Havana Syndrome study halted amid allegations of data mishandliing, patient coercion

A long-term study of Havana Syndrome patients was shut down after an internal review conducted by the National Institute of Health (NIH) found the mishandling of medical data. According to Fox News, the review board found that some of the participants were pressured to join the research.

The internal investigation which ultimately halted the study was prompted by complaints from the participants about unethical practices. Not only this, the study still did not find evidence linking the participants to the same symptoms and brain injuries.

The study was halted a year after the intelligence committee released an interim report in which they concluded that foreign adversary is “very unlikely” to be behind the symptoms hundreds of US intelligence officers are experiencing, despite qualifying for US government-funded treatment of their brain injuries.

Patients of Havana Syndrome are not surprised by the findings

The NIH released a statement in which they stated that the study was being conducted in a “dishonest” manner.

“The NIH investigation found that regulatory and NIH policy requirements for informed consent were not met due to coercion, although not on the part of NIH researchers,” an NIH spokesperson said in a statement to Fox News.

Meanwhile, a former CIA officer who goes by the name Adam said that he was not “shocked” that the study was stopped. “The way the study was conducted, at best, was dishonest and, at worst, wades into the criminal side of the scale,” Adam said.

Interestingly, Adam was Havana Syndrome’s Patient Zero after he became the first one to experience severe sensory phenomena that hundreds of US government officials eventually experienced while they were stationed overseas in places like Havana and Moscow, even China.

Some of Adam’s symptoms included pressure to the brain that led to vertigo, tinnitus and cognitive impairment. Not only Adam but several other active-duty service members, spies, FBI agents, diplomats and even children and pets have experienced this debilitating sensation that patients believe is caused by a pulsed energy weapon.

As of now, 334 Americans have qualified to receive treatment for the Havana Syndrome at specialised military facilities. Adam told Fox News that he first started feeling the symptoms in December 2016 when he was in Havana, Cuba. He recalled hearing a loud sound penetrating his room.

“Kind of like someone was taking a pencil and bouncing it off your eardrum… Eventually, I started blacking out,” the former CIA official recalled. Havana Syndrome patients who took part in the NIH study raised concerns that the CIA was including people who were actually not suffering from the condition, in order to water down the findings which will be eventually analysed by the researchers.

There were accusations that officers were pressuring those who needed treatment at Walter Reed by stating that they would have to participate in the NIH study in order to get treatment at the military health facility.

“It became pretty clear quite quickly that something was amiss and how it was being handled and how patients were being filtered… the CIA dictated who would go. NIH often complained to us behind the scenes that the CIA was not providing adequate, matched control groups, and they flooded in a whole litany of people that likely weren’t connected or had other medical issues that really muddied the water,” Adam said, accusing the NIH of working with the CIA.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson from the CIA made it clear that the federal agency is cooperating with the investigators working on the matter. “We cannot comment on whether any CIA officers participated in the study. However, we take any claim of coercion, or perceived coercion, extremely seriously and fully cooperated with NIH’s review of this matter, and have offered access to any information requested,” a CIA official told Fox News in a statement noting that the “CIA Inspector General has been made aware of the NIH findings and prior related allegations.”

With inputs from agencies.