[ad_1]
It was in late 2016 and 2017 that staff at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba complained that they could start to feel ill, suffer from dizziness and headaches, and look blurry for seemingly no reason. The condition is known as Havana syndrome.
The causes of the disease have eluded researchers and government intelligence services, and explanations range from mosquito poison to noisy crickets, writes The Guardian.
A first official report written by the National Academics of Science, Engineering and Medicine and commissioned by the United States government, now points to pulsing radio waves as a probable cause of the syndrome.
The authors of the report do not know where these waves or signals would come from or who may be behind them. But they find support for their theory in earlier Western and Soviet research.
Social and psychological factors may come into play
In 2018, The Guardian wrote about the incident. According to neurologists the newspaper spoke to at the time, the cause could be explained by mass hysteria:
– These people are shocked in an environment of anxiety and it is exactly that situation that can trigger something like this. Anxiety can be a key factor, says neurologist Mark Hallett to the newspaper.
The report now presented admits that psychological and social factors can play a role in this context, but does not consider that alone they can explain “the acute, initial, sudden onset, distinct and unusual symptoms.”
At the same time, researchers are opening up that various other factors, including psychological and social, may have an impact.
