subject: The Unknown Disease Recognized As Morgellons [print this page] Human beings are complex, from our social interaction to our physical function, we defy simple or complete description or understanding. The science of medicine has been hard at work for centuries and still we do not know what causes some of the most prevalent afflictions, even those that are fatal. It is not due to a lack of desire, it is more that like the causes for the symptoms of those who suffer from Morgellons, there are some things we simply do not know.
This condition, recognized by the US Centers for Disease control as the subject for an epidemiological study, has an unknown source, and also lacks a systematic set of diagnostic symptoms. Its methodology of morbidity likewise escapes documentation, yet its sufferers are adamant that they suffer from real problems with a real cause. The notion that because we have no information of previous diagnoses there is no disease is tantamount to giving up because it is too hard to determine the cause.
Thus the limited medical body of knowledge records that in the seminal case of this syndrome, someone whose child was reported to have suffered from this affliction was themselves impaired. Not surprisingly the diagnosis of this patient was inconclusive, which compounds the notion that there may be nothing there to examine. The condition, however, is new enough that its sufferers had the power of the internet and e-mail at their disposal to protest medical dismissal to government agencies directly.
Complaints range from skin lesions to fatigue, joint and muscle pain, and most commonly describe the appearance of protruding fibers of unknown origin for which the affliction was named. While parasitologists and entomologists who have examined these fibers purport to finding no biological presence to ascribe them to, there is an acknowledgement of a consistent presence of Lymes disease amongst the patients.
One of the reasons there is so little progress in the research on this affliction is that early on the malady was associated with a psychiatric disorder. Those who claimed to be sufferers were assumed to have a condition known as delusional parasitosis, the belief they are afflicted with parasite when none are present. Worse, some are accused of creating symptoms in themselves or other purely to attraction attention.
People who have this condition understand that it is real and they have a condition that needs to be acknowledged before it can be identified and treated. They have banded together to keep pressure on the medical community to address Morgellons instead of unilaterally dispensing it to the lessor realms of imagined illness. This may just be the next in what could be a number of new medical problems which will continue to appear and afflict man for as long as we are alive.
