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The Havana Syndrome Diplomats’ Mystery Illness and Pulsed Radiofrequency Microwave Radiation: Interview with Dr. Beatrice Golomb

Q & A with Dr. Beatrice Golomb and Theodora Scarato, Environmental Health Trust Executive Director 


Dr. Beatrice Golomb is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Internal Medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. She is also the director of UCSD’s
Golomb Research Group which focuses on the relation of oxidative stress and mitochondrial function to health, aging, behavior, illness, environmental and medication effects, and nutrition. Current research studies are on Gulf War Illness, statin and fluoroquinolone side effects, and electrosensitivity. Dr. Golomb completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Southern California in Physics. She then went on to obtain her PhD in Biology and her Medical Degree at the University of California San Diego. She was a postdoctoral fellow in the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory at Salk Institute.  

Dr. Golomb’s research interests include the balance of treatment risks and benefits; research methods and inference from evidence; and the relation of oxidative stress and mitochondrial function (bioenergetics more generally) to health, behavior, illness, environmental and medication effects, nutrition, and aging. She is best known for her work on Gulf War illness, statins, placebos—and chocolate! A number of her studies have been featured in the national and international print, radio, and television media, from The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Economist to Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show.

In 2018, Dr. Beatrice Golomb shared with the US State Department her published paper, “Diplomats’ Mystery Illness and Pulsed Radiofrequency/Microwave Radiation,” which states, “A tremendous number of physicians and scientists and entities and scientific studies and government reports, in many nations, over many decades, have identified that RF/MW causes symptoms consistent with the spectrum now described for diplomats.” Her paper concludes that “reported facts appear consistent with radiofrequency microwave as the source of injury in diplomats in Cuba. Non-diplomats citing symptoms from radiofrequency microwave, often with an inciting pulsed-radiofrequency microwave exposure, report compatible health conditions.” https://www.golombresearchgroup.org/about

Theodora Scarato MSW is the Executive Director of Environmental Health Trust (EHT), a scientific think tank that publishes research and educates policymakers on environmental health issues.  

She is a co-author of a chapter in the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments Nursing’s textbook explaining how wireless radiation is an environmental exposure and an emerging health issue. Numerous studies have linked EMFs to a wide variety of health endpoints such as brain cancer, DNA damage, oxidative stress, immune dysfunction,  altered brain development, damaged reproduction, sleep changes, hyperactivity, and memory damage.  As a petitioner in the historic lawsuit EHT et al., v the FCC, Scarato, and EHT have spearheaded efforts to strengthen U.S. wireless radiation limits. Scarato has published research on international policy and maintains EHT’s renowned EMF policy database. Scarato has lectured at the National Institutes of Health, the New Hampshire State 5G Commission, the University of California San Francisco, and several international conferences. 

Environmental Health Trust