carried them out so that we can see which results were not published. He notes other problems like drug companies carrying out their own research and he contributes to the Bad Science blog but that's off-topic for this thread.

Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients

I'm not saying the first paragraph of the discussion is purposefully slanted toward: "we found something." It's more subconscious and subtle than that. So let's see what they actually found.

These patterns of volumetric differences do not conform readily to any established mechanisms of pathogenesis, nor do they form an anatomical basis for a specific behavioral dysfunction observed in other brain disorders. ...

... This is in contrast to the increased mean diffusivity and decreased fractional anisotropy observed in other brain disorders, such as traumatic brain injury. ... contrary to what is observed due to axonal swelling in acquired brain injuries such as traumatic brain injury and stroke. ...

TBF there were 2 finding consistent with traumatic brain injury.

The presence of cerebellar differences in terms of tissue volume and microstructure in the patients may have important clinical implications because involvement of this region is associated with vestibular and oculomotor dysfunction, which was observed in a subset of the patients.

IOW those results were consistent with what the selected group was referred to the study for: vestibular and/or oculomotor evaluations. Again, we don't know how big the group was that these patients were selected out of. And that is consistent with this finding:

In exploratory analyses, some correlations were observed between neuroimaging metrics and quantitative measures of vestibular and oculomotor dysfunction that were obtained clinically for a subset of 28 patients with neurological signs and symptoms that required subspecialty evaluation.

And we find out:

The strength of correlation (R2) of these diffusion-based tissue integrity measures with clinical scores was relatively weak. These correlations suggest a potential neuroanatomical basis of the observed neurological manifestations in these patients. However, this analysis must be interpreted in light of the limitation that numerous clinical and imaging correlations were evaluated, including clinical findings that showed no correlation with the imaging metrics or that showed correlation with imaging metrics that were not significantly different between groups. Thus, given issues related to multiple comparisons in the absence of predefined hypotheses, the relatively weak correlations observed for some metrics, and the absence of correlation with functional connectivity metrics entirely, the clinical implications of the neuroimaging differences remain uncertain.

This is the last paragraph in the discussion:

This was further complicated by the small number of patients and large degree of heterogeneity arising from multiple sources, including (1) difficulty in determining the presence or absence of an “exposure” beyond clinical history; (2) not knowing the character or relative “dose” of the potential exposure; (3) a highly varying time interval between the reported exposure and the clinical and MRI evaluations; (4) the existence of premorbid conditions and routine health problems; and (5) varying degrees of clinical symptom severity at the time of clinical evaluation, leading to different clinical treatment and intervention paradigms.

Then look at the limitations:

First, the effort was not designed as a research study but was undertaken retrospectively, using clinically acquired data and measures of deficit assessment

It was a retrospective study!!!!! That makes the selected group even less neutral.

They had to score the group as a whole because they had no idea which individuals had severe symptoms and which had mild symptoms.

Third, the analysis involved a small sample with high heterogeneity, compounded by clinical (as opposed to research) neuroimaging acquisition. In the absence of a common clinical severity score due to varied symptomatology, the cohort cannot be subdivided. Therefore, the findings represent group-level statistical differences as opposed to individual changes that may be highly variable.

They can't rule out important confounding factors:

Fourth, because the patients have undergone neurological rehabilitation, the imaging findings may be representative of brain changes associated with the rehabilitation or compensatory changes in a recovering brain.

How well does the last paragraph correlate with the "Conclusion":

Among US government personnel in Havana, Cuba, with potential directional phenomena exposure, compared with healthy controls, advanced brain MRI techniques revealed significant neuroimaging differences in whole brain white matter volume, regional gray and white matter volume, cerebellar tissue microstructural integrity, and functional connectivity in the auditory and visuospatial subnetworks but not in the executive control subnetwork. The clinical importance of these differences is uncertain and may require further study.

Bottom line, this study is not one that supports the claim they found physical evidence (as opposed to subjective self-reports).

Got any more? I would love to see some actual significant finds. It would be a first that this kind of malady shouldn't be dismissed.

 

[xjx388]

From the paper:
Past concussions were not described for any of the control group.
We don't know what this means but one can conclude these were selected patients out of some larger group with complaints of Havana Syndrome. We need to know how big that total group was in order to assess just how selected the study group was.


Did you look at the discussion?

If you just read the first paragraph it looks like they found real differences in the 'exposed' group.
Have you read anything about Bad Pharma from Ben Goldacre? It's not the usual CT crap or anything like that. Instead he describes how only positive studies are published given a slanted view that leaves out negative findings. He pushed for and has gotten some success requiring researchers list their studies before they've carried them out so that we can see which results were not published. He notes other problems like drug companies carrying out their own research and he contributes to the Bad Science blog but that's off-topic for this thread.

Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients

I'm not saying the first paragraph of the discussion is purposefully slanted toward: "we found something." It's more subconscious and subtle than that. So let's see what they actually found.

TBF there were 2 finding consistent with traumatic brain injury.

IOW those results were consistent with what the selected group was referred to the study for: vestibular and/or oculomotor evaluations. Again, we don't know how big the group was that these patients were selected out of. And that is consistent with this finding:

And we find out:


This is the last paragraph in the discussion:


Then look at the limitations:
It was a retrospective study!!!!! That makes the selected group even less neutral.

They had to score the group as a whole because they had no idea which individuals had severe symptoms and which had mild symptoms.


They can't rule out important confounding factors:


How well does the last paragraph correlate with the "Conclusion":



Bottom line, this study is not one that supports the claim they found physical evidence (as opposed to subjective self-reports).

Got any more? I would love to see some actual significant finds. It would be a first that this kind of malady shouldn't be dismissed.

I disagree with your analysis. Every study has limitations. I see no evidence of any kind of slant; you really had to read into it to find “subconscious and subtle” traces of it.

They found differences. Obviously, more study is needed; but they did find some physical differences between the control group and the study group.

Perhaps everyone in the diplomatic/intelligence service now (or entering service) should get these kinds of brain scans. That might tell us a lot more and give us a baseline to compare to. This study is not proof that these people were attacked, but it is evidence that something happened to their brains which roughly correlates to the symptoms they report. It warrants further investigation and not a blanket dismissal of the participants as suffering from MPI.

As far as I can tell, no other US studies have been made public. This is a Canadian study that documents brain damage and speculates (with some evidence) that it might be due to cholinesterase inhibitors such as those found in some pesticides.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/19007096v1.full.pdf

The only problem I have with the pesticide theory is that the whole Cuban population is exposed to them, given the government’s program of mosquito control spraying. I see no reports that Cuban citizens are having similar symptoms; but, maybe they are and the government keeps that quiet.

I don’t have any firm conclusions and none are possible given what we know. What I have a problem with is the dismissal of the “syndrome,” with an easy “it’s all in their minds,” wave of the hand.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I disagree with your analysis. Every study has limitations. I see no evidence of any kind of slant; you really had to read into it to find “subconscious and subtle” traces of it.

They found differences. Obviously, more study is needed; but they did find some physical differences between the control group and the study group.

Perhaps everyone in the diplomatic/intelligence service now (or entering service) should get these kinds of brain scans. That might tell us a lot more and give us a baseline to compare to. This study is not proof that these people were attacked, but it is evidence that something happened to their brains which roughly correlates to the symptoms they report. It warrants further investigation and not a blanket dismissal of the participants as suffering from MPI ...

If you could post quotes in the findings that support the conclusion significant differences were found I'd be willing to look at them.

And you need a quote or two that supports the fact a selected study group had no effect on that conclusion.

They had a small, non-random study group. Right there the conclusion isn't supported by the findings. Ask your wife.

As far as I can tell, no other US studies have been made public. This is a Canadian study that documents brain damage and speculates (with some evidence) that it might be due to cholinesterase inhibitors such as those found in some pesticides.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/19007096v1.full.pdf

I'll take a look at that one.

 

[xjx388]

If you could post quotes in the findings that support the conclusion significant differences were found I'd be willing to look at them.

And you need a quote or two that supports the fact a selected study group had no effect on that conclusion.

They had a small, non-random study group. Right there the conclusion isn't supported by the findings. Ask your wife.


I'll take a look at that one.

I understand that the Penn study cannot say for certain that the abnormalities were definitively the result of something that happened in Cuba. I understand the limitations of a retrospective study. But the mere fact that there were abnormalities found in the study group that were not found in a demographically similar control group is certainly suggestive.

All I’m really trying to get across is that there really isn’t enough information to draw conclusions. One cannot say, with anything approaching certainty, that “it was probably MPI,” just as one cannot say, “it was probably an attack.”

Dann would like us to accept that it’s most probably MPI because that fits his “America evil; Cuba good,” narrative. I say that we can’t just accept that because it isn’t clear at all. And I say that not because I’m trying to defend America (we’ve done our share of evil) but because there isn’t enough information.