Mystery disease strikes American, Canadian diplomats in Cuba

Why are Canadian and American diplomats suffering a mysterious, unknown disease when they go to Havana?

About three dozen American and Canadian diplomats have suffered brain damage, hearing loss, headaches, and even brain damage while working in Havana. Doctors are puzzled because their symptoms are not consistent with any known disease. And it only affects Americans and Canadians, only diplomats, and only in Havana and China.

Welcome back to Plain English. I’m Jeff, JR is the producer, and we are on episode number 118 together. You know the details by now: Plain English is a podcast for English learners. We talk about current events, things going on in the world, but we do it at a speed that’s a little slower so you can follow along—you can hear every word. And if you need a little extra help, well, that’s why we have the transcripts online. Today’s transcript is available at PlainEnglish.com/118. Translations of the hardest words are available for Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, French, Italian, and Japanese.

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Mysterious illness strikes diplomats in Cuba

Picture this: a mysterious disease that doctors can’t fully diagnose that hits only people in a certain profession. It only affects people from the US and Canada, and only when they’re living or traveling abroad. It sounds like something out of a spy novel, but it’s a real thing. It’s known as Havana syndrome, and it’s a vexing problem facing United States and Canadian diplomats living in Cuba and China.

Here’s what happens. People working for the United States or Canadian embassies or consulates in Havana, the capital of Cuba, hear these loud noises and suddenly get headaches, they feel pressure in their heads, and hear ringing in their ears. It causes them to get physically sick, to lose sleep, and to lose their balance. They also experience hearing loss, vision loss, and even some brain damage.

The symptoms are so mysterious and not consistent with any known disease that many people ignored the symptoms. Doctors didn’t know what to diagnose until they started detecting a pattern: the symptom only affected American and Canadian diplomatic staff in Havana. It didn’t affect any locals. It didn’t affect the whole diplomatic staff. The first cases started to emerge in 2016 and the US government finally acknowledged what was going on in 2017. To date, 21 Americans and now 13 Canadians have been afflicted with the so-called Havana syndrome since 2016. The most recent Canadian case came to light just about a month ago. A doctor sent by the United States government to investigate the disease was affected by it himself at his hotel when he went to Cuba; nobody else in the hotel was affected.

What is going on? Nobody knows for sure. The United States investigated in Cuba but was not able to come to any definitive conclusions. Cuba and China protest their innocence. Cuba says it launched its own investigation and did not uncover any foul play. The United States cut its diplomatic staff down dramatically in 2017 in reaction to the attacks, so the US now has many fewer people in Havana than it did after the American embassy reopened a few years ago. An American government worker in China has also come down with the so-called Havana syndrome.

A lot of people are putting the pieces together and coming up with only one conclusion: it is an attack by the government of Cuba, and now of China, against American and Canadian workers. The theory says that these governments are using some type of audio technology that can be targeted to individual people in their homes.

This theory certainly has a lot going for it. That explains why this syndrome affects diplomats from only two countries. It explains why the symptoms are not consistent with any known disease on planet earth. The other theories that have been floated fall well short of explaining the circumstances. Some people say it could be toxins in the food, that it could be due to faulty headphones or listening devices, or that it’s due to mass hysteria—in other words, that the victims are either making up their symptoms or making themselves sick. None of these other theories makes any sense.

The world of working for a consulate or embassy is a complicated world. Those workers often have their homes invaded, their conversations recorded, their movements monitored, things like that. And of course many are spies themselves. Since spies often pretend to be low-level government employees, other countries assume any low-level employee might be a spy. So there is a certain risk to this life; even so, however, if this were an attack, it would be a serious international offense. Diplomats and government workers are often bothered or harassed in other countries, but doing permanent damage to a person’s brain is quite a bit more than the norm.

Many of the victims and their families, the government workers affected, have expressed frustration that the US isn’t taking this seriously enough. But without evidence, the US and Canada have had to tread carefully around this issue since it emerged in 2016. The US didn’t acknowledge the issue for over a year. The US then investigated the issue and did not find any evidence that this was done on purpose. However, the US has tried to put some pressure on the government of Cuba for not keeping its diplomats safe while in Havana. Without evidence, though, they can’t do much more. The Cuban government denies that it has been involved and conducted its own investigation.

That is a weird and frightening story. Can you imagine being perfectly healthy thirty-something professional and then, as one person said, bumping into furniture as you walk around, suffering hearing loss, losing your balance? All because of these painful sounds you hear in your own house? Wow.

Time to say hello to a few listeners. Yzul from [location] wrote. She’s up to about 80% understanding of TV shows in English—that’s pretty good. Augusto from Brazil, Vitoria Brazil, has decided to move to London on short notice—kind of an impulsive decision. But a good one for sure: London is a fantastic city. Anyway, he has listened to about forty episodes starting at the beginning as preparation. Thanks for writing Augusto and good luck in London.

Augusto asked for something interesting. He’s heard me mention that the show emails have an extra word from each episode defined and explained. And he asked if there is a way to get them all from previous episodes. And the answer is, there is really no place to get that. I don’t really save them except one by one in the old emails in Mailchimp. But maybe I’ll find a way to get them on the web site in the future. But if you want to get those, if you want to learn the one extra English phrase in every episode, you should start now by getting on the email list at PlainEnglish.com/mail. You can also follow links to English articles to read more about the main topic—I know a lot of you do that to learn more about topics that you like.