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Speaker 1: Pushkin Havana, Cuba, in the fall of twenty sixteen. The

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Speaker 1: island's longtime ruler, Fidel Castro, an implacable foe of the

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Speaker 1: United States, has just died. What upheavals, what power struggles

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Speaker 1: his passing might set in train, are of considerable interest

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Speaker 1: to America's intelligence agencies. In a pleasant neighborhood of the Capitol,

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Speaker 1: one of the CIA's agents has returned home for the evening,

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Speaker 1: fairly certain in the knowledge that Cuban operatives have him

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Speaker 1: under surveillance, and then the American feels as if he's

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Speaker 1: been hit by a beam of sound. Young and fit

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Speaker 1: at the time of the incident, the agent eventually seeks

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Speaker 1: medical attention at the clinic in side the US Embassy.

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Speaker 1: He's been having headaches with acute pain in one ear,

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Speaker 1: and his hearing in general isn't what it was. Two

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Speaker 1: other officers soon say they too remember strange, sharp and

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Speaker 1: disorienting sounds in their homes. Around the same time, a

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Speaker 1: few more reports come in. The wife of one embassy

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Speaker 1: official says she heard a strange sound and looking out

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Speaker 1: the window, saw a van rush by. Was a Cuban

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Speaker 1: operative at the wheel? You need to call a meeting,

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Speaker 1: one diplomat tells the head of the American mission, the

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Speaker 1: rumor mill is going mad, so he does. He tells

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Speaker 1: the embassy staff that they may be being targeted by

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Speaker 1: some kind of unknown sonic weapon, And after the meeting,

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Speaker 1: cases of Havana syndrome explode. Staffers and their families report

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Speaker 1: hearing the strange sounds at home, even in some cases

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Speaker 1: a hotel room. They complain of dizziness, mental fog, ear pain,

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Speaker 1: and headaches. By summer twenty seventeen, news was getting out.

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Speaker 1: At first, the US State Department guardedly said they were

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Speaker 1: looking into incidents which caused the variety of physical symptoms,

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Speaker 1: but a journalist from the Associated Press got officials to

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Speaker 1: speak off the record. He reported their belief that this

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Speaker 1: was some kind of advanced device that operated outside the

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Speaker 1: range of audible sound. Soon the official language became more assertive,

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Speaker 1: not incidents, but attacks. Then President Donald Trump said he

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Speaker 1: believed Cuba was responsible. In October, the Associated Press published

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Speaker 1: another scoop, then obtained one of the recordings of the

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Speaker 1: mysterious sounds that led to suspicion of a sonic weapon.

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Speaker 1: The recordings themselves are not believed to be dangerous to

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Speaker 1: those who listen, wrote the Associated Press. Sound experts and

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Speaker 1: physicians say they know of no sound that can cause

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Speaker 1: physical damage when played for short durations at normal levels

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Speaker 1: through standard equipment like a cell phone or computer, so

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Speaker 1: I should be safe in playing it to you. How

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Speaker 1: to describe the sound, the Associated Press had to go

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Speaker 1: It sounds sort of like a mass of crickets. What

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Speaker 1: device produced the original sound remains unknown. One obvious possibility

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Speaker 1: is that the device could have been a mass of crickets.

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Speaker 1: That the sound of mere insects can't reduce the CIA's

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Speaker 1: finest to physical rex, can it. I'm Tim Harford, and

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Speaker 1: you're listening to cautionary tales. In an elementary school in

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Speaker 1: Miami in nineteen seventy four, a couple one hundred children

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Speaker 1: are rehearsing a musical. The fourth, fifth and sixth graders

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Speaker 1: are singing in the school's caffetorium. That's a room that

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Speaker 1: doubles as a cafeteria and an auditorium. At half past

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Speaker 1: nine in the morning, one eleven year old girl begins

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Speaker 1: to feel unwell. Let's call her Sandy. That's the name

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Speaker 1: the New Yorker magazine gave her. When they wrote an

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Speaker 1: article about what happened. Next, Sandy doesn't want to disrupt

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Speaker 1: the rehearsal, so she tries to slip out of the

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Speaker 1: caffetorium without anyone noticing. The teacher doesn't see her, but

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Speaker 1: some of the other children do. Sandy goes to see

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Speaker 1: the school nurse. The nurse isn't there, but the head

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Speaker 1: secretary is passing by and she sees Sandy's slump, unconscious

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Speaker 1: on the nurse's couch. The secretary takes out her smelling

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Speaker 1: salts and wafts them under Sandy's nose that Sandy doesn't

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Speaker 1: come round, The secretary calls the emergency services. They arrive

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Speaker 1: just as the rehearsal ends. As the kids file out

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Speaker 1: of the caffetorium, they see Sandy being carried off on

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Speaker 1: a stretcher. And now another child says she's feeling ill,

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Speaker 1: and another and another. Some say they're dizzy, some have headaches,

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Speaker 1: some complain of abdominal pain, some are hyperventilating. Soon, seven

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Speaker 1: more children have been rushed to hospital. Another twenty five

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Speaker 1: are sick enough that the school calls their parents to

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Speaker 1: come and collect them. What could be happening a neighborhood

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Speaker 1: doctor arrives to offer his help and immediately notices a

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Speaker 1: funny smell some kind of poison gas, perhaps leaking from

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Speaker 1: a broken pipe. Police cars join the ambulances, so does

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Speaker 1: the rescue squad from the fire department. The local media

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Speaker 1: routinely look for stories by listening in to transmissions on

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Speaker 1: the emergency services radio frequency, so word of the suspected

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Speaker 1: poison gas leak soon gets around. Reporters from newspapers turn up,

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Speaker 1: so do four film crews from the local TV news stations.

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Speaker 1: Worried parents flock to the school. They're joined by curious

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Speaker 1: neighbors and passers by. By the time Joel Nitskin arrives

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Speaker 1: to investigate, the scene is chaotic. Dr Nitskin heads the

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Speaker 1: county's Department of Public Health. He and his colleague have

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Speaker 1: to park half a block away as the street is

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Speaker 1: jammed with assorted emergency vehicles, their lights all flashing. Nitskin

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Speaker 1: is six feet nine inches tall, so he's able to

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Speaker 1: pick a path through the crowds of people. As he

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Speaker 1: enters the school grounds, Nitskin sees hundreds of children sitting

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Speaker 1: quietly in the shape of some trees, looking amused. Look

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Speaker 1: perfectly healthy. That's reassuring, Nitskin thinks. Whatever's going on, hundreds

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Speaker 1: of children are obviously unaffected. Nitskin and his colleague go

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Speaker 1: into the school building. They notice the unusual smell, but

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Speaker 1: they can't immediately place it. The school's head secretary greets them.

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Speaker 1: There's been some kind of poisoned gas leak. She tells them, Oh,

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Speaker 1: that's what she's heard. It all started with this girl, Sandy.

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Speaker 1: She started to feel ill when rehearsing a musical in

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Speaker 1: the caffetorium. Then more children got sick, dozens of them.

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Speaker 1: Some have gone to hospital, some have gone home. We're

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Speaker 1: treating about forty more now as best we can. Where

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Speaker 1: are you treating these sick children, asks Nitskin. In the caffetorium,

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Speaker 1: says the secretary. Nitskin exchanges a glance with his colleague.

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Speaker 1: In the caffetorium, that's where Sandy got ill. Wouldn't that

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Speaker 1: be where the poison gas must have been leaking, Oh,

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Speaker 1: says the secretary. I don't know about that. Nitskin and

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Speaker 1: his colleague head into the caffetorium, where, sure enough they

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Speaker 1: find children stretched out on the floor and nurses and

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Speaker 1: police and fire rescue workers buzzing anxiously around them. That

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Speaker 1: strange smell is nowhere near as strong in here, Nitskin notices.

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Speaker 1: He locates an office with the telephone and calls the

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Speaker 1: hospital where Sandy and the other children were taken. They're

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Speaker 1: doing fine, says the doctor. They all seem to be

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Speaker 1: feeling better. The lab tests haven't all come back, but

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Speaker 1: everything's coming up normal so far. Nitskin hangs up the

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Speaker 1: phone and sees another colleague from the county's environmental health department.

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Speaker 1: He's arrived separately, and he's been checking out the school building.

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Speaker 1: About that funny smell when you come into the school,

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Speaker 1: asks did you notice it? Any idea? What it is?

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Speaker 2: Sure?

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Speaker 1: Comes the reply, it's carpet adhesive. They laid a new

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Speaker 1: carpet in the library a few days ago. Is it toxic? No, who,

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Speaker 1: laughs the colleague, not at all. Have you found any

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Speaker 1: hint of toxic gas? Nope. I'll investigate further, of course,

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Speaker 1: but on a first check, everything seems normal, doctor Nitskin

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Speaker 1: ponders as he walks back to the caffetorium. He trusts

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Speaker 1: his colleague from Environmental Health. It doesn't seem to be

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Speaker 1: poisoned gas. It can't be viral or bacterial. There wasn't

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Speaker 1: time for Sandy to have infected everyone else anyway. The

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Speaker 1: kids are complaining of all kinds of different symptoms that

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Speaker 1: wouldn't make sense if it's an infectious disease. In Nitskin's mind,

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Speaker 1: the pieces are starting to fall into place when he's

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Speaker 1: accosted by a woman who works in the kitchen. You're

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Speaker 1: a doctor, right, you're in charge here, yes, says Nitskin.

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Speaker 1: I am. Then why don't you do something? Why don't

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Speaker 1: you straighten out this mess? You know as well as

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Speaker 1: I do that there's nothing the matter with these kids.

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Speaker 1: Get them up on their feet, get them out of here.

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Speaker 1: I have to start setting up for lunch. Nitskin stares

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Speaker 1: at the woman, his mouth open. She's just bluntly put

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Speaker 1: into words exactly where his own thoughts had been tentatively leading.

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Speaker 1: Now he's pretty sure he knows what's wrong and how

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Speaker 1: to fix it. Enough, says doctor Nitskin.

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Speaker 2: I've got an announcement to make.

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Speaker 1: He's soon commanding the attention of everyone in the caffetorium.

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Speaker 2: We've conducted an initial investigation into claims of poison gas.

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Speaker 1: He says, we.

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Speaker 2: Haven't found any there's no evidence of any infectious disease either.

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Speaker 1: By now the journalists are crowding round. Nitskin has cameras

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Speaker 1: on him, microphones thrust in his face. What's happened here,

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Speaker 1: he continues, is.

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Speaker 2: An outbreak of math hysteria, and it needs to stop

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Speaker 2: right now. We have to get this school back to normal.

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Speaker 2: Get these kids out of the caffatorium so the kitchen

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Speaker 2: staff can set up for lunch, Bring in all the

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Speaker 2: other kids from under the trees outside, send them back

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Speaker 2: to their classrooms.

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Speaker 1: Now bright this minute, Nitskin scans the faces around him.

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Speaker 1: Nobody says a word. The nurses look stunned, the teachers

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Speaker 1: look thoughtful. He sees his colleague nodding and smiling, and

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Speaker 1: the parents. The parents look appalled. Has Nitskin just said

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Speaker 1: that their kids are crazy? But it's as if a

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Speaker 1: spell has been broken. People start to talk to each other.

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Speaker 1: The kids who had been feeling ill perk up. The

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Speaker 1: teachers take them back to their classrooms and bring in

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Speaker 1: the kids from under the trees outside. The first responders

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Speaker 1: from the various emergency services begin to drift off. Dr

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Speaker 1: Nitskin drives back to his office, thinking I hope I

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Speaker 1: got that right. Cautionary tales will be back in a moment.

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Speaker 1: When Joel Nitzkin spoke in that Miami school cafetorium, he

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Speaker 1: described what was happening as mass hysteria. That was half

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Speaker 1: a century ago. Language evolves, and hysteria is for good reason,

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Speaker 1: no longer a medical diagnosis. It's an ancient Greek word

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Speaker 1: from Hista, meaning uterus. Hysteria was thought to affect people

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Speaker 1: with a uterus, and over the years it's often been

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Speaker 1: used to describe any kind of behavior by women that

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Speaker 1: men find annoying. Aristotle, for example, said women shouldn't have

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Speaker 1: the vote because of their hysterical disposition. As for mass hysteria,

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Speaker 1: that seems to have first become common in the Middle Ages,

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Speaker 1: especially with outbreaks of the dancing plague. Here's one historical account.

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Speaker 1: The streets were filled with men and women who joined hands,

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Speaker 1: formed circles, and seemingly lost all control over their actions.

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Speaker 1: They danced together ceaselessly for hours or days, and in

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Speaker 1: wild delirium, the dance has collapsed and fell to the ground, exhausted,

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Speaker 1: groaning and sighing, as if in the agonies of death.

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Speaker 1: People believed that they were seeing God or being possessed

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Speaker 1: by demons. Here's an especially striking case recounted by a

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Speaker 1: German physician. I have read in a good medical work

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Speaker 1: that a nun in a very large convent in France

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Speaker 1: began to meou like a cat. Shortly afterwards, other nuns

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Speaker 1: also meowed. At last, all the nuns meowed together every

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Speaker 1: day at a certain time for several hours. The whole

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Speaker 1: surrounding Christian neighborhood heard with equal chagrin and astonishment this

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Speaker 1: daily cat concert, which did not cease until all the

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Speaker 1: nuns were informed that a company of soldiers were placed

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Speaker 1: by the police before the entrance of the convent, and

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Speaker 1: that they were provided with rods and would continue whipping

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Speaker 1: them until they promised not to meau anymore. When you

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Speaker 1: hear stories like this, mass hysteria sounds like something from

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Speaker 1: a long gone age of superstition. But it still happens.

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Speaker 1: Only today we have a different name for it, mass

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Speaker 1: psychogenic illness. Psychogenic means beginning in the mind. In contrast,

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Speaker 1: an illness that begins in the body is called physiogenic.

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Speaker 1: For example, if you've breathed in poison gas, we all

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Speaker 1: find it easy to understand physiogenic illnesses. If a doctor

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Speaker 1: tells you you're ill because a bacteria or a toxin

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Speaker 1: has got into your body, you believe them. Psychogenic illnesses

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Speaker 1: are much more mysterious. How does our own mind make

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Speaker 1: us ill? And yet it does. It's lunchtime at a

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Speaker 1: secondary school in the small Belgian town of Burnham. The

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Speaker 1: year is nineteen ninety nine. As usual, the canteen has

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Speaker 1: crates of coca cola that the children can buy to

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Speaker 1: drink with their lunch. Today, something seems different, but quite right.

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Speaker 1: A buzz of conversation goes round the canteen. Does this

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Speaker 1: bottle of coke smell funny to you? Some of the

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Speaker 1: children shrug and gulp down the coca cola regardless. Others

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Speaker 1: start to drink theirs, but find that the taste is

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Speaker 1: a bit off, so they leave their bottles unfinished. Still,

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Speaker 1: others are concerned enough by the smell to take their

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Speaker 1: bottle back to the canteen staff and ask to swap

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Speaker 1: it for a new one. After this happens a few times,

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Speaker 1: the canteen staff decide they'd better stop selling the coke.

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Speaker 1: The children go back to their lessons, but Within half

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Speaker 1: an hour, several are starting to feel ill. They have headaches, nausea, dizziness,

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Speaker 1: abdominal pain. Some are having trouble with their breathing. The

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Speaker 1: school phones their medical helpline for advice, better take all

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Speaker 1: the kids to hospital. They're told to be on the

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Speaker 1: safe side. The teachers don't yet know what they're dealing with.

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Speaker 1: They decide to go round all the classrooms. Did any

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Speaker 1: of you drink coca cola at lunchtime and you're now

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Speaker 1: feeling ill? More children come forward, twenty two in all.

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Speaker 1: The teachers drive them all to the hospital at home.

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Speaker 1: That evening, still more children start to feel unwell. Another

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Speaker 1: eleven turn up at the emergency room. Investigators later analyzed

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Speaker 1: the coke the children had drunk. There was indeed a

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Speaker 1: problem with it. The gas that makes fizzy drinks fizzy

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Speaker 1: is carbon dioxide, but in bottles from this batch of drinks,

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Speaker 1: it had been contaminated by two other gases, carbonyl sulfide

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Speaker 1: and hydrogen sulfide. These are gases that smell like rotten eggs.

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Speaker 1: They can make you ill in large quantities, although the

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Speaker 1: investigators didn't find large quantities enough to cause a strange smell, yes,

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Speaker 1: enough to harm someone, They didn't think so. Still the

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Speaker 1: story is all over the Belgian news. Kids drank funny

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Speaker 1: tasting Coca cola and now they're in hospital. And soon

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Speaker 1: reports come in from different schools in different towns. Some

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Speaker 1: children are feeling ill. They drank cans of Coca Cola

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Speaker 1: light from a vending machine. We've seen the news and

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Speaker 1: we're assuming that must have had something to do with it. Actually,

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Speaker 1: some of the kids hadn't had Coca Cola Light. They'd

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Speaker 1: had Fanta that's made by the Coca Cola company too.

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Speaker 1: It soon turned out that these cans of Coca Cola

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Speaker 1: Light and Fanta had been produced at a different facility

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Speaker 1: from the coke bottles. The carbon dioxide in them is

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Speaker 1: perfectly fine, so two different problems hit two different factories

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Speaker 1: at the same time. Investigators looked into the cans too,

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Speaker 1: and they did find another problem, although it didn't seem

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Speaker 1: very serious. The wooden palettes used to transport the crates

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Speaker 1: had apparently been treated with fungicide, and that fungicide might

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Speaker 1: have reacted chemically with the chlorinated cleaning products used in

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Speaker 1: the vending machines, and that reaction might have caused a

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Speaker 1: smell on the outside of the can. Could it have

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Speaker 1: poisoned people? Didn't look plausible. Meanwhile, the storm in the

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Speaker 1: media grows. More and more reports come in, and not

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Speaker 1: just from schools or from children. Adults too become convinced

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Speaker 1: that Coca cola products are making them ill. Hundreds of

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Speaker 1: members of the public call the twenty four hour hotline

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Speaker 1: of Belgium's Poison Control Center, comporting symptoms and wondering if

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Speaker 1: they should attribute those symptoms to the fizzy drink they've

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Speaker 1: recently consumed. Most of the symptoms aren't too serious, like

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Speaker 1: the wands originally reported in the media. Headaches, nausea, dizziness,

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Speaker 1: abdominal pain, that kind of thing. But one doctor calls

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Speaker 1: the Poison Control Center hotline to ask about a condition

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Speaker 1: that's much more worrying, hemolysis, a disorder of the red

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Speaker 1: blood cells. The doctor explains that he's treating a child

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Speaker 1: with hemolysis and he's curious to know whether or not

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Speaker 1: anyone has reported hemolysis as one of the conditions potentially

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Speaker 1: linked to coca cola. Nobody has, but the doctor's inquiry

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Speaker 1: goes into the database, and when Belgium's Minister of Health

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Speaker 1: asks for a list of the possible effects of drinking

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Speaker 1: Coca cola. That list contains hemolysis. The Minister mentions the

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Speaker 1: term at a press conference. Soon after, the media finds

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Speaker 1: a hospital that's treating people with hemolysis who have also

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Speaker 1: recently drunk Coca cola. The Minister decides that urgent action

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Speaker 1: is needed. Six days after the first school children fell ill,

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Speaker 1: the Ministry of Health bans the sale of all Coca

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Speaker 1: Cola products in Belgium. The Coca Cola company puts out

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Speaker 1: a statement saying we deeply regret any problems encountered by

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Speaker 1: our European consumers in the last few days, and they

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Speaker 1: issue a mass product record for Coca Cola, Coca Cola Light, Fanta, Nesty, Aquarius, Bonaqua,

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Speaker 1: Kinletnic and Lilt. They temporarily shut down three factories. They

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Speaker 1: throw away stocks of soft drinks worth over one hundred

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Speaker 1: million dollars. Gradually, the media reports die down and the

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Speaker 1: calls to the poison hotline start to dry up. After

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Speaker 1: a couple of weeks, the Minister lifts the ban and

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Speaker 1: Coca Cola's CEO issues an abject apology. We let down

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Speaker 1: the people of Belgium. But had the Coca Cola company

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Speaker 1: let down the people of Belgium by making lots of

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Speaker 1: the meal, or had they in fact let people down

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Speaker 1: by not being more like no nonsense? Dr Nitskin cautionary

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Speaker 1: tales will return in a moment. After Dr Nitskin told

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Speaker 1: the children in Miami that there was no poison gas,

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Speaker 1: when they should get back to their classrooms and carry

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Speaker 1: on as normal, some parents were furious with him. One

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Speaker 1: mother called his office, demanding that he apologize for insulting

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Speaker 1: her daughter. How dare he imply that she's insane? Dr

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Speaker 1: Nitskin tried to explain that he'd done no such thing.

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Speaker 1: He had implied that she was suggestible. We all are,

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Speaker 1: he explained, to some degree. It's not a sign of insanity,

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Speaker 1: especially at the age of eleven. Here's how that suggestibility works.

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Speaker 1: I see other people feeling ill. Someone tells me it's

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Speaker 1: because of a mystery gas. I smell it too. I

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Speaker 1: expect to start feeling ill, and I do, and it's

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Speaker 1: not my imagination. I really do feel ill. Exactly how

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Speaker 1: our beliefs and expectations translate into actual, real symptoms is

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Speaker 1: still not well understood. It's one of the many mysteries

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Speaker 1: of the human mind, but there's no room for doubt

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Speaker 1: that it happens. Many people, though, seem to find that

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Speaker 1: hard to get their heads around. When a doctor suggests

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Speaker 1: that their illness might be psychogenic, the patient thinks they're

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Speaker 1: being accused of something, of imagining their symptoms or faking them.

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Speaker 1: A few weeks into the Coca Cola scare in Belgium,

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Speaker 1: some scientists publicly raised the idea that mass psychogenic illness

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Speaker 1: could have been the cause. The backlash from the general

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Speaker 1: public was immediate. What do these scientists know. They haven't

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Speaker 1: examined a single patient. Are they saying doctors were fooled

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Speaker 1: or people simply imagined their symptoms? No, they weren't. They

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Speaker 1: were saying people had real symptoms caused not by drinking

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Speaker 1: poisonous soda, but by mistakenly believing their drunk poisonous soda.

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Speaker 1: But if experts struggled to get that idea across to

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Speaker 1: an irate public, imagine what would have happened to the

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Speaker 1: Coca Cola company if they'd come out at the height

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Speaker 1: of the media storm and said, our drinks seem fine

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Speaker 1: to us, maybe it's psychogenic. It would have been a

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Speaker 1: public relations disaster. No wonder they preferred to pour one

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Speaker 1: hundred million dollars of soda needlessly down Belgian drains. From

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Speaker 1: the backlash against doctor Nitskin and the scientists in Belgium,

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Speaker 1: it seems clear that mass psychogenic illnesses are widely misunderstood.

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Speaker 1: And that's a problem because when a mysterious new syndrome

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Speaker 1: comes along, it can be hard to have a dispassionate

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Speaker 1: discussion of the possible causes. I was inspired to write

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Speaker 1: this cautionary tale about mass psychogenic illnesses by a book

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Speaker 1: recently published by two distinguished academics, Robert Bartholomew and Robert Below.

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Speaker 1: The book is well researched and it's convincingly argued, but

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Speaker 1: it also has some terrible reviews from readers propagandistic garbage,

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Speaker 1: unbribed ignorance, and pseudoscience, wild speculations, des information add its finest.

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Speaker 1: The book is called Havana Syndrome. Remember the story. It

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Speaker 1: started with an undercover officer at the US Embassy in Havana, Cuba,

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Speaker 1: complaining that he fell ill after hearing a mysterious sound

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Speaker 1: at his home. As news about the case got around,

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00:27:32,650 --> 00:27:37,330
Speaker 1: more and more people started reporting symptoms. After hearing similar sounds,

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Speaker 1: officials became convinced that they were dealing with some kind

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Speaker 1: of sonic weapon, a weapon that sounded sort of like

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Speaker 1: a mass of crickets. The FBI took recordings of the

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Speaker 1: sounds to an expert in crickets. He listened to them.

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Speaker 1: That's crickets, he said, crickets, cicadas, or Katie did's one

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Speaker 1: of them. Probably cicadas. Actually, Cuban cicadas can be pretty loud,

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Speaker 1: he pointed out, ninety five decibels. That's about as loud

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Speaker 1: as a motorcycle engine. But could a cicada damage your hearing, No,

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Speaker 1: he said, not unless you shoved it into your ear canal.

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Speaker 1: There might, of course, have been a sonic weapon that

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Speaker 1: sounded a lot like cicadas. But think of it this way.

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Speaker 1: You're about to be posted to Havana. You're quietly taken

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Speaker 1: aside and played a recording that sounds very much like

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Speaker 1: Cuba and cicadas. You're told, we think this may be

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Speaker 1: a sonic weapon that's making people ill. You get to

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Speaker 1: Havana and one night you predictably hear cicadas. As the

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Speaker 1: authors below and Bartholomew put it, this is a classic

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Speaker 1: setup for an outbreak of mass psychogenic illness. There's another

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00:29:04,050 --> 00:29:10,010
Speaker 1: reason to consider psychogenic explanations. Nobody seemed able to suggest

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Speaker 1: how the mooted sonic attack device might actually work. Still,

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Speaker 1: militaries don't tend to publicize their cutting edge technologies, and

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Speaker 1: some experts say it can't all have been psychogenic because

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Speaker 1: a few people's symptoms were too serious for that. Below

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Speaker 1: and Bartholomew disagree. I don't feel qualified to judge, but

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Speaker 1: I do think I can judge the quality of debate

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Speaker 1: around the suggestion that Havana syndrome might have been a

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Speaker 1: mass psychogenic illness. That debate was depressing, and not just

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Speaker 1: in the reader reviews of Below and Bartholomew's book. Senator

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Speaker 1: Marco Rubio, for example, sarcastically dismissed the idea that a

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Speaker 1: bunch of people are just being hypochondriacs and making it up. Well, no,

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00:29:58,650 --> 00:30:02,650
Speaker 1: that's not how psychogenic illness works. Whether an illness begins

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Speaker 1: in the body or the mind, the symptoms are real.

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Speaker 1: But that leads to an other question, how do we

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Speaker 1: treat them? In London in nineteen ninety, more than fifty

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00:30:17,850 --> 00:30:21,330
Speaker 1: school children were rushed to hospital when they started feeling

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Speaker 1: sick after lunch. They had abdominal pain, nausea, and vomiting.

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Speaker 1: They all recovered pretty quickly. You know the drill by Now,

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Speaker 1: this looks like a mass psychogenic illness, right, Actually no.

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Speaker 1: After careful investigation, it turned out that the cucumbers served

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Speaker 1: at school lunch were probably contaminated with insecticide. Lots of

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Speaker 1: things can make us ill, especially with the kind of

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Speaker 1: symptoms I've been mentioning through this tale. Fatigue, nausea, dizziness, headaches.

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Speaker 1: These are common ailments with all kinds of causes. It

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Speaker 1: shouldn't surprise us if we happened to find a Belgian

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Speaker 1: with some of these symptoms who just had a coke,

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Speaker 1: or a US diplomat in Havana who recently heard cicadas.

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Speaker 1: Diagnosis is hard and we need to keep an open mind,

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Speaker 1: especially because cases of physiogenic and psychogenic illnesses often crop

400
00:31:24,330 --> 00:31:29,090
Speaker 1: up together. The London investigators blamed the cucumbers, but they

401
00:31:29,130 --> 00:31:32,090
Speaker 1: also reckoned that some of the later cases might have

402
00:31:32,170 --> 00:31:36,930
Speaker 1: been psychogenic kids seeing their friends getting ill and thinking

403
00:31:36,970 --> 00:31:41,610
Speaker 1: themselves into illness too. Some people think that might also

404
00:31:41,690 --> 00:31:45,970
Speaker 1: have happened in Belgium. Those first few bottles of coke might,

405
00:31:46,010 --> 00:31:49,130
Speaker 1: of course, children to feel sick, and from that starting

406
00:31:49,170 --> 00:31:54,970
Speaker 1: point the problem ballooned through psychogenic contagion. Maybe that'll turn

407
00:31:55,010 --> 00:31:58,130
Speaker 1: out to be the story with Havana syndrome II, a

408
00:31:58,250 --> 00:32:02,970
Speaker 1: mix of physiogenic and psychogenic cases. We don't yet know

409
00:32:03,170 --> 00:32:07,730
Speaker 1: all the answers. The trouble is that psychogenic and physiogenic

410
00:32:07,730 --> 00:32:12,370
Speaker 1: illnesses need treating in completely different ways. If you're ill

411
00:32:12,410 --> 00:32:15,530
Speaker 1: because something's got into your body a toxin or a

412
00:32:15,610 --> 00:32:18,970
Speaker 1: virus or a bacteria, you need to figure out what

413
00:32:19,130 --> 00:32:22,890
Speaker 1: that thing is and if it has an antidote. If

414
00:32:22,930 --> 00:32:26,810
Speaker 1: the cause is psychogenic, then there isn't a cure as such,

415
00:32:27,370 --> 00:32:30,610
Speaker 1: at least if we discount the medieval method of sending

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00:32:30,730 --> 00:32:35,410
Speaker 1: soldiers to whip the meowing nuns. But there is an

417
00:32:35,450 --> 00:32:40,330
Speaker 1: approach that makes sense. If the power of expectation made

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00:32:40,370 --> 00:32:45,570
Speaker 1: someone ill, the power of expectation can also help them recover.

419
00:32:46,650 --> 00:32:49,610
Speaker 1: When doctor Nitskin told the children in Miami that there

420
00:32:49,770 --> 00:32:54,690
Speaker 1: was no toxic gas, they stopped worrying and their symptoms

421
00:32:55,050 --> 00:33:00,570
Speaker 1: melted away. Of course, what's an inspired diagnosis, if you're right,

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Speaker 1: looks like an arrogant rejection of your patient's experiences if

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Speaker 1: you're wrong. For every Joel Nitskin who decisively cures a

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Speaker 1: psychogenic outbreak, there's a doctor brusquely telling their patients to

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Speaker 1: snap out of it, when in fact the illness has

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Speaker 1: a physical cause that the doctor has overlooked. Joel Knitskin

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Speaker 1: knew he had taken a risk he'd have to justify

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Speaker 1: to his bosses. I'd made a bold move, he told

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Speaker 1: The New Yorker, and bold moves are not encouraged in

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Speaker 1: the bureaucratic world. The safe thing to do would have

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Speaker 1: been to close the school for the day. When the

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Speaker 1: report came back no poison gas. Sandy had a viral illness.

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Speaker 1: All the other kids thought themselves into feeling ill too.

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Speaker 1: Nobody would have blamed doctor Nitskin for airing on the

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Speaker 1: side of caution. I'm not sure that makes sense. If

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Speaker 1: a doctor tells us he thinks we've probably got a

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00:33:59,690 --> 00:34:03,450
Speaker 1: viral illness and it turns out to be bacterial, we're

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Speaker 1: not going to get more or less upset than if

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Speaker 1: it made the opposite mistake. But we don't feel the

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Speaker 1: same symmetry about psychogenic illnesses. Nobody is happy when a

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Speaker 1: doctor makes a mistake, but the mistake of declaring an

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Speaker 1: illness to be psychogenic is the one we can't seem

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Speaker 1: to forgive. And if we wrongly see the suggestion of

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Speaker 1: psychogenic illness as a personal insult, we'll make doctors scared

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Speaker 1: to mention it. John Nitskin took a risk because he

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Speaker 1: understood how psychogenic illnesses work. He knew that if he

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Speaker 1: allowed the idea of poison gas to linger, more kids

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00:34:46,330 --> 00:34:50,210
Speaker 1: would have felt ill, and he understood that their symptoms

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00:34:50,250 --> 00:34:54,730
Speaker 1: would have been genuine. Those forty kids in the caffetorium

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00:34:55,170 --> 00:35:00,490
Speaker 1: complaining of nausea or breathing problems weren't faking or imagining.

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Speaker 1: They were suffering. With one calm and authoritative statement, doctor

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Speaker 1: Nitskin cured them all. For a full list of our sources,

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Speaker 1: please see the show notes at Timharford dot com. Cautionary

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Speaker 1: Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright.

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00:35:49,370 --> 00:35:52,770
Speaker 1: It's produced by Alice Fines with support from Edith Russlow.

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00:35:53,370 --> 00:35:56,290
Speaker 1: The sound design and original music is the work of

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00:35:56,370 --> 00:36:01,610
Speaker 1: Pascal Wise. Julia Barton edited the scripts. It features the

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00:36:01,690 --> 00:36:05,730
Speaker 1: voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melanie Guttridge, Gemma Saunders and

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Speaker 1: rufus Wright. The show wouldn't have been possible without the

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00:36:09,610 --> 00:36:14,450
Speaker 1: work of Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohne, let Al Millard,

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00:36:14,810 --> 00:36:20,410
Speaker 1: John Schnaz, Carlie mcgliori and Eric Sandler. Cautionary Tales is

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00:36:20,450 --> 00:36:24,010
Speaker 1: a production of Pushkin Industries. It was recorded in ward

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Speaker 1: Or Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you like

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00:36:27,210 --> 00:36:30,490
Speaker 1: the show, please remember to share, rate and review go

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00:36:30,610 --> 00:36:32,930
Speaker 1: on you know it helps us And if you want

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00:36:32,970 --> 00:36:36,210
Speaker 1: to hear the show ad free, sign up for Pushkin

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00:36:36,290 --> 00:36:39,370
Speaker 1: Plus on the show page in Apple Podcasts or at

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00:36:39,410 --> 00:37:13,290
Speaker 1: pushkin dot Fm, slash plus