Post by theshee on Jun 15, 2010 4:09:07 GMT 10
I would honestly say that the increase of the disease is to do with the internet and people looking up their symptoms. When you are repeatedly told that nothing is wrong with you, you hunt your symptoms down until you find something with a name that sits well with ‘some’ of the symptoms you have. The more you read on the symptoms the more you can convince yourself you have them/it. So much that it can cause physical symptoms to manifest. Many ‘sufferers’ of Morgellons are self diagnosed themselves and are now treating themselves – mainly with nothing more than snake oil.
Not many if any legitimate doctors will have anything to do with morgellons. The one's that do are selling their own 'protocol’ they have something to gain from it. Some people with a legitimate medical doctorate sometimes feel underappreciated as a real doctor and decide to go down this road. Hey, there is big money to be made by bringing your own protocol out for a condition that Doctors don’t recognise or stay clear of. This is one reason why the scientific community gets a bit nervous about researchers who have an extremely personal stake in things or who mix their scientific results with their own belief system.
If this was a true puzzling medical condition pharma would be onto it quicker than rat down a shit pipe, its big money. I’m NOT saying these people haven’t got something, BUT the cause and the cure are not being addressed by self-diagnosis, and self-treatment with useless and potentially dangerous products in my opinion. Plus I would be interested to find out the percentages (if any) of coloured people who have this or believe themselves to have it as it seems only white middle class people suffer from it?
This following pub med research was enlightening BUT when you look at the researchers, everyone of them are known within the morgellons field, so to me it isn’t independent medical research but interesting none the less.
The FULL article can be found here - www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2737752/
Not many if any legitimate doctors will have anything to do with morgellons. The one's that do are selling their own 'protocol’ they have something to gain from it. Some people with a legitimate medical doctorate sometimes feel underappreciated as a real doctor and decide to go down this road. Hey, there is big money to be made by bringing your own protocol out for a condition that Doctors don’t recognise or stay clear of. This is one reason why the scientific community gets a bit nervous about researchers who have an extremely personal stake in things or who mix their scientific results with their own belief system.
If this was a true puzzling medical condition pharma would be onto it quicker than rat down a shit pipe, its big money. I’m NOT saying these people haven’t got something, BUT the cause and the cure are not being addressed by self-diagnosis, and self-treatment with useless and potentially dangerous products in my opinion. Plus I would be interested to find out the percentages (if any) of coloured people who have this or believe themselves to have it as it seems only white middle class people suffer from it?
This following pub med research was enlightening BUT when you look at the researchers, everyone of them are known within the morgellons field, so to me it isn’t independent medical research but interesting none the less.
Morgellons disease, illuminating an undefined illness: a case series.
Harvey WT, Bransfield RC, Mercer DE, Wright AJ, Ricchi RM, Leitao MM.
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: This review of 25 consecutive patients with Morgellons disease (MD) was undertaken for two primary and extremely fundamental reasons. For semantic accuracy, there is only one "proven" MD patient: the child first given that label. The remainder of inclusive individuals adopted the label based on related descriptions from 1544 through 1884, an internet description quoted from Sir Thomas Browne (1674), or was given the label by practitioners using similar sources. Until now, there has been no formal characterization of MD from detailed examination of all body systems. Our second purpose was to differentiate MD from Delusions of Parasitosis (DP), another "informal" label that fit most of our MD patients. How we defined and how we treated these patients depended literally on factual data that would determine outcome. How they were labeled in one sense was irrelevant, except for the confusing conflict rampant in the medical community, possibly significantly skewing treatment outcomes.
CASE PRESENTATION: Clinical information was collected from 25 of 30 consecutive self-defined patients with Morgellons disease consisting of laboratory data, medical history and physical examination findings. Abnormalities were quantified and grouped by system, then compared and summarized, but the numbers were too small for more complex mathematical analysis. The quantification of physical and laboratory abnormalities allowed at least the creation of a practical clinical boundary, separating probable Morgellons from non-Morgellons patients. All the 25 patients studied meet the most commonly used DP definitions.
CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest Morgellons disease can be characterized as a physical human illness with an often-related delusional component in adults. All medical histories support that behavioral aberrancies onset only after physical symptoms. The identified abnormalities include both immune deficiency and chronic inflammatory markers that correlate strongly with immune cytokine excess. The review of 251 current NLM DP references leads us to the possibility that Morgellons disease and DP are grossly truncated labels of the same illness but with the reversal of the cause-effect order. Further, the patients' data suggest that both illnesses have an infectious origin.
Harvey WT, Bransfield RC, Mercer DE, Wright AJ, Ricchi RM, Leitao MM.
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: This review of 25 consecutive patients with Morgellons disease (MD) was undertaken for two primary and extremely fundamental reasons. For semantic accuracy, there is only one "proven" MD patient: the child first given that label. The remainder of inclusive individuals adopted the label based on related descriptions from 1544 through 1884, an internet description quoted from Sir Thomas Browne (1674), or was given the label by practitioners using similar sources. Until now, there has been no formal characterization of MD from detailed examination of all body systems. Our second purpose was to differentiate MD from Delusions of Parasitosis (DP), another "informal" label that fit most of our MD patients. How we defined and how we treated these patients depended literally on factual data that would determine outcome. How they were labeled in one sense was irrelevant, except for the confusing conflict rampant in the medical community, possibly significantly skewing treatment outcomes.
CASE PRESENTATION: Clinical information was collected from 25 of 30 consecutive self-defined patients with Morgellons disease consisting of laboratory data, medical history and physical examination findings. Abnormalities were quantified and grouped by system, then compared and summarized, but the numbers were too small for more complex mathematical analysis. The quantification of physical and laboratory abnormalities allowed at least the creation of a practical clinical boundary, separating probable Morgellons from non-Morgellons patients. All the 25 patients studied meet the most commonly used DP definitions.
CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest Morgellons disease can be characterized as a physical human illness with an often-related delusional component in adults. All medical histories support that behavioral aberrancies onset only after physical symptoms. The identified abnormalities include both immune deficiency and chronic inflammatory markers that correlate strongly with immune cytokine excess. The review of 251 current NLM DP references leads us to the possibility that Morgellons disease and DP are grossly truncated labels of the same illness but with the reversal of the cause-effect order. Further, the patients' data suggest that both illnesses have an infectious origin.
The FULL article can be found here - www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2737752/