What the US Government Is Not Telling You About Those ‘Sonic Attacks’ in Cuba

When the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) recently published a preliminary clinical evaluation of health problems suffered by US embassy personnel in Havana, the State Department seized the opportunity to reiterate a countrywide “health alert” on Cuba.
“Discuss the JAMA article with a doctor if you have concerns prior to travel,” the department advised on February 14. “We encourage private U.S. citizens who have traveled to Cuba and are concerned about their symptoms to share this article with their doctor.”
The alert reflects an ongoing effort by President Trump’s State Department to frighten US travelers away from Cuba. Last September, when the administration announced a drastic 60 percent embassy staff reduction in Havana in response to the mysterious health maladies, the department issued a categorical warning to US citizens “not to travel to Cuba.” In early January, when the State Department issued a new safety ranking system for all nations, Cuba received a “level 3” designation—“Reconsider Travel: Avoid travel due to serious risks to safety and security.” In late January, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs told The Miami Herald that, following the September alert, 19 US citizens had called to report health problems after traveling to Cuba—out of close to 620,000 travelers who visited the island in 2017—even though officials at the Bureau of Consular Affairs who fielded those calls readily admit that they took no steps to determine when, where, and how those illnesses occurred, and simply passed the callers on to the FBI. And last week, when the State Department determined that the embassy would not be restaffed and will “continue to operate with the minimum personnel necessary to perform core diplomatic and consular functions,” the department posted a long list of warnings for anyone thinking about traveling to Cuba—even though the island remains among the safest countries anywhere in the world for US citizens to visit.
 
The highly technical JAMA study, titled “Neurological Manifestations Among US Government Personnel Reporting Directional Audible and Sensory Phenomena in Havana, Cuba,” certainly sounds scary. The article summarizes initial medical findings on 21 of the 24 members of the US embassy community in Havana—diplomats, family members, and intelligence agents—who suffered a range of neurological-related symptoms from a still-unidentified source between late 2016 and August 2017. “Persistent cognitive, vestibular, and oculomotor dysfunction, as well as sleep impairment and headaches, were observed among US government personnel in Havana, Cuba, associated with reports of directional audible and/or sensory phenomena of unclear origin,” a team of doctors from the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Brain Injury and Repair reported. “These individuals appeared to have sustained injury to widespread brain networks without an associated history of head trauma.”

“At this point, a unifying explanation for the symptoms…remains elusive and the effect of possible exposure to audible phenomena is unclear.” —JAMA editorial

The report, however, was accompanied by an editorial warning that the findings remain preliminary and incomplete. “At this point, a unifying explanation for the symptoms experienced by the US government officials described in this case series remains elusive and the effect of possible exposure to audible phenomena is unclear,” states the JAMA editorial. “Before reaching any definitive conclusions, additional evidence must be obtained and rigorously and objectively evaluated.” Nevertheless, the JAMA study has helped to clarify the murky and misrepresented events that the Trump administration has characterized as “sonic attacks” against US personal in Havana—and a potential threat to US travelers. The journal article contains several important takeaways:

• The “sonic attack” meme has been scientifically laid to rest. The doctors determined that the sounds heard by those who were hurt—described as a “high-pitched sound,” “buzzing,” “grinding metal,” “piercing squeals,” and “humming”—could not have caused the symptoms they experienced. “We actually don’t think it was the audible sound that was the problem,” says Dr. Douglas Smith, MD, a co-author of the study who directs the Center for Brain Injury and Repair. “We think the audible sound was a consequence of the exposure, because audible sound is not known to cause brain injury.” At the same time, the JAMA study casts doubt on viral or chemical sources of the symptoms. While the JAMA editorial alludes to “mass psychogenic illness” as a possible explanation—a theory that Cuban investigators have also advanced—after a year of serious investigation by multiple US agencies, the cause of the health problems remains unidentified.
• Sensational reports of brain damage turn out to be fake news. Based on leaks by anonymous US officials briefed on the medical-study findings, the Associated Press circulated a seemingly explosive scoop in December that the doctors had “discovered brain abnormalities” among the US embassy personnel. “Medical testing has revealed the embassy workers developed changes to the white matter tracts that let different parts of the brain communicate,” the AP reported. But now those claims have been revealed to be incorrect at best—and malicious spin at worst. According to the JAMA study, all 21 patients underwent MRI testing, and “most patients had conventional imaging findings.” Only three showed “multiple T2-bright white matter foci”; of those, two were “mild in degree and 1 with moderate changes.” The study made it clear that there was no way to know if those few cases had anything to do with events in Havana or “could perhaps be attributed to other preexisting disease processes or risk factors.”
• Those who experienced health problems in Havana hotel rooms were US personnel. The JAMA study refers to government patients who experienced an “onset of symptoms in their homes and hotel rooms,” offering official, if inadvertent, confirmation that reported incidents in the Hotel Nacional and the Hotel Capri involved US employees, not tourists. Other than the names of the hotels, the State Department has refused to provide any details about three incidents that took place at the Nacional and Capri. But when the administration announced the virtual shutdown of the embassy last September, the State Department pointed to the hotels as evidence of a potential threat to US tourists and categorically warned them not to travel to the island. “Because our personnel’s safety is at risk, and we are unable to identify the source of the attacks,” the travel warning stated, “we believe U.S. citizens may also be at risk and warn them not to travel to Cuba. Attacks have occurred in U.S. diplomatic residences and hotels frequented by U.S. citizens.” An updated travel advisory posted on the State Department’s website last week specifically instructs US travelers to “avoid Hotel Nacional and Hotel Capri.”

Predictably, these travel warnings have led to significant cancellations at the Capri and the Nacional, as well as a significant drop-off in overall US visitors to the island. That might not have been the case if the Trump administration had been transparent, and honest, about what happened in Cuba, instead of exploiting this troubling situation to sabotage normalized relations. “Leaks of intentionally misleading and false information by US government officials have distorted the truth and made it harder to get to the bottom of the mystery,” points out Collin Laverty, who runs Cuba Educational Travel (CET) and tracks the impact of Trump’s policies on tourism and the tourist sector in Cuba. The administration, he suggests, is “hiding many of the facts.”