Havana Syndrome study halted as review finds some patients were coerced

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A long-term study of Havana Syndrome patients was shut down after a National Institute of Health (NIH) internal review board found participants who reported being pressured to join the research.The study had until now not found evidence linking the participants to the same symptoms and brain injuries. The internal investigation that halted the study was prompted by complaints from the participants about unethical practices.

This comes after the intelligence community released an interim report last year concluding a foreign adversary is "very unlikely" to be behind the symptoms hundreds of U.S. intelligence officers are experiencing, despite qualifying for U.S. government funded treatment of their brain injuries.

In a statement to Fox News an NIH spokesperson stated, "In March 2024, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) initiated an investigation in response to concerns from participants who were evaluated as part of a study on Anomalous Health Incidents (AHI), the results of which were published in the journal JAMA. The investigation was conducted by the NIH Office of Intramural Research and the NIH Research Compliance Review Committee, an Institutional Review Board (IRB) within the NIH. 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."

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