News Articles Internet Articles (2015)
|
Morgellons Syndrome: Old Plague, New Disease. Morgellons
Syndrome, which many in the medical community still insist is an imaginary
disease caused by too much Internet exposure and too much time on someone's
hands, is not only real, but there is no consistent protocol to treat
it. Nor, does it appear, is there a consistent manner in which its victims
contract the disease. Morgellons presents itself with the sensation
of bugs crawling around just under your skin. Chemtrailers
are convinced that Morgellons Syndrome is the result of government
experimentation, and that its victims contract it through chemtrail debris.
Interesting theory. Wrong conclusion. Morgellons Syndrome is a
parasitic infection. Of course, as advocates of the chemtrail theory insist, it may be that the disease simply has not manifested in its other victims yet, or they may be being treated by their dermatologists for eczema, cellulitis, scabies, or some other skin disorder as they complain that there are bugs crawling around under their skin. Modern Morgellons has been around longer than chemtrails. Dr. C.E. Kellot first identified it in 1935. He used the provincial term, masclous (little flies) to describe it. Dr. Jeffrey Meffert, MD, Associate Professor of Dermatology at the University of Texas has attempted to debunk Morgellons Syndrome as a nonexistent disease. He agrees that patients have something, but it's more likely scabies or some form of eczema which he believes may be prurigo modularis (a skin disorder characterized by itchy pea-sized nodules which usually appear on the arms and/or legs). However, prurigo nodularis may look like a Morgellons outbreak in its initial stage, but as the disease progresses, prurigo nodularis does not develop the fiber strands which are prevalent in all patients exhibiting symptoms of Morgellons Syndrome.
Leitao had taken Drew to several Pittsburgh-area dermatologists and pediatricians. None could identify what Drew had. Most referred to it as a case of scabies or eczema. They prescribed various ointments and creams to treat it. None of them worked. On this night, she bathed Drew and was applying a cream ointment that appeared to be working well to stop the itch. Drew lay in his mother's lap, lulled by the bath and his mother's caress. Leitao began rubbing the ointment on her son in gentle, circular motions. Something unusual happened. A fiber-like substance came from Drew's skin. She collected a sample of the fibers and got her older son's $8 Radio Shack microscope and looked at the fibers. Since that night, she has examined those strandsand othersunder various microscopes at the University of Massachusetts and, later, as a medical researcher at a Boston-area hospital. The fibers now obsessed her completely because of what she sees in people with Morgellons Syndromea name she coined based on her study of the research done by Sir Thomas Browneare at odds with the majority of the American medical community which still believes Morgellons does not exist. But if you
ask former Oakland Athletics relief pitcher Billy Koch or
his wife Brandi, or California resident Verna Gallagher,
each of them will assure you, it's real. When Morgellons struck Koch, he was sold by the Toronto Blue Jays to Oakland,
and from Oakland to Chicago and, finally, from Chicago back to Toronto. He developed a mysterious illness in 2004. So
did his wife Brandi. What was the mysterious illness? According
to Brandi Koch, it consisted of strings and black specks coming
out of their skin. When it first struck Brandi Koch, she said she began to be increasingly forgetful and detached. Her doctor diagnosed her as having Lyme Disease. "Then," she said, "the horror really started. I noticed there was some kind of matter coming out of my skin, not just where I had sores." Prior to the illness, she worked regularly and competed in 10K runs. Then her legs and arms began to swell, and for no reason, she got lesions on her back. Doctors decided she had an auto-immune disease, perhaps arthritis. Then they decided it was scleroderma. In truth, the doctors had no idea what was wrong and chose to ignore the fibers which she insisted were coming out of her skin. Attributing the fibers to the clothes she wore, they refused to associate them with her illness.
In 2006, a young man in Texas who was afflicted with Morgellons Syndrome committed suicide because his doctors refused to believe there were "things" growing out of his skin. "Parasitosis is a classic form of shared delusion," Dr. Mary Seeman of the University of Toronto said. "Skin disease is [a] perfect [catalyst] for it. A person gets in a rush or something, then the disease spreads through any shared space in which there is close contact." One woman, she said, convinced her husband that neighbors were shooting at her with lasers. Another convinced her sister that they were both being attacked by bugs. "When a person has something bothering him these days," Seeman said, "they get online [where they] get reinforcement [of their] ideas." And, of course, the conspiracy is born. Mary Leitao, who in Seeman's view would likely be one of the ringleaders of the fiber conspiracy, created the Morgellons Research Foundation website in her home using her own limited financial resources. But Drew Leitao, like most of those who have beenand still aremisdiagnosed, still see doctors who fail to believe that the fibers are not related to the illness, which is still being diagnosed as eczema.
Believing she was suffering from insect infestation, the Laws tore up all of the carpeting in their home and sanded the floors. Then, suspecting it might be some type of mold, they stripped off all the wallpaper and painted the walls. Her condition worsened.
Christina (last name omitted by victim), a New Yorker, decided to "winter" in a rented condo in Florida in 2004. Within a month or so, she began to wonder if the rented house was infested with fleas. She was experiencing what felt like bug bites; and she developed a nagging itch. One Florida friend thought she might have noseeums (a microscopic mite), or possibly chiggers, or some other form of mite, and gave her remedies for all of them. Because the people who owned the house had a dog and because several stray cats constantly hung around the home, Christina set off a bug bomb to kill what she believed was a flea populationeight times. When she returned to New York in the spring, she passed the infection on to her sister, two daughters and a granddaughter. Like Mary Leitao's son Drew, the Koches, Gallagher and Sue Laws, Christina experienced all of the Morgellons symptoms. Her doctor, like everyone else's doctor, gave her lotion for the itching and the constant stinging sensation. While her sister and daughterboth blood relativescontracted the disease from, her daughter's husband and grandson did not. After a year-and-a-half of suffering, Christina discovered Mary Leitao's Morgellons Research Foundation website and realized what it was that she had. But, like every other victim of Morgellons, she still has the problem because the medical community insists on calling it eczema. And no one has yet discovered how to cure Morgellons. Carol Doe, also a New Yorker and also an alias, managed the employee communications department for a Fortune 100 company until she contracted Morgellons Syndrome. Where she used to spend hours each week negotiating multi-million dollar contracts for her company, she now has trouble writing simple statementswhich can take a whole day, or longer, to construct. She also has trouble getting out of bed before noon. She no longer drives, and no longer invites friends into her home. And, she no longer allows her husband to share their bed, fearful that she will pass her horrible disease on to him. In 2006 her doctor correctly diagnosed her as having Morgellons Disease. Pam Winkler of Bel Air, Maryland was a placid suburban housewife. She had two beautiful children and a bright future until she contracted this strange malady that some people were calling the "fiber disease." When Morgellons struck, the doctors told her it was her imagination. And, because everyone insisted it was "in her mind," Winkler began to believe that perhaps it was. She ended up in a psychiatric ward of a suburban DC hospital against her will, and ended up on antipsychotic medicationalso against her will. In the end, using her confinement as grounds, her husband divorced her and gained custody of their children. According to Winkler, she still blows black fibers and specks from her nose. The doctors who were treating her at the mental facility insist the lesions and black fibers are self-inflicted. While the medical community is still skeptical that Morgellons is a real medical condition, thousands of those afflicted with the disease have flooded Congress with letters, demanding that they devote the research dollars needed to identify the origin of the disease and find an adequate treatment, and cure, for it. As a result of pressure from the public, the Centers for Disease Control [CDC] agreed, on Jan. 17, 2008, to dedicate a million dollars a year in 2008 and 2009 for an epiderminological study on what the CDC termed "an unexplained dermopathy" which was now affecting approximately 2,000 new victims each year. Leitao claims 7,000 people have registered with the Morgellons Research Foundation, the CDC has thus far found over 11,000 families in the United States that are affected with the strange, as yet medically undefined disease.
|
|
|