Duval County report

While looking into the CDC’s actual interest in Morgellons, I came across this report from the Duval County Health Department:

http://cctvimedia.clearchannel.com/wtev/morg2.doc

The Duval County Health Department Epidemiology Program began to receive phone calls from the public in February 2005 regarding a skin condition called Morgellons Disease recently highlighted in local news reports. DCHD initiated an investigation into the epidemiology of Morgellons Disease in Duval County. Each reported case was documented and investigated, and the feasibility of designing an epidemiologic study was considered.
[…]
The following chart represents all of these inquiries which include telephone calls, emails, and written letters. Calls began in February 2005 and DCHD continues to receive sporadic calls. Although there appears to be a cluster of reports around March 3,2005, this is attributed to the airing of Fox News’ coverage of the illness and is not a true cluster of disease.
[…]
DCHD Epidemiology consulted a pediatric dermatologist within the health department for his professional opinion. It was concluded that this is a psychological condition that has been mentioned in literature for hundreds of years, and further dermatological research is not practical. DCHD then consulted with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, GA. The reply was the same in that there was no interest to support research into Morgellons disease

I wonder if this is how Morgellons.org somehow got the idea that there was a “team” assigned to investigate Morgellons. Here’s another version of the report, as a FAQ:

http://cctvimedia.clearchannel.com/wtev/morg3.doc

Due to high media interest the following personnel were involve with initial research:
Dr. Zaheer, C. Bailey-GOC II, R. Kay-EIS, and R. Alcantara-RN; to this date continued research personnel include: Dr. Zaheer, S. Jones-GOC II, S. Traynor-EIS and R. Alcantara-RN.

The team investigated, and deduced the normal skin conditions, sprinkled with DOP.

[UPDATE: 5/26/2006] After similar reports in May, the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services released a brief statement:

No credible medical or public health association has verified the existence or diagnosis of “Morgellons Disease.” The current description of the disease is vague and covers many conditions. Until there is a credible, national standard for the diagnosis of this condition, there is no basis for making it a reportable disease. Concerned individuals should have careful clinical and laboratory investigation of their serious skin irritations, but at this time there is no reason for individuals to panic over unsubstantiated reports of this disease.

Do you want to have Morgellons?

Okay, so you are ill. You have bad skin, you feel tired, you can’t think very well, you itch, you find fibers on your skin, and doctors don’t take you seriously.

There are a number of diagnoses that might cover many of your symptoms. But let’s assume for now you have a novel infectious disease which we shall call “Morgellons”.

Now, how do we know this is a disease?

Let’s consider another diagnosis – one that many people feel is related – “Chronic Lyme“. Many people seek out a diagnosis of Chronic Lyme, thinking this diagnosis with allow them to deal with their problems. People even report great happiness when they are finally, after much effort, are diagnosed with Chronic Lyme. Believers congratulate one another. Typical quotes from the previous link:

  • “I feel vindicated”
  • “It’s a milestone to be diagnosed with Lyme disease”
  • “Congratulations”
  • “congratulations on getting a diagnosis ! what great good news ..bad news “
  • “Getting the Lyme dx, I was elated, happy to finally know what I had..”

These people are HAPPY that they have Lyme. Finally they can put a finger on the cause of their fatigue. What’s the problem here? There is not much evidence to support the concept of late stage Chronic Lyme – studies show people who have had Lyme do not get sicker than people who have not.

Sure, these people are sick – but lots of people get sick, lots of people have chronic symptoms of eczema and fatigue for no known reason. The difference here is that some people are so desperate for a diagnosis, that they either diagnose themselves, or they seek out a doctor who will give them the diagnosis they seek.

The people who choose Chronic Lyme to explain their symptoms are fortunate in that they choose a real disease, that might actually occur in chronic form. It’s also fairly new, so the literature is still in flux. The fact that the CDC and AMA downplay the incidence of Chronic Lyme does not dissuade them, they have choosen Chronic Lyme, they seek out a friendly doctor, and they start happily “treating” their disease.

People who choose Morgellons are less fortunate. Morgellons is not based on a real disease, so they have to claim it’s an unidentified infectious agent. They still want the joy of validation, they seek a diagnosis. Unfortunately there are no friendly doctors. They are reduced to diagnosing themselves, and forming support groups to diagnose each other, and pescribing each other treatments, to validate and reinforce their own belief.

Statistics do not Chronic Lyme is not the epidemic some people claim it to be, it is probably a mistaken diagnosis in a large part of the group that claims to have it. They are simply unhealthy, as many people are, particularly in America.

Similarly, Morgellons is just a collection of chronic symptoms that are typical of a percentage of the demographic that reports those symptoms. You are not the carrier of some novel infectious agent, you are simply getting old. Seeking a diagnosis of some exotic disease is a very seductive idea. Unfortunately, in all likelihood, you are simply getting a bit older, and are in poor health – in part due to stress, bad diet and lack of exercise.

The seductive diversion of “Morgellons” is an illusion. It is wasting your time, and the “treatments” are probably making you sicker.

How good is your eyesight?

People professing “Morgellons” are usually middle aged white women.

Why could this be?

I wonder if some tiny fraction of Morgellons sufferers are simply people who have fading eyesight, and simply do not realize this.

The “fibers” that are claimed are often very small. Such as the vellus hairs on the back of your hand. They are mostly invisible to the naked eye, but can become visible when lotion is applied, or when lighting conditions change, or when viewed at a different angle. This sudden appearance might make it seem like the hairs are “shooting” out of your skin. The hairs were not there, then they were – at least to your eyes.

This phenomenon might in turn be magnified by poor eyesight, which usually takes a turn for the worse after the age of 35.

Women also tend to use a lot more lotion, which both attracts fibers, and contributes to the sudden “appearance” of hairs (both vellus and terminal) when the lotion is applied.

I’m not saying this explains every case. But it might explain some. You need to eliminate such possibilities before moving on to others.

How good are your eyes? Check here:

http://www.preventblindness.org/eye_tests/near_vision_test.html

Causes of itching

There are many causes of itching, here are a few:
http://www.ca.uky.edu/agc/pubs/ent/ent58/ent58.pdf

People sometimes jump to conclusions, skipping over potential explanation in favor of the explanations they most desire. If you think you have Morgellon, did you actually check that none of the things listed here could be responsible for your symptoms?

Here’s something that might be responsible for a fraction of the Morgellons cases.

biopara-scabies.jpg

(It’s a scabies mite – it burrows into your skin)

The Mental Health Pharma-conspiracy

The deeper Morgellonites are pushing this story

(http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2006/04/21/eline/links/20060421elin004.html)

The implication being that many doctors and psychiatrist are in league with the pharmacutical industry – and have a vested interest in diagnosing things as psyciatric disorders so that Big Pharma can sell more psychopharmalogical drugs.

This is about as likely as the clothing manufacturers being in cahoots with the dry-cleaning cartels by labeling their garments “dry-clean only”, when you know perfectly well they’ll do just fine in the laundry.

The question to ask (and I’m borrowing here, Seinfelt I believe) is “how would that even work?”

When your doctor suggests perhaps a component of your disorder is mental, then does he get some kind of kickback from Big P? How much might that be? How does that money get to him?

Doctors get paid a lot already. What portion of their income comes from these psych-referral kickbacks?

How does the accounting work? Follow the money. In all the decades of auditing of various health industries – has there been one shred of evidence of such a kickback scheme?

It must be more subtle – the Doctors get paid by insurance companies that get paid by the consumers, who get high premiums because the price of psych drugs is so high. Doctors keep over-prescribing them, so everyone makes money.

Consider though, how would that even work? The individual doctor will get paid regardless. If he writes needless prescriptions, he does not get paid more. He’s taking a risk of getting caught. So it’s better for the individual doctor to get paid as normal, and let others take the risk.

So there HAS to be a kickback scheme involved.

But nobody has ever produced one shred of evidence of any financial irregularities.

And don’t point at that Reuters story above – read it first, it explains why they have “links”. Their links are most tenuous, and quite innocent looking. Heck, I have links just because I own share in SPY, which includes some pharma companies. Most of you dear readers, if you have a 401K, or other retirement account, will have some shares in a mutual fund that also invest in Pharma. Are you involved?

How would that even work?

Fibers are Everywhere – Part 2

http://www.rense.com/general39/chhmit.htm

You may be astonished to find them ALL OVER — your skin. your rug, your mirrors (they seem ‘attracted’ to mirrors!)… They’re in the air, swirling and floating on the slightest air currents. Check your hair — it is exposed outdoors — it can ‘host’ hundreds! Your clothes can glow like galaxies of miniature stars are on them. ‘Dust’ on every flat surface in your home can be filled with them.
Some wave and squirm, almost as if they’re alive.”

This is something I noticed myself, when playing around with a black light. I also noticed a white t-shirt (and most white items of clothing) glow bright white. It’s part of the dyeing process that makes them white. Plus, laundry detergent glows white. The fibers from these things are the fibers that you see under black light.

It’s funny – they make the same case I was making before, fibers are everywhere, yet somehow reason escapes them and they attribute it to aliens and the government’s secret mind control chemtrail spraying activities.

Why is it not lint?

First of all, you can SEE lint on your clothes. You CANNOT see these filaments in regular light EVEN if you are looking right at them. Catch one with tweezers under UV light, keep a firm grip, and turn on the room light. It ‘vanishes’! Turn the room light off, turn the UV on, and it’s still there

That’s because it’s tiny! You can see it under black light because it emits light against a black background. when you turn the light on, it blend in with everything, as it’s so small.

Secondly, there were a lot of people in the 1970’s who owned UV lights of this type for illuminating posters and creating a party mood. No one from that era claims to remember this material.”

WHAT!? “Er, do you remember, going to a party sometime in the 70’s, did you happen to notice, when it was really dark and you were next to a black light, that there were these tiny fibers on people’s clothes?” – This is evidence of a vast government conspiracy? – that you can’t find anyone who remembers the fibers from a party in the 70s? Well, that could equally well be evidence that detergent manufacturers started using stilbenes in their detergent sometime between 1980 and 2000? Or, it could mean nothing at all. Or maybe that people who decorated with black light did not do much laundry. What do you remember from the 70s? What color were lava lamps? Did pet rocks have hair? Did mood rings work?

Thirdly – […] all you need is a microscope […] a known piece of lint […] Note the twisted fibers — they look like rope. These are solid (not translucent), dusty-looking, and have bushy ends. […] Now pick up a suspected ‘CT-UV fallout’ filament […] They seem to made of some sort of prismatic flat filament that twists — extruded looking, about 1/3- 1/5 the diameter of a human hair laid side-by-side — obviously NOT fibrous

Total nonsense. Lint contains all kinds of fibers. Most of them are emphatically NOT twisted like rope, they are single fibers. Brushed cotton/polyester blend fibers also look like a “sort of prismatic flat filament that twists “. They are also about 1/3 the diameter of a human hair. Obviously fibrous.

And then:

No one posting at Carnicom seems to have access to a photography microscope. We hope that someone with access to such will post some photomicrographs

How unfortunate. Try the QX5, only $70
http://www.shopdigitalblue.com/product_info.php?products_id=101

Here’s some “photomicrographs” of lint. 200x and 60x. Note how there are ALL KINDS of fibers. Probably a few from my florescent white t-shirts. Note the white ones, kind of “sort of prismatic flat filament that twists “, don’t you think?

dryer-lint-200x-lit.jpgdryer-lint-60x.jpg

Fibers are indeed everywhere. Perfectly naturally.

UPDATE: Looks like someone got themselves a QX3/5 http://www.rense.com/general39/chem.htm
Strikingly similar to my photos, you think?

Why do some hairs move?

Somewhere herein, Patti said:
When certain hairs on your head and body move while ones right next to them are dead-still, there simply is no explanation except whatever the “pathogen” is that has invaded our bodies

Interesting. So, I resolve to investigate:

I look at my arm, it’s got a bunch of hairs on them, up to nearly an inch long. I blow on them, they move. I blow very gently, ONLY ONE HAIR MOVES!
armhairarrow.jpg

That one there. It’s a longer hair, kind of lonely out there on its own, it’s also a bit kinked.

So, here I’m theorizing, that hair is an older hair, that’s nearly at the end of its life cycle, it’s kinked because its internal structure is breaking down, making it lose rigidity. As it’s at the end of its life cycle, its root will not be firmly embedded in the follicle, in fact there is probably another hair growing, pushing it out.

I can blow very very gently towards that patch of skin, and I can’t feel the air movement at all. yet the hair still moves and occasionally a few other very isolated hairs move. Since I can do this, it seems quite possible that small air currents might do the same.

The point is Patti – there is an explanation as to why only individual hairs move. I was able to demonstrate this with just a few minutes of experiments. There are probably several other explanations as well. There is no need to go for the most complex explanation possible, just because you can’t immediately think of a simple explanation.

Morgellons in California

Why is there so much Morgellons in California?

Morgellons.org states:

Note: Although California represents 12% of the US population, 26% of all who have registered with the Morgellons Research Foundation reside in California

Now it’s tempting to say things like “California is full of dirty hippy druggies!”, but that’s not really true. Besides, most of the Morgellons sufferers are nice middle-aged white women.

So, why this disproportionate number of Morgellons sufferers from California?

Note what the above is measuring – it’s a percentage of all who have registered with the Morgellons Research Foundation. i.e, over the internet.

How do people find out about Morgellons – on the internet.

How do people share their photos of fibers – on the internet.

How do people form communities to share stories of their illness?

The internet – a common factor in Morgellons suffers.

Morgellons is an interesting syndrome because of the visual aspect – fibers, and hence photos of fibers. Lots of sites have many many photos of fibers. These sites really need a broadband internet connection (DSL or Cable Internet).

In June 2004, California had 13 broadband lines per 100 persons, and the rest of the US had 9.

http://www.m9systems.com/broad_dep_2.html

Could it be that there is more Morgellons, because there is more broadband?

These simple figures don’t tell the whole story either – California’s population is clustered into cities. The Morgellonites in CA also cluster around the four major population centers. In those population centers, the access to broadband internet is unparalleled through the United States. People in Urban California have the best availability to broadband internet in the country.

If Morgellons is a phenomenon fueled by the internet, then obviously there would be more cases in California.

California is a unique state in many ways – perhaps there are some other factors?

The Chain of Chance – Introduction

In the book “The Chain of Chance”, by Stanislaw Lem, a detective is investigating a series of mysterious deaths occuring to foreign businessmen at a seaside spa. If you’d like to read the book, then don’t read this article, as they share many of the same themes.

Consider a magic trick – a performer is in a fairly large theater, it holds 2000 people. He asks them all to take out a coin and flip it. He then asks all the people for who the coin comes up heads to flip it again. This repeats, and more and more people are eliminated. Eventually after ten tosses, only one person remains – the magician calls this person to the stage, the winner.

Now consider this from the point of view of the person who “wins”. They flip the coin, it comes up heads – they flip it again and again, it keeps coming up heads! Something must be going on? From their perspective, the continual heads is very surprising.

But it had to happen to someone.

Consider now, that 5% of the US population have some form of Eczema. That’s about 15 million people (out of a total US population of 300 million)

Consider furthur, that 2.2 million Americans have Obsessive-Compulsive disorder, that’s about 0.73% of the population.

Now, assuming an even spread, then of our 15 million people who have eczema, then 0.73% of them will have both eczema and OCD. That’s 110,000 people.

The numbers get larger if we consider the number of americans who have a Major Depressive Disorder. That’s 9.5% of our 15 million, or 1,425,000 people who have Eczema and a Major depressive disorder.

So out of those, who also has Fibromyalgia? Well, the prevelence of Fibromyalgia is 1.36%, so out of the people who have a major depressive disorder, and Eczema, then 19,380 also have Fibromyalgia.

So that means nearly 20,000 people will have the combined symptoms of:
– Eczema
– A Major Depressive Disorder
– Fibromyalgia.

That means they will have
– Intense itching
– Rash
– Lesions
– Major Depression
– Abnormally irritable mood
– Fatigue
– Brain fog
– And several other symptoms.

Some of these 20,000 people meet one-another and compare symptoms. They find they have the same symptoms. They figure they have the same disease. They call it Barstow Syndrome after the town it was first discovered in. They form a support group, they start a web site, more people find out about it, everyone thinks it’s a real disease. They start to speculate as to the cause of the disease.

But there is no Barstow Syndrome – they are simply the 20,000 people who were unlucky enough to get combined Eczema, Major depression and Fibromialgia all at the same time. From their point of view this is very unlikely. But right now, 20,000 people HAVE all three problems. It’s just simple statistics. It’s unfortunate for them, but it’s nothing special.

The Barstow Syndrome Research Institute dislikes this analysis. How likely is it, they ask, that all these people, thousands and thousands, all have the exact same symptoms? Well, as we just saw, it’s not only likely, it’s inevitable. Like the guy who tosses heads ten times in a row – it just had to happen to someone. It HAD to happen to 20,000 people.

The far side of Morgellons meets the near side.

In the Morgellons community, there are several folk who think that their problems are due to some kind of genetically modified organism, typified by this post from TamTam

Fibers are stray target of experimental biology.
In particular experimental micro biology class 3 (C3)

That cellulose type fibers move on its own is because it are micro organisms that go dormant (pseudo apoptotic) In particular micro organisms that breath and become static because of low metabolism.
During formation they show nerve cell type behavior.

Nerve cell type behavior they will show in particular when they unite as a fiber most resembling a shaft that is related to the mold of the cyanobacterium.

This dominant type gene expression in the form of a semi autonomous and sensing fiber is in fact a break away group cell.
A variant form.

Its character is inbetween plant(cellulose) and insect (chitin)cell.

Single cell micro organisms with an aquired property called quorum sensing will make the organisms act multi cellular.

Quorum sensing is a stem cell like property.
Quorum sensing micro organisms unite hence differentiate during formation of a multi cellular organism.

Hence multi lineage differentiation synonymous with stem cell.
————————————————————————————–
Fast dividing tissue forms a base(culture medium) for this organism.
This type target can only be kept alive and cultered in test animal.
————————————————————————————–

Fibers show inbetween behavior like “plant cell that think they are insect cell”

The agent its intermediate stage resembles a protoplasm.
A transparent cloud with basic properties preserved.

All elements are quorum sensing
All elements differentiate

check: chitin / cellulose wound dressing

TamTam writes in an unusual way. Declarative sentences with little explanation. This reminds me of the way AIs are portrayed in Science Fiction. Or perhaps someone with a brain wired a particular way – maybe Asbergers (not that there’s anything wrong with that, Bill Gates has often been diagnosed with Asbergers).

TamTam is probably responsible for this video:

http://www.silentsuperbug.com/

Which shows text similar to the above, overlaid on footage of some microscopic video.

Interstingly, mainstream Morgellons hits fringe Morgellons when Randy Wymore analyses this video on mogellon.org
http://morgellons.org/rwupdate.html
He basically says “there is no science here”, but uses several more word, trying to be kind.