Perhaps you've seen a TV show describing poor victims of a mysterious skin condition that no doctor can diagnose, or if he does diagnose it, the patients don't believe him. Most likely, it was "Morgellons" disease--the newest medical hype to come down the pike.
Heck, when I first saw a show on it, I was almost convinced, but after doing a little research, determined that the show was incredibly biased, just to get the maximum ratings value.
I recently posted an HND article on it, and have already gotten plenty of hate mail--and I really do mean hate mail--from the true believers.
No doubt, many self-identified "Morgellons" people are suffering, but they will never get cured unless they remove themselves from this cohort of commiserating true believers. Maybe when the CDC finally publishes its report the hype will end. Maybe.
http://lymebusters.proboards39.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=rash&thread=11125
Posted by: Niels | October 21, 2008 at 01:27 PM
Niels has already sent me direct e-mail. I leave his comment up here so you can examine the thread.
I guess it's more important for these people to be part of a group, rather than to get cured.
Posted by: Michael Shaw | October 21, 2008 at 02:56 PM
How should I "get cured" ??
Seems to me like antibiotics, antiparasitics and antifungals help a lot more than psych-drugs being pushed on Morgellons patients. Therefore I follow the treatment advice of the california licensed physician that diagnosed me with "Lyme Disease, Morgellons Type."
Do you have a problem with my following doctors orders after having plenty of lab results showing i have Lyme disease?
The situation is exactly like it says in http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26890110 which is a much better article on the controversies surrounding Morgellons disease, from a far more credible source.
Desperate, White found a dermatology practice with a physician’s assistant who had heard similar stories from other patients. The physician’s assistant (who spoke to SELF but asked not to be named for fear that her office would become ground zero for Morgellons sufferers who have nowhere else to go) had started out assuming the patients had delusional parasitosis, a recognized psychiatric disorder in which people imagine they are infested with parasites. But their stories were so vivid and similar that she began to wonder whether they had something different, perhaps some kind of an infection. She did a skin biopsy to rule out discoid lupus erythematosus, an autoimmune condition that may make skin react to sunlight and form scars. Then, in July, the physician’s assistant prescribed White a psychiatric drug, pimozide, that affects the action of several brain chemicals and reduces the sensation of itching. The drug didn’t help, but something else did: She also gave White the address of the Morgellons Research Foundation Web site.
The group looked reliable to White. It has eight M.D.s and seven Ph.D.s among its board members, and its founders had published an article introducing the concept of Morgellons in the American Journal of Clinical Dermatology. More compelling were the accounts by self-described patients at the Web site. They told of rashes, weird hairs or fibers, itches, mysterious splinters — and of lives ruined: relatives who didn’t believe them, jobs forfeited, savings depleted by medical visits, and doctors who insisted that the illness was all in their head.
That Web site and others provided White with validation — “very nice people who helped me a lot,” she says — and hope for treatment. Many people who posted said they were being treated for Lyme disease, an illness transmitted by infected ticks. Lyme causes different symptoms from Morgellons, but some found the high doses of antibiotics they were taking had eased their Morgellons. White initially tested negative for Lyme but then tested positive for antibodies to the Lyme bacterium. Her neurologist stuck an intravenous line of antibiotics into her arm.
After five months on the drugs, her anxiety and insomnia improved, as did her swollen glands and rashes. But she was not recovered. “I have lots of Morgellons-specific symptoms that I don’t think are going to fade even with the Lyme treatment,” she says. She still has nodules on her head and the sense of tangles under her scalp, the hair twisting in the follicle. “I don’t know what medicine is powerful enough to make it stop.”
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Posted by: Niels | October 22, 2008 at 02:31 PM
Niels--
If all this works for you, that's great. However, the piece was about Morgellons being a new disease or not, so maybe we should see what the CDC concludes.
Posted by: Michael Shaw | October 22, 2008 at 02:59 PM