New NIH study sheds light on mysterious 'Havana Syndrome': Victims' symptoms ... trends now
A new government study tracking over 80 self-reported victims of 'Havana Syndrome' found no signs of brain injury — despite also identifying 'real symptoms' of the mystery ailment that researchers called 'quite profound' and 'disabling.'
Persistent dizziness and balance issues were among those real symptoms for 28 percent of the embassy officials and other patients studied, according to the report.
But one Georgetown neurologist, who conducted early research into the syndrome for the Pentagon's Special Operations Command, tells DailyMail.com their findings risk creating 'a false conclusion that nothing happened to these people's brains.'
His critiques add alarming corroboration to past anonymous accounts from a former US intelligence community PhD who told DailyMail.com last year, 'We know that the Soviets had sonic weapons.'
'Anyone in the intelligence community will tell you the US has had these kinds of energy weapons for a while,' that anonymous intel agency PhD said last March.
After US officials and embassy staff reported hundreds of cases in nearly 70 countries, new reports of Havana syndrome declined sharply starting in early 2022. But the mystery of what cause the ailments and the alarm remains. (Above a timeline map of key incidents)
Above, an August 5, 2021 motorcade passes the US embassy in Havana as part of a protest demanding an end to the six-decade US economic embargo of Cuba
Dr. James Giordano, who teaches neurology at the Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington DC, was more cautious about the syndrome's exact cause.
'Let's not call it a weapon,' Dr. Giordano told DailyMail.com.
'One of the considerations, here, was that if, in fact, these individuals were exposed to some form of electromagnetic and/or acoustic stimulus,' Dr. Giordano explained, 'the nature of the damage would be functional, rather than structural.'
He described the new study as consistent with his own 2017 and 2018 analysis of Havana Syndrome patients for US Special Operations Command, which found lasting problems in patients' brain function but not to their brain structure — consequences similar to so-called 'mini-strokes' or transient ischemic attack cases.
In a statement one year ago this March, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said the 'symptoms reported by US personnel were probably the result of factors that did not involve a foreign adversary, such as preexisting conditions, conventional illnesses, and environmental factors'
'Let me be very definitive, we're not talking about a functional neurological disorder, which is a psychosomatic disorder,' Dr. Giordano told DailyMail.com.
'We're talking about a disruption of neurological function, that then created a host of effects, including downstream physiological effects that manifested themselves cognitively, motorically, and behaviorally.'
Unlike the 'mass hysteria' explanation that has plagued the State Department's self-reported victims of Havana Syndrome, the neurologist likened the findings to a
