Thank you Baker!!! - o7
CDC: Havana Syndrome in Civilians Is out of Scope. This Position is Unsustainable.
Len Ber MD
Dec 20, 2025
The CDC, as the nation’s leading public health agency, is responsible for tracking emerging health threats, issuing guidance, and coordinating responses to novel syndromes. However, FOIA responses reveal a lack of civilian-focused efforts on AHI/HS.
A FOIA request submitted November 6, 2024 sought documents on tracking, investigating, and analyzing AHI/HS among U.S. residents with domestic incidents on U.S. soil from January 1, 2018, to November 1, 2024. The CDC’s final response, dated March 3, 2025, from the Office of Safety, Security, and Asset Management (OSSAM), released nine pages of records including fully redacted “CDC Anomalous Health Incidents (AHI) Guidance”. Upon analysis, this redacted document matched the publicly available 2022 DOL Bulletin which advises filing worker compensation claims for AHIs under an ICD-10 code corresponding to Acute Traumatic Brain Injury. This guidance is restricted to federal employees and dependents, with no equivalent for civilians.
On September 29, 2025, Targeted Justice submitted a formal petition urging CDC to recognize civilian AHI/HS, establish surveillance, and provide physician guidance. The agency replied:
Here is the information you requested on petition Havana Syndrome. Unfortunately, this question is out of scope for CDC-INFO.
This dismissal underscores a profound absurdity in the federal response to a novel health threat: the nation’s premier public health agency, tasked with protecting all Americans from emerging hazards, and effectively abdicates responsibility for civilians exposed to the same syndrome that has prompted extensive government action for federal personnel. This position is illogical, both in the ethical and the practical sense: public health threats do not respect employment status or dependency classifications, and ignoring civilian cases risks underestimating prevalence, delaying interventions, and perpetuating misdiagnoses.
For instance, consider a hypothetical scenario where a family is attacked in a hotel room during an AHI: a government employee, their dependent children, and a non-dependent relative (e.g., an adult sibling) all experience AHI. Under current policy, the government would investigate the employee and dependent, but the relative would be ignored, despite identical exposure. This selective approach not only fragments epidemiological data but also raises discrimination concerns, potentially violating principles of equal protection under public health laws like the Public Health Service Act. As mentioned in the Registry Composition section of this Reprot, diagnosed civilian victims are not being tracked or investigated by the DOD that currently leads HS and AHI investigative efforts.
Moreover, the dismissal of civilian victims of Havana Syndrome is not merely passive neglect but involves active suppression, as evidenced by restrictions placed on leading medical experts who previously validated civilian cases. For instance, Dr. Michael E. Hoffer, an otolaryngologist at the University of Miami, informed a civilian patient in 2024:
I hope you didn’t come all this way and be disappointed, but I am not allowed to diagnose Havana Syndrome victims any longer. The government won’t let me.
This statement, provided under penalty of perjury, reflects a policy shift around 2023 where Dr. Hoffer began denying appointments to non-government employees, despite having previously diagnosed civilians using the same criteria. Formal petition text is available here: https://open.substack.com/pub/lenbermd/p/formal-petition-to-the-cdc
Public-faced petition in support of the CDC and the NIH formal petitions exists here, and as of writing this article, has 1,041 signatures. Please, continue voting. We need all the support we can muster.
What’s the next step? Publishing January 2026 Civilian Registry Report. Hint: the number of verified diagnosed civilian cases doubled since the January 2025 Report. The fight continues. Stay tuned.
https://lenbermd.substack.com/p/cdc-havana-syndrome-in-civilians?publication_id=1227537&post_id=182074261