Personal Injury Law

A Figment or Not a Figment: Morgellons Reality Bites

There are Unidentified Flying Objects. There are Unidentified Submarine Objects. Now there are Unidentified Cutaneous Objects. (For those of us without an MD, and even for those WITH an MD, cutaneous means relating to or existing on or affecting the skin.) These "UCO" are classified officially as Delusional Parasitosis since the Center for Disease Control and Prevention doesn't know what they are, or even IF they are. And of course, what they don't know about must be delusional.

I suppose whenever humankind faces something new, it is a throwback to the day when we believed we lived in a geocentric universe in which the sun and everything else revolved around us, and everyone who was anyone said the world was flat. Just like those long ago days, now they're all having a whopping case of denial. And I'm not talking about that river in Egypt. I'm talking about Morgellons syndrome. It IS denial when a scientist won't even look at the problem. Not investigating. . . that is not scientific method.

Maybe it is a scary thing when we have to admit there's something new out there in the big bad world. After all, we humans are creatures of habit. Most of us would like to be able to take a snapshot of things and be able to relax and say "This is how it is." But the world keeps turning. We keep discovering new things about our old world. Our body of knowledge keeps on growing, in spite of denial. Things grow. Things change, even if we say they don't.

You'd think a researcher would be thrilled to find something new. But they (the official powers that be) spent years denying the existence of Morgellons syndrome. It is a debilitating condition which wears down those afflicted by it, a condition which is characterized by itching skin, the sensation of crawling or biting on or below the skin, skin lesions, and weird fibers that grow below the skin.

In fact, experts don't agree on anything about this condition. Is it a single parasite? Are there misdiagnoses in addition to legitimate cases? Is Morgellons a collection of other conditions mislabeled and lumped into a single category? Is the syndrome imaginary? Is it a mental illness?

For now, it is classified as an Unexplained Dermopathy; at least it's been acknowledged to the point of being investigated in epidemiological studies by the CDC. For the past few years, sufferers have had http://www.morgellons.org/ which is working toward getting more money for more research centers. Because of Morgellons Org., there are some legitimate researchers getting involved: Oklahoma State University, California State University ? Hayward, State University of NY ? Stonybrook, a microbiologist at Clongen Laboratories, and possibly others.

So, how is the research going? Some scientists think that the fibers are consistent with substances created by the body. They've discovered half of the people they've investigated who have symptoms of Morgellons also have Lyme disease. At least they're looking at the problem. There may not yet be a light at the end of the tunnel, but at least they're admitting there is a tunnel, and not declaring it hysterical spelunker syndrome.

Links
On Wikipedia
Morgellons Research Foundation
Study seeks clues on skin-crawling Morgellons

Full post as published by The Brockovich Report on February 05, 2008 (boomark / email).