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Parasitic Infection Flummoxes Victims and Doctors

Posted by Zonk on from the if-you-need-me-i'll-now-be-up-all-night dept.

Toxictoy writes "Imagine having a disease that is so controversial that doctors refuse to treat you. Individuals with this disease report disturbing crawling, stinging, and biting sensations, as well as non-healing skin lesions, which are associated with highly unusual structures. These structures can be described as fiber-like or filamentous, and are the most striking feature of this disease. In addition, patients report the presence of seed-like granules and black speck-like material associated with their skin. Sound like a bad plot for a Sci-Fi channel movie? Think again - it could be Morgellon's Syndrome."

4 of 581 comments (clear)

  1. Where's the story? by xtal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you have strange sores, or another infection, a biopsy will reveal abnormalities. The fact the CDC has not been sent any sample by a trained medical professional (or so the article claims), leads me to question the validity of the claims. There -are- procedures in place to deal with undiagnosed infections.

    I'm not seeing the story here, and I'm reluctant to believe there is a grand conspiracy keeping a single sample from making it to the CDC.

    --
    ..don't panic
  2. News? by Bieeanda · · Score: 5, Insightful
    More like tinfoil-hat bullshit. Sorry folks, but Morgellons is a particularly sad expression of schizophrenia, not a strange space-age malady that makes you break out in deep-pile shag.

    It's particularly telling that the 'big' sites that 'cover' this 'malady' don't actually show pictures of symptomatic sufferers or anything noteworthy like that. No, instead we get useless SEM photos of fibres, bits of dust and ECU shots of cat scratches.

  3. The one that really scares me... by rdmiller3 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    One of the links for this "disease" talked about a woman who was taking her two-year-old son to the doctor because she thought he had it.

    Since these fibers are obviously ordinary textile fuzz and lint, that means that the poor kid's delusional mom is inflicting the condition upon him. I hope that their doctor had the sense to contact someone in Social Services.

  4. Re:Like all establishments, medicine is conservati by technothrasher · · Score: 5, Insightful
    What if there are other undiscovered disease agents? It's immensely hubristic to assume modern medicine has everything figured out yet.

    This is the classic 'argument from ignorance'. To a some degree, you are correct- Lack of evidence is not the same as evidence of lack. However, this is only an argument of the possibility of something existing, not that something does actually exist. That's a pretty weak argument. It can be equally applied to almost any claim. Heck, it can be applied to Santa Claus existing.

    just look at the battles the homeopathic community has to fight; some of them are wackos perhaps, but many of them have treatments superior to those of "modern" medicine.

    Ah, now here you make a definitive argument: Homeopathic medicine is effective. However, you don't back it up with any evidence at all (and you've infected it with the old 'modern' medicine is ridgid strawman).

    To anyone who thinks Morgellon's must necessarily be a load of nonsense

    You've got it backwards. People aren't saying it "must necessarily" be nonsense. They're saying the evidence is weak, so it's not necessarily what the victims say it is. There are lots of possibilities about what is going on, from it being exactly what the victims claim to it being nothing at all, to a whole rainbow of things in between. So don't just accept it so readily. That's really showing a pretty closed mind. (And this goes for Homeopathy too, btw)