Disease: Real or state of mind?

[snopes]

Envision a nightmare of horror, conspiracy, medical mystery, human suffering and cyberspace, and you might get a phenomenon that has come to be called Morgellons disease.

In more than 5,000 households across the country and in a handful of doctor's offices, sufferers and the people who treat them subscribe to the idea that there is abroad in the land a new type of infection — a parasite, a worm, a virus — its source as yet unknown.

Theories as to its origin have included alien abductions, a French government conspiracy to poison bottled water, and exposure to a wide range of toxic pollutants.

To its victims, who call themselves "Morgies" and congregate almost exclusively in cyberspace, Morgellons is a disease that is dreadfully, painfully real. To doubters — among them, the vast majority of dermatologists to whom most patients turn first — Morgellons is almost certainly a painful, dreadful psychosis called delusional parasitosis. What is new, they say, is the name, the online community that has formed around it and the growing conviction among victims that it is a real, new disease.

http://www.latimes.com/features/prin...,3382987.story

[Sister Ray]

I'm pretty sure this isn't a new phenomenon. Many people are convinced they have diseases that don't exist. Some of the symptoms of this one are a bit extreme, but it's still a recognized phenomenon.

Sister "who has somatic complaints that she knows are somatic" Ray

[medtchva]

If you go to the Morgellon's site (www.morgellons.org), there are photos and electron scanning micrscopy photos of the filamentous fibers that are seen coming from the skin lesions of patients. These fibers have been identified as cellulose, which makes up the cell wall of plants. Under the Scientific section, it talks about the possibility that these patients are infected with Agrobacterium, which is known to produce cellulose in infected wound sites. It's also the cause of galls in plants - maybe the fibers are the animal response to the bacteria?

[lynnejanet]

Morgellons is a weird one. There seems to be too much physical evidence for it to be a psychosis. However, it is a fascinating study in how the internet has changed the way that we learn and communicate. This debate is one to watch.

[hambubba]

On the geography page, it's plain to see where the source is - the three states with the increase in/most symptoms are the only three that the space shuttle has landed in (if you count 1 crash).

It's a spaceborne alien parasitic organism. Can't you SEE?

[snopes]

It sounds like a freakish ailment from a horror movie: Sores erupt on your skin, mysterious threads pop out of them, and you feel like tiny bugs are crawling all over you.

Some experts believe it's a psychiatric phenomenon, yet hundreds of people say it's a true physical condition. It's called Morgellons, and now the government is about to begin its first medical study of it.

http://www.azcentral.com/offbeat/art...on0116-ON.html

[musicgeek]

We kicked this around on the old board for a while. At the time, the preponderance of evidence showed the fibers to be fibers from clothing, carpet, Kleenex, etc. (that they were made of cellulose is because they were from linen, cotton, etc.) that became trapped/embedded in open wounds or sores.

[Halfmad]

Forgive me if this was already linked, didn't look like it. Here's a story from the Washington Post that I read yesterday. It looks like there could be more to this than "they are crazy":

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...ollar_jobs.php

[Blatherskite]

I can't imagine anything more distressing than not being taken seriously by doctors when you are sure in your own mind that something is very wrong. Actually, I can imagine a few things more distressing, including having skin legions covered in fibres and sensations of being stung all over by invisible bees.

[Der Jägermeister]

A description of a a mainstream doctor's response and why real doctors treat Morgellons' as a psychosomatic disease, is available over at Science Based Medicine. The article title is "Itching and the Imaginary Passenger Brake."

[BrokenBiscuit]

Wow, this is interesting! I haven't read anything more than what's in the articles, but I'm not convinced it's physical.

I didn't like the worm theory in the Washington post article. I don't really understand what he was observing. It was the shape of the "egg" fibres right, not a direct observation of the worms? But if the worms are creating a mass large enough to compress the blood supply to the brain, that should be detectable. And under this theory the life cycle of these worms is: They are absorbed and thrive in the colon, but are normally destroyed in the bloodstream. Under depressed immune function, they move into the bloodstream, clogging smaller vessels. They move into the skin and lay eggs in open sores.

This doesn't make sense to me. The vessels that supply the brain aren't that small. Wouldn't you see the damage elsewhere first? These are also very specific neurological symptoms. People with strokes and temporary lack of oxygen to the brain don't often feel they're invaded by parasites and that there are worms crawling out of their eyes. And why are all the eggs empty? Shouldn't some be maturing? If they're spread by faeces and abundant in the colon, shouldn't we be able to detect them in a stool sample?

I also disagree with the "see, you have fibres on your skin too. It's infected everybody!" I'd take that to mean the fibres are environmental.

But it's best to investigate with an open mind.

What I hate is the derogatory tone of 'all in the head', 'they just think I'm crazy' or even - forgive me - the title of this thread. Mental illness is illness too and can cause real changes in the body. If the itching is caused by the brain, it doesn't mean there isn't any itching or that we think they're making it up for attention. For example, if you inject someone with placebo and tell them it's morphine, they release natural opiates into their bloodstream. They don't act like they're high, they are high. The brain is a complicated organ - if the disease is in there, it doesn't mean the condition is not real.