Mass
hysteria may explain 'sonic attacks' in Cuba, say top neurologists
·
Despite 22 Americans reporting symptoms no evidence of a weapon
found
·
·
Experts suspect a psychosomatic disorder linked to high stress
in Havana
Julian Borger and Philip
Jaekl
Thursday 12 October 2017 13.20 EDTLast modified on
Thursday 12 October 2017 17.53 EDT
Senior neurologists have suggested that a
spate of mysterious ailments among US diplomats in Cuba – which has caused a diplomat rift between
the two countries – could have been caused by a form of “mass hysteria” rather
than sonic attacks.
The unexplained incidents have prompted the US
to withdraw most of its embassy staff
from Havana and expel the majority of
Cuban diplomats from Washington.
The neurologists who talked to the Guardian
cautioned that no proper diagnosis is possible without far more information and
access to the 22 US victims, who have suffered a range of symptoms including
hearing loss, tinnitus, headaches and dizziness.
The state department has described the
incidents as “attacks”, saying they began at the end of last year with the last
recorded incident in August.
But US and Cuban investigations have produced
no evidence of any weapon, and the neurologists argue that the possibility of
“functional disorder” due to a problem in the functioning of nervous system –
rather than a disease – should be considered.
“From an objective point of view it’s more
like mass hysteria than anything else,” said Mark Hallett, the head of the
human motor control section of the US National Institute of Neurological
Disorders and Stroke.
“Mass hysteria” is the popular term for
outbreaks among groups of people which are partly or wholly psychosomatic, but
Hallett stressed there should be no blame attached to them.
“Psychosomatic disease is a disease like
anything else. It shouldn’t be stigmatised,” said Hallett, who is also
president of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. “It’s
important to point out that symptoms like this are not voluntary. They are not
a sign of weakness in an individual’s personality.”
Hallett said it was more common for such
disorders to affect smaller groups of people, often in families, but he added
that it was feasible for larger numbers of individuals to be affected,
especially when they were working closely together in a tense and hostile
environment.
“There are a very large number of individuals
that have relatively vague complaints as far as I can see,” Hallett said.
“There has been an exploration of possible causes for this and nothing has been
found and the notion of some sonic beam is relatively nonsensical.
“If it is mass hysteria that would clarify all
the mystery – and presumably normalise US-Cuban relations again,” said Hallett.
“These people are all clustered together in a somewhat anxious environment and
that is exactly the situation that precipitates something like this. Anxiety
may be one of the critical factors.”
The Associated Press reported on Thursday that
it had been provided audio tapes of high-pitched whining noises which some US embassy
workers said they heard in Havana, but it is unclear whether the sounds were
linked to the health complaints. The report noted that not all the Americans
injured in Cuba heard sounds, and of those who did, it is not unclear if they
heard the same thing.
Alan Carson, a consultant neuropsychiatrist
and former president of the British Neuropsychiatry Association told the
Guardian: “Typically what one gets in a functional disorder is some trigger. It
is often relatively mild and non-specific, it can be a minor physical injury.
But then a combination of a degree of anxiety and also belief and expectation
distort that feeling.”
“If there is a strong enough expectation that
something is going to happen, that will distort in an entirely real way the
incoming information,” Carson said. “In certain circumstances that can be
transmitted from person to person... If one person has that experience strongly
enough and sets off that train of thought in somebody’s else’s mind, that can
happen too.”
Many acoustics experts have said that it is
highly unlikely that the range of symptoms reported could have been caused by
any kind of sonic weapons.
Another theory was that the health complaints
were caused by a surveillance operation that had gone wrong – but that has also
met with scepticism from experts and a dearth of evidence.
The US has not directly blamed the Cuban
government but said Havana had failed in its obligation to protect foreign
diplomats on its territory. The Cuban government has denied conducting any form
of attack and has offered its cooperation in discovering the cause of the
symptoms.
“I don’t think the Cuban government is behind
it,” said Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama’s foreign policy adviser, who was involved
in negotiating the previous administration’s rapprochement with Havana.
“First, these things apparently started in
December … At the same time the attacks were starting the Cuban government was
frantically concluding agreements with us, signing business deals … in other
words trying to preserve the relationship. So the notion that at the same time
as doing that, they would initiate something that is so obviously designed to
blow up the relationship doesn’t make any sense.”
Asked about the possibility of functional
disorders, a state department spokesperson said: “We have no definitive answers
on the cause or the source of the attacks on US diplomats in Cuba, and an
aggressive investigation continues. We do not want to get ahead of that
investigation.”
Donald Trump has struck a markedly more
hostile tone towards Cuba than his predecessor, and in June announced a partial
rollback of Obama’s rapprochement, tightening travel and trade rules
with the island.
Jon Stone, a University of Edinburgh neurologist
and the co-editor of a book on functional neurologic disorders, said that such
disorders were very common, and the second commonest reason to see a
neurologist.
“There is a misconception that only people who
are weak-willed, people who are neurotic, get these symptoms. It isn’t true,”
Stone said. “We are talking about genuine symptoms that people have of
dizziness, of headaches, of hearing problems, which they are not faking.”
He added that the outbreak could have started
with one or two people falling ill with headaches or hearing problems, and
those spread in a high-stress atmosphere and then amid talk of a “sonic
attack”.
“None of this makes sense until you consider
the psychogenic explanation,” said Robert Bartholomew, a medical sociologist
and the author of series of books on outbreaks of mass hysteria.
“American intelligence agencies are the most
sophisticated in the world, and they reportedly don’t have a clue as to what’s
causing the symptoms. I will bet my house that there are agents in the
intelligence community who have also concluded that this is a psychogenic event
– but their analysis is either being repressed or ignored by the Trump
administration because it doesn’t fit their narrative. Mass psychogenic illness
is by far the most plausible explanation.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/12/cuba-mass-hysteria-sonic-attacks-neurologists?CMP=share_btn_fb
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