(NaturalNews) There's a feeling of bugs crawling under your skin, day and night; continuously haunting you. Sharp stings from what feels like bees constantly torment you, keeping you awake for days on end. Intense burning and itching from these unseen forces invade your life, robbing you of your everyday activities, causing fear and agony as the time wears on, with no end in sight. To top it all off, to your horror you discover that strange red, blue, black, white, and translucent fibers are literally coming out of your pores, accompanied by strange black specks. Then the fatigue and joint pain begin.

Sound like something out of a science fiction movie? It's not. Everyday thousands of people across the country are experiencing these horrible symptoms. Many times, their family and friends do not believe, and leave them to endure their suffering alone. They are called crazy. They are told they have delusions of parasites, or DOP for short. They are labeled, ridiculed, humiliated, and most of all, scared. They have a condition known as Morgellons Disease.

History

A distraught mother, Mary Leitao, named Morgellons Disease, also called Morgellons Syndrome or the fiber disease, back in 2002. Her then 2 year old son, Drew, had a rash on his chin that would not go away, and he kept complaining, "Mommy, bugs", and pointing to it. She found dandelion-like tufts in it and, being a biologist, studied them under her microscope. They were nothing like she had ever seen before.

After having been dismissed by multiple pediatricians, allergists, and dermatologists, even labeled as having Munchausen's by proxy, she started her own research. This lead her to discover a 17th century French medical article describing an infliction named morgellons, in which black hairs emerge from the skin of the children inflicted. Although there is nothing to link the two, at least now she had a name for it.

She put up a website, morgellons.org, hoping to get professional help. Instead, she began receiving numerous letters, emails, and phone calls from people with the same symptoms. Realizing the scope of the problem, she started The Morgellon's Research Foundation, a non-profit she runs from the basement of her home. People with symptoms can now go to her site and register as sufferers of the illness. As of this writing, April 4, 2008, there were 12,106 registered affected families.

The Medical Community

In medical circles, the people suffering from this affliction are many times labeled as delusional. The fibers brought in are thought to be just another part of the delusion, called 'matchbox' or 'Ziploc' symptoms, coined for the containers patients use to bring in specimens as 'proof'. Dr. Noah Scheinfeld, an assistant professor of dermatology at Columbia University, stated in a CNN interview that the disease is all in their heads, people are picking at themselves, and they are doing it for various reasons. He further explains that when they have the open sores, they shove the fibers in themselves.(1)

Even searches for Morgellons on the American Academy of Dermatology website as well as the Infectious Diseases Society of America produce no results. Some people believe this collective dismissal is Semmelweis Reflex, a term named for a 19th century physician who was ostracized by his colleagues for believing doctors should wash their hands between patients, thereby reducing the instance of puerperal fever. It is characterized by the dismissing or rejecting out of hand any information, automatically, without thought, inspection, or experiment. Other professionals, however, are not so quick to dismiss.

Randy Wymore is an associate professor of pharmacology and physiology at Oklahoma State University, and is now the Director of the OSU-CHS Center for the Investigation of Morgellons Disease. He put out a formal position statement(2) in June of 2007, stating, among other things, that the condition known as Morgellons is not delusions of parasites, neurotic excoriations, or the DOP-like symptoms that can be found in crystal-meth users or other addicts, nor is it those symptomatic with severe skin problems.

He also states that at this time, they do not know the cause of Morgellons, what the fibers, specks, or other 'shed' material is composed of, nor any effective treatment. He has studied the fibers, and with the help of the Tulsa Police Department's forensic lab, concluded that they do not match any of the 900 or so commercially available textiles in their database. They even tested if it matched any of 85,000 known organic materials by heating it to 700 degrees F, which should have vaporized it, but had no effect.(3) He has a team in place and is hopeful that with thorough research, they will begin to find answers to shed some light on this mystery.

Ahmed Kilani is an infectious diseases microbiologist who runs Clongen Laboratories. He has ran tests on the fibers from victims for such things as leishmaniasis, a disease transmitted by sand flies, as well as protozoal infections and fungal disease, only to come up empty handed. He is now serving on the MRF scientific advisory board.(4)

 

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