- Over 1000 people in Texas, Florida and
California are saying that they are suffering from a nasty new skin complaint,
but doctors are telling them they are 'delusional'.
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- It is a weird 'bug' which sounds like
something from an 'X Files' script, but it seems to be real, despite official
denials from the US medical establishment.
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- No one knows what it is, and most people
suffering from it are told they are suffering from 'Delusional Parasitosis'
by their doctors.
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- However, now there is mounting evidence
that it is the doctors and the US medical establishment who are 'delusional',
not their unfortunate patients.
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- There are currently over 1,100 hundred
known cases in the U.S., mostly in Texas, Florida and California of what
is being called 'Morgellons', and it is spreading.
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- Bugs crawling under your skin
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- Victims feel like bugs are crawling under
their skin. They have little blue fibers, and black specks and white threads
coming out of their skins. Under the skin, those fibers are connected to
what appears to be a cluster of fibers or in some instances, parasitic
looking organisms.
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- One Morgellons patient Eric Roberson
said, 'It's almost like they're intertwined with your muscle tissue,"
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- "The lesions start out as bumps
that are itchy, little round raised bumps. The fibers are quite alarming."
said another.
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- "When you lay down, as soon as your
head hits the pillow, your hair starts crawling," says Becky Bailey.
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- "It gives you the sensation that
you have worms under your skin or rats crawling on you," says Miles
Lawrence.
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- Another victim, Becky Bailey moved out
of her Austin, Texas home and into a trailer hoping to escape the bugs
that torment her. "We ripped out our carpet and burned our carpet
and furniture and move out into our R-V and they were still on me."
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- A victim in California Dillon King committed
suicide because he could not stand the feeling of bugs crawling under his
skin any longer. His mother is quoted: "The hardest thing was seeing
him just get worse all the time".
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- King's fiancée, Elizabeth Strong,
says she thinks he picked up some kind of 'weird infection', and that she's
now beginning to show the same symptoms. "It started as a small sore
and kept spreading," she said.
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- The Morgellons Research Foundation, which
is campaigning for more research to be done, reports that unexplained hair
loss, as well as a hardening or thickening of skin is also a common symptom
and that many people report lymphedema, profound fatigue, and joint pain.
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- Objects described as granules are often
found associated with skin lesions as well and several victims have had
lymph nodes surgically removed due to obstruction.
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- The fibers have been analyzed by FTIR
(Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy) and have been identified as cellulose.
Since true fungi are not able to synthesize cellulose, the Foundation is
currently focused on the 'Oomycetes' class of fungus-like organisms. Apparently
'Pythium insidiosum' is the only Oomycete which has been documented to
cause human infections.
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- Skeptic doctors and the 'Matchbox Sign'.
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- Morgellons victim Jane Waldoch, a nurse
for 24 year says she finds fibers that look like crunched up bugs in her
sheets every morning. They come from the dozens of sores that cover her
arms, legs, back and neck.
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- She began collecting samples of what
was coming out of her skin. She thought it would help her doctors diagnose
this bizarre and painful skin condition. She was wrong.
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- Doctors took it as a sign that Jane was
delusional.
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- "One of the hallmark clues to delusional
parasitosis is what they call the matchbox sign. I guess in the older days
people would take their samples in little match boxes to their physician,"
she says.
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- Mary Leitao, a biologist and the executive
director of the Morgellons Research Foundation, said doctors have become
"a brick wall. They have their answer, and they aren't open to discussing
the possibility they could be wrong."
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- "They are so smug and sure they
are right," she said.
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- Dr. Peter Lynch of the University of
California, a dermatologist for 40 years, is one of the few skeptical experts
who have been willing to even talk on the record. Other have ignored emails
and telephone calls. He said "If there were a peer-reviewed study,
with 15 or 20 patients who have the same exact thing in their skins, then
maybe I'd believe it,"
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- "When fiberglass curtains first
came out, many people with skin conditions were diagnosed with delusions
of parasitosis (DOP). But studies showed these patients had tiny (fiberglass
particles) in their skin."
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- "Anecdotal evidence doesn't carry
much weight," Lynch said. "There are many anecdotes of alien
abductions, but that doesn't mean they are true. And as for the pictures,
you can see pictures of the Loch Ness Monster on the Internet, too."
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- Leitao and other members of the Morgellons
Research Foundation are not impressed with these arguments and point to
the mounting evidence.
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- Californian microbiologist Jenny Haverty
for example, has done research on the mystery malady. Her findings point
to something very definitely physical going on.
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- "I accepted specimens from four
different people in four different counties in the Bay Area, and I looked
at them very carefully over and over again under the microscope,"
she said. "The colors and shapes of the fibers of each individual
were very, very similar."
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- She reports that tests on similar fibers
taken those of several other patients in the Bay Area show them to be tiny
tubes of protein. But how and why the filaments are formed remains a mystery
for now.
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- Evidence of link to Lyme Disease
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- Evidence is beginning to mount linking
Morgellons to Lyme Disease which can be caught from tick bites.
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- Ginger Savely, a medical practitioner
in Austin Texas, says she's seeing more and more patients in her clinic
with the symptoms. Quoted in a local newspaper she said "Talking about
it just sounds crazy, but there are just a lot of things that come out
of their skin."
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- Savely specializes in Lyme Disease and
believes there may be a link. She says that about 10 percent of her patients
with chronic Lyme disease have symptoms of Morgellons. He theory is that
people with the tick-borne Lyme Disease have weaker immune systems, and
may be more vulnerable to the Morgellons infection.
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- The Morgellons Research Foundation says
that forty-four people with Morgellons have tested positive for Borrelia
burgdorferi (Bb), the bacteria which causes Lyme Disease.
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- They believe that an infection with Borrelia
burgdorferi (Bb) may alter the individual's immune system and allow this
unknown organism to become an opportunistic coinfection.
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- Ancient Engine of An Unrecognised 'Borreliosis'
Pandemic?
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- A former NASA physician and epidemiologist
based in Houston also believes there is an infectious bacteria at the heart
of this problem.
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- Dr. William Harvey is the current chairman
of the NASA Education Advisory Committee. He has documented more than 565
of these (Borreliosis) cases in Texas and says 94% of (those with Morgellons'
skin lesions) have tested positive for the bacteria associated with Lyme
disease, or Borreliosis. "I think we are a looking at a major problem
that has been unrecognized in humanity right now."
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- Harvey co-authored a published medical
study concluding the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi, associated with Lyme
disease, could be at the heart of a widely unknown misdiagnosed infection.
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- In 2003 Harvey published his research
in the medical journal Medical Hypotheses. His article 'Lyme Disease':
Ancient Engine of an Unrecognized Borreliosis Pandemic', suggests that
the bacteria associated with Lyme disease is much more widely distributed.
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- "The yet-unrecognized form appears
to have a broader clinical presentation, wider geographic distribution,
and vastly greater prevalence," Harvey wrote in his report.
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- He says research suggests it attacks
the immune system in a specific way rendering it susceptible to these unusual
organisms. "The lab tests that we do are predictably showing certain
immune damage and it is consistent from patient to patient to patient to
patient."
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- Harvey believes the bacteria is the bigger
problem. But the so-called parasites, which have yet to be clinically proven
in a controlled laboratory setting, do have highly unusual characteristics
as seen through a scanning electron microscope.
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- Harvey says some of the "filaments"
have been confirmed as the infectious yeast Candida tropicalis and that
doctors can easily see the physical symptoms in people who are branded
"delusional." He says when patients complain that "fibers"
are coming out of their skin sores, physicians should investigate.
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- "All the doctors have to do is buy
a 30X hand-held microscope from Radio Shack and look," Harvey said.
"The facts speak for themselves."
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- Microscopic bug called 'Collembolan'
could also be involved
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- The 'National Pediculosis Association'
in Boston, Massachusetts, originally created to increase awareness about
head lice and protect children from pesticides has also done some research.
They teamed up with the Oklahoma State Department of Health to study Morg.
They took skin samples from 20 patients who claim they have the bugs, but
were diagnosed by their doctors as delusional. Researchers found collembolan,
a microscopic bug, in 18 of the 20 patients.
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- Collembola feed on algae, bacteria and
decaying matter. They thrive in wet or damp surroundings, and can be found
under leaky kitchen or bathroom sinks, swimming pools, and the soil of
potted plants.
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- The report has been published in the
journal of the New York Entomological Association.
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- Who is really delusional?
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- So, it seems there is in fact a real
bug, or even a 'willing coalition' of bugs at large in the United States
attacking innocent citizens, despite official denials. It also seems that
it is the US medical establishment that is 'delusional', not their unfortunate
patients. Either that, or they are lieing through their bleached white
teeth. Or possibly both.
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- http://www.schmoo.co.uk/morgellons.htm
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