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Pentagon Reportedly Testing Radio Wave Machine Linked to ‘Havana Syndrome’
This reported machine could also be linked to “Havana syndrome,” a debated situation characterised by a wierd panoply of signs that have been skilled by U.S. officers stationed in Cuba
J. David Ake/Getty Pictures
Ten years in the past U.S. officers stationed in Cuba began reporting a wierd assortment of signs, from ringing ears and dizziness to crushing complications and reminiscence loss. The signs, collectively dubbed “Havana syndrome” and extra formally often known as anomalous well being incidents (AHIs), recommended a neurological subject. However what, precisely, the basis trigger was has remained a matter of intense debate amongst each medical and army specialists.
Now, in response to CNN, the U.S. Division of Protection has reportedly been testing a machine that’s believed to supply pulsed radio waves and could also be linked to Havana syndrome. The DOD and the Division of Homeland Safety didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
A tool that might produce highly effective pulsed radio waves is among the many many speculated however unproven causes of Havana syndrome, which additionally embody potential publicity to neurotoxins and mass psychogenic sickness (collective anxiousness).
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Medical specialists proceed to debate even the precise neurological penalties of Havana syndrome: researchers on the Nationwide Institutes of Well being and their colleagues carried out magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans on 81 federal staff and their members of the family who stated that that they had heard a noise and felt strain of their head after which developed complications and different cognitive signs. The outcomes, printed in 2024 in JAMA, confirmed no variations between the brains of those people and people of a management group. Different research have additionally discovered inconclusive outcomes.
“It’s potential that people with an [anomalous health incident] could also be experiencing the outcomes of an occasion that led to their signs, however the harm didn’t produce the long-term neuroimaging modifications which can be sometimes noticed after extreme trauma or stroke. We hope these outcomes will alleviate considerations about AHI being related to extreme neurodegenerative modifications within the mind,” stated Carlo Pierpaoli, lead creator of the NIH examine, in a press release on the time.
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