US diplomats' brains were shrunk by sonic attacks at Cuban embassy, study finds
telegraph.co.uk
telegraph.co.uk
But the medical team that performed the scans said the findings were not conclusive. They do not match what is normally seen in brain injuries and the severity of symptoms did not vary with the extent of the brain differences spotted.
“It’s a unique presentation that we have not seen before,” said Ragini Verma, a professor of biomedical imaging on the team at the University of Pennsylvania. “What caused it? I’m completely unequipped to answer that.”
Independent experts agreed the findings were inconclusive and said it was still unclear whether the diplomats were victims of any attack or had suffered related brain injuries. The apparent abnormalities might have pre-dated the attacks, they said, and could have more mundane explanations such as anxiety or depression. One said the study did not meet the usual standards for publication.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jul/23/brain-scans-...
There's been a lot of finger pointing, but until we know HOW this was done it may be hard to figure out WHO conducted it, or even if it was man-made at all (e.g. disease).
On the wild end of things one could imagine it being a combination of sonic and chemical attack where the an innocuous chemical structure became active as a result of high frequency sound.
“The study supports the validity of the patients report of symptoms, but doesn’t answer the question of whether they have had a brain injury or not or whether the exposure they report is relevant."
So something happened, but no one knows what caused it.
Through history doctors have all too often assumed their current testing capabilities were perfect and there was nothing more to learn. Thus if a patient looks normal on tests of the day then they must be imagining the problem and they label it psychogenic. Then this can't be disproved until new technology or research reveals how wrong this label was.
People should think about the amount of grief these people and others through history have suffered due to this.
No, it’s a case where doctors and researchers disagreed with one another and continued gathering data to try and reach a more definitive conclusion. Who, exactly, do you think was doing the MRI studies on their brains and publishing it in JAMA?
Those that do label illnesses psychogenic without any evidence do harm to patients. They cause grief, delay or hinder access to further research, and so forth.
That’s pretty common in software too where we want to blame the users endpoint computer or browser cache or something. We never want it to be an actual bug in our software.
But those are local problems, when you have multiple eyes (and variety of experts) looking at it and a major geopolitical implication, simple dismissal is less of a problem.
But agreed this is something that all professionals should be aware of, fighting our natural instincts, and try not to be so lazy or dismissive, and ask the harder questions.
The point is that this event is inconsistent with any known diseases or injuries, including sonic devices, but completely consistent with other events of (self-reinforcing) mass hallucinations. No one is saying the affected have not suffered.
All illness have at some time been “inconsistent with any known diseases or injuries”, MS, epilepsy, CFS, etc. What’s more likely at this point.
I think lack of evidence in medicine shouldn’t be used as evidence for “psychogenic illness.” Just as lack of evidence for something in physics shouldn’t be used as evidence for “god put it there.”
Doctors should get used to saying “we don’t know what’s wrong with these people yet” instead of trying to force an answer where there currently isn’t one. It’s far more correct and much kinder.
At this point I feel like a psychogenic diagnosis is like attributing something to god/religion. When you say what the cause of something is the burden of proof is now on you to provide evidence of that.
Looking at the wikipedia for mass psychogenic events they are noted for "symptoms that are transient and benign; symptoms with rapid onset and recovery" eg headaches and coughs not stuff like "one diplomat's hearing was damaged to the point that he now requires a hearing aid" (skeptoid article) or structural changes to the brain (telegraph article).
There are a few DIYers making microwave guns on youtube but I don't think they point them at people much https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80kDn4vit_w&feature=youtu.be...
https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/how-we-reve...
"Computer science researchers have explored the physics of IMD. In the DolphinAttack paper, we used ultrasonic signals to trick a smartphone’s voice-recognition assistant. Because of nonlinearity in the smartphone’s microphone, the ultrasound produced by-products at audible frequencies inside the circuitry of the microphone. Thus, the IMD signal remains inaudible to humans, but the smartphone hears voices. In an early 2017 paper, Nirupam Roy, Haitham Hassanieh, and Romit Roy Choudhury at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign described their BackDoor system [PDF] for using ultrasound and IMD to jam spy microphones, watermark music played at live concerts, and otherwise create “shadow” sounds."
Your Siri is talking to the voices in her head... Conspiracy theory wise i'd think (ie. hope that "at least some of my tax dollars at work") that NSA uses such tools too, and this is why everybody is so mum about it.
> Design, Setting, and Participants: Forty government personnel (patients) who were potentially exposed and experienced neurological symptoms underwent evaluation at a US academic medical center from August 21, 2017, to June 8, 2018, including advanced structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging analytics. Findings were compared with imaging findings of 48 demographically similar healthy controls.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/03/25/7049036...
I wonder if microwave damage would be consistent with the effects found.