Here is an interesting and disturbing article about “a bizarre and mysterious infection” called Morgellons disease, which is supposedly striking people at random in Texas, Florida, California and elsewhere. WARNING: the article’s description of the symptoms may make your skin crawl! The “disease” is actually rather controversial, and is regarded by many doctors and scientists as the result of serious delusions rather than an actual physiological condition; see the Wikipedia page for more.
Frankly, given the reports of “black and tarry…beads of sweat” and “fibers [that] come out of…hands and fingers,” and images like these (warning: they’re gross!), I don’t understand why doctors have been unable to resolve the debate over whether this condition is “real” or not… either the fibers and such exist, or they don’t, right? Anyway, I don’t claim to know the truth, but I do find the whole thing very interesting. And it promises to get a fair amount of attention, now that Drudge is linking to the aforementioned article.
P.P.S. This blog has another image. Meanwhile, this blog has conspiracy theories. And this guy claims he has the disease.
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Categories: Health Care & Medicine
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May 12th, 2006 at 7:37:03 pm
Just the sort of thing I was hoping to read about after being diagnosed with an unusual sinus infection this morning…
May 12th, 2006 at 7:40:18 pm
First the weird mumps, and now this. Seems to me Nature is trying to figure out a way to knock us off.
May 12th, 2006 at 8:32:05 pm
So THAT’S why my palms are hairy.
May 12th, 2006 at 8:41:05 pm
That’s REALLY creepy
May 12th, 2006 at 9:07:20 pm
I blame Karl Rove
May 12th, 2006 at 9:37:29 pm
Paging Dr. House…
May 12th, 2006 at 9:42:45 pm
The lay term for Morgellons is Joe Mama-ism.
May 12th, 2006 at 11:15:57 pm
It’s the damn aliens.
May 13th, 2006 at 5:00:52 pm
I’m guessing they’re all speed freaks.
May 14th, 2006 at 11:39:57 am
First point, doctors often have difficulty deciding whether or not something is a “real” disease or not. (This whole discussion is leaving aside the idea that even if a disease is psychosomatic, i.e. “unreal,” it is still in some sense “real” and an expression of the pateints health.) One example is Chronic Fatigue Syndrom. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_Fatigue_Syndrome
Often times weird symptoms arise as the result of various causes and they can’t be pinned down. Doctors avoid calling it a “disease” when they have not yet found some single cause, like a virus.
Human beings are creating the conditions for large scale, speeded up evolutionary changes in diseases as well as plants and animals.
May 14th, 2006 at 3:38:14 pm
“Human beings are creating the conditions for large scale, speeded up evolutionary changes in diseases as well as plants and animals.”
I’d dispute that in regards to disease, Mouse. Almost all infectious diseases–whether viral or bacterial–have very short generation times and relatively high mutation rates. As such, they’re able to adapt extremely quickly to environmental pressures which are relevant to them. I mean, the main reason why AIDS treatments eventually fail is that the HIV strain which infected the pateint evolves within the patient and ends up overcoming the drugs.
Typically, for diseases of multicellular organisms, the most relevant response is to the immune system, as the pathogen has to overcome the immune response in order to exploit the resources of its host. (This, incidentally, is the leading evolutionary explanation for why the majority of multicellular organisms reproduce sexually as opposed to asexually–by moving the target, as it were, every generation, the organism helps protect itself and its descendents from mass pestilence. This is an aspect of the Red Queen concept: you need to run as fast as you can in order to stay still, because everything else is moving as fast as it can too) Single-celled organisms typically attack their competition with chemicals–which is why the vast majority of our antibiotics are chemically derived from naturally-occuring substances produced by bateria and fungi.
In any event, though, diseases aren’t really evolving faster than they were previously, they’re just evolving differently than they were previously. Before the widespread use of antibiotics and sulfa drugs, the primary selective pressures on a human pathogen were in penetrating the human immune system, growing within its host cells, and spreading to the next victim. With increased use of antibiotics, we’ve introduced antibiotic resistance as a key evolutionary pressure, but the speed at which human pathogens are adapting to antibiotic use isn’t significantly different than the speed at which they’ve always adapted to important evolutionary pressures. We’ve changed other parameters as well–increased population density and contact with peole from far away shifts the pressure on many diseases to become more virulent, as they thus encounter more potential hosts and consequently are less impacted if the current host dies as a result of the infection–but again, that’s not an issue of changing the speed of evolutionary changes, but an issue of changing what those changes are likely to be.
May 15th, 2006 at 7:18:14 pm
Mike - I don’t see a discussion of the chemical and physical make-up of the fibres (OK, the article says “fibers”, and I’m a Brit !) … some of the pictures look like various forms of non-typical hair growth, including the small sebaceous ‘cyst-like’ sac at one end of the hair/fibre … the lesion part is another story, however …
It will be interesting to find out what this turns out to be …
July 5th, 2006 at 8:43:48 am
Hi,
it’s good that you are all taking note of this phenomenon. There would seem to be a new clinical condition which is difficult to diagnose correctly, partly because standard diagnostic laboratory tests are highly unlikely to ascertain the causative microorganisms, partly because segments of this highly organised parasite seem to have invaded aspects of the host’s tissue in such a way that growth can ostensibly resemble normal tissue, and partly because it can spread to different areas of the body, while medicine is increasingly specialised within its compartments.
If the cause is the accidental release of a cloned microorganism (? cyanobacteria and major parasitic protozoa), from a high biosafety containment level laboratory, (level 3 or above), it is appropriate to be concerned. Someone who says he is a scientist, is repeatedly maintaining this on another forum, and he has made videos that claim to show the culture used in the experiment, which includes embryonic flies, and other insect technology, which apparently develop and interact with quorum sensing cloned bacteria in a synergistic fashion, in relation with the host’s stem cells, e.g. in the hair follicle.
Scientists are turning to the kingdom of insects, e.g. in order to develop new drugs, and they are experimenting with cloned microorganisms and arthropods within laboratories that do have the correct permit authorising containment level 3, or above.
The scientist mentioned claims that something must have been released in the US in 2000.
He states the red and blue fibers are trying to grow into the wing of a butterfly or moth, because the lepidoptera species is part of the cloned culture. Thus, what an infected person has is an infection that ‘thinks it is an insect’, (and arthropods per se may emerge if the bacterial level becomes quorate), and an ‘infection that thinks it is a plant’, (because plant technology is another aspect of the cloned culture, apparently, as is squid and bird technology). Do note that some individuals have grown inverted bright white feathers (rarely), e.g. from hair follicles in the infected scalp.
Within this infection, there would seem to be (a) a helminthic (worms)component, (b) a dermatophyte (fungal) component, (c) a bacterial component, (d) a parasitical component, in the form of arthropods such as flies and collembola, and (perhaps) systemic insects from the other parts of the assembled cloned culture. Some high containment level laboratories, with the appropriate permit, can purchase some advanced and pre-prepared clutures from specialist suppliers. The scientist referred to appears to be suggesting this.
This disease is also showing its face in the UK.
American citizens who can see someone as bright and able as Ginger Savely are extremely fortunate. I do not think it would be a waste of money to travel to see her, or any registered health care professional who knows how to treat this horrible condition. I think she runs her clinic now in San Francisco.
Please read further on the writings on this, particularly those penned by Cliff Mickelson. Note well what he has to say about the ‘callus’, (a shield of hard ’skin’, with hooks embedded into the sufferer’s subcutaneous tissue, and the breeding of worms underneath this very painful affliction). This ‘callus’ is central to the whole infection/infestation, and it is arguably the most unusual and significant aspect of it.