Havana Syndrome: U.S. and Canadian diplomats targeted with possible weapon causing brain injury and neurological symptoms

Is it not the case that there were reports of similar cases from an embassy in China? Is there any reason to suppose that insecticides had been used and might be causative there?

 

Sadly,the answer to that is very probably YES.

 

Player 3 has joined the game: neurotoxins.

Neurotoxin may have caused diplomats’ illness in Cuba: study

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-diplomats-canada-idUSKBN1W42QU

 

Today I learned that life for diplomats in Havana is basically like WWI trench warfare under heavy artillery shelling.

At least that's according to this medical sociologist who totally does not have firm beliefs about mass hysteria. No, it's definitely that all facts point towards that. What facts? Well, the fact that there are no facts firmly confirming any of the other peer-reviewed hypotheses, of course.

And the Freud of the gaps lives on, but also died of irony right in this sentence:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...911/open-letter-the-diplomats-havana-syndrome

 

At least it refers to a Canadian psychiatrist having a position on mass hysteria that is based on emotion and ignorance, I would guess this is Shorter who deserves such criticism and that he is mistakenly referred to as a psychiatrist rather than a historian of psychiatry.

 

Shorter is a (cross-appointed) "Professor of Psychiatry" at the University of Toronto. I imagine that many people see him identified as such (as in theconversation.com article ) and just assume that he must be a psychiatrist, or at least some kind of physician. But you know what they say happens when you assume...

 

Every

Yeah, not a great article. I have inserted comments for readers' consideration and/or entertainment.

 

Wow! That was seriously impressive! (And I'm not being sarcastic - I'm genuinely impressed.)

 

The most legitimate example of "psychosomatic" illness that i think is likely to be explained somewhat by psychological theories is acute physical distress (chest pains etc) due to panic attacks

But "psychosomatic" ideas are still dualist and in reality even if there are social and behavioral triggers for something like that there are still organic causes.

I also suspect psychosomatic long term illness is very rare. I suspect psychosocial stress plays a role in plenty of organic diseases to a small and variable extent but i also suspect that many psychological therapies would perform more poorly than just having medical treatment, a doc w good bedside manner and palliative care, and social support.

I wouldn't go as far as the eliminative materialists and say that the "mind" doesn't exist, but it's hard to define and easy to mystify. And even if a mind or consciousness emerges as a result of physical systems it doesn't follow that the mind can then easily affect the physical systems it was birthed from. The "mind body connection" is not a two way street that goes in both directions equally. The causality and directionality is murky and a result of complex systems and feedback loops, only some of which we can affect.

For instance I may be able to use my "mind" and will to seize the tiny window in which agency exists when in a severe crash, to try and communicate something important, but this does not then mean I can simply think myself out of being sick.

 

Thanks @Arnie Pye , I appreciate you saying so

 

As do many other things, like nutrition and air quality and income. But we don't go around labelling everything a nutrition dependent, air quality dependent, or income dependent illness because these things are usually not central.

I suspect these things often play a bigger role than psychosomatics in explained and unexplained illness, but medicine focuses almost 100% on psychosomatics when it doesn't know what to do. Moreover, the psychosomatics they advocate is often bizarre: strange ideas about faulty illness beliefs or buried and forgotten trauma.

 

I actually think air quality probably has played or at least will play a bigger role than psychosocial stress in most illnesses. Anyway, I'm not a fan of psychosomatic theories. I'm just saying it's possible for stress to cause physical symptoms without structural damage, but we probably need a better framework for that than the psychosomatic crowd has

 

Pollution is estimated to cause something to the order of 5M deaths every year, yet is largely dismissed in medicine. I think largely because there isn't much to do about from within medicine, they can't exactly influence industrial and environmental policies, but then they can't actually effect any of the changes they believe they do with stuff like CBT anyway so the point is moot.

The impact of malnutrition, especially in childhood, is also well-known. Those things have 10-100x the impact that even the more chaotic self-destructive beliefs anyone could have, short of acting out on them (such as doing extreme sports, hooliganism, joining a doomsday cult or whatever). But creating illness within the body is a complete crock of bullshit. Cancer is no more the consequence of impure thoughts than it is of sin and chronic heart disease is way more likely to cause what we label as chronic stress than the other way around.

Knowing nothing about what BPS is I would have assumed stuff like pollution, nutrition choices and the health consequences of poverty would be right up their alley. And yet: thoughts and beliefs, perfectionism and general pathologization of normal human behavior. I don't see the point other than as an initial attempt by insurance companies to cheapen out on chronic health problems that ended up having a life of its own, growing into the weird metastasized horror we know today.

 

Whilst I do not believe I suffer from an income related illness I do suspect that income related factors perpetuate and exacerbate not just my illness but those of many with chronic illnesses.

Hot and cold running servants and a healthy buffet in every room would do a great deal towards improving my health IMO.

However for some reason I cannot get anyone to take this seriously.

 

Right?? I can't help thinking that if I was a child of an upper class Victorian or earlier era aristocrat with the same illness my quality of life would be far better. I would be encouraged to take bedrest, be brought to a home in the mountains in switzerland for frsh air, been given laudanum or paregoric to keep me pain free, etc etc.

As it is i don't even get palliative care, and have gotten yelled at by my parents for draining their resources by needing caregiving

 

Ha! I had a similar thought recently, that loss of income and poverty are a common consequence of ME, but it makes as much sense treating with CBT-GET as it would to treat it with financial literacy classes to help with our unhelpful beliefs about loss of income. Just as credible.

 

I'm sure Michael Sharpe and the whole crowd can move into the general field of CBT to help whole countries recover from austerity politics by stopping thoughts that feed into their "poor role", after moving on from ME research

 

I'm surprised that the author has responded to comments a number of times. Actually I quite appreciate it - seems like a much more civil fellow than the PACE clan. -

I personally find it instructive that 'yes it is, and a lot of other people think so, too', is the uniform response repeatedly produced by someone who is society's supposedly greatest expert in a particular topic. I guess here we already knew that that's where things are, but it's interesting to experience first-hand.

 

are they not aware of the organo-phosphate findings?