The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced today that it is launching a study to learn about an unexplained condition that causes people to feel as if they have foreign substances growing from their bodies.
People with the condition, referred to as Morgellons disease, say they have fibers and other inorganic material growing out of their skin.
“We earnestly want to learn more about this unexplained illness, which affects the lives of those who suffer from it,” said Dr. Michele Pearson, principal investigator leading the study for the CDC, in a press release. “Those who suffer have questions, and we want to help them.”
“We have a team of epidemiologists, laboratorians and pathologists to carry out the study,” Pearson said.
The study will be conducted in conjunction with Kaiser Permanente’s Northern California Division of Research. For more information, CLICK HERE to visit the CDC’s Unexplained Dermopathy Web site.
In 2006, a number of Morgellons sufferers told ABC News in interviews that when they consulted doctors, they received diagnoses they called wrong or dismissive. Brandi Koch, the wife of former Major League Baseball player Billy Koch, said that she felt as if she were living in a horror movie, claiming she had colored fibers coming out of her skin.
Koch, of Clearwater Beach, Fla., said that her life was good until one day in the shower when she noticed something strange — tiny fibers running through her skin.
“The fibers look like hair, and they’re different colors,” Koch said.
Koch said she knows that what she experienced “sounds crazy,” but it’s true. “If I had a family member call me up and say, ‘I have this stuff,’ I’d say, ‘I’m sending a straitjacket over. You need some help,'” she said.
Anne Dill described a similar condition. Looking at Dill’s life in Florida, she seemed to be living the American dream — her three daughters excelled in sports and were straight-A students.
But life in the Dill household was far from idyllic. Anne’s 40-year-old husband, Tom, died in January 2006, and she believes his death was due to a contagious illness that has infected her entire family.
Dill described her family’s skin: “There’s this fibrous material. It’s in layers.” Dill said the skin on their hands was particularly bad, very swollen and itchy, and said it felt as if bugs were crawling underneath the skin.
Consulting Doctors
Dr. Greg Smith of Gainesville, Ga., has been a pediatrician for the past 30 years. He claimed that a fiber was coming out of his big toe, and he had video footage to prove it.
“It felt like somebody stuck a pin in my toe and wiggled it, and it just continued to hurt,” Smith told ABC News in 2006.
He said he never thought he had bugs. “I’ve certainly had those crawling sensations, and the fibers which come out of the skin are really bizarre, and really odd.”
Smith was handed over to a hospital psychiatrist when he went to the emergency room complaining of a fiber in his eye. He admits that he, too, would be skeptical if a patient came to him with the same story.
“I would wonder if they’d taken their medicine that day. It makes no sense. It’s totally bizarre. It’s something that — just telling the story is so outlandish on the face of it — that no one would believe it,” Smith said. Dill’s doctor told her to stop scratching, even though many of her sores were in places she could not reach.
Koch went to the Mayo Clinic, where doctors didn’t believe that the fibers she’d brought them had grown from her body.
“I saw the infectious disease doctor, and I showed him some samples that I had and he snickered,” she said. “I can’t go through another doctor blowing me off or looking at me like I’m crazy. I know I’m not.”
Dr. Vincent DeLeo, chief of dermatology at New York’s St. Lukes-Roosevelt Medical Center, weighed in on what he’d say to someone who came to him with this condition. “I don’t think this is any different than many patients I’ve seen who have excoriations and believe that there is something in their skin causing this,” he told ABC News in 2006.
DeLeo said the open lesions were most likely a result of scratching the skin.
Relying on Your Own Research
But biologist Mary Leitao refused to accept the medical skepticism surrounding Morgellons.
Leitao’s son, Drew, was just 2 years old when Leitao noticed an odd sore on his lip that would not heal.
“He very simply said ‘bugs,’ and he pointed to his lips,” said Leitao.
Leitao never expected to find herself at the center of a medical storm. But when her son complained about the strange sore, the biologist, who once ran the electron microscope at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, did what any scientist would do. She took a closer look.
“What I saw were bundles of fibers, *** of fibers,” Leitao says. “There was red and blue.” Even stranger, they glowed under ultraviolet light.
Armed with research, Leitao took her son to a doctor at one of the country’s leading hospitals. He dismissed her tale of fibers and wrote to her pediatrician, saying that her son needed Vaseline for his lips and that his mother needed a thorough psychiatric evaluation.
Undaunted, Leitao began poring through medical literature looking for clues. What she discovered was a 17th-century reference to a strange disease with “harsh hairs” called “Morgellons.”
She named the strange fibers Morgellons disease and put the information on a Web site, Morgellons.org. At the time of her interview in 2006, more than 4,500 people had contacted Leitao, claiming they had Morgellons-type symptoms. The name stuck, and the disease was featured on the television show “ER.”
But do these fibers grow from inside the body, as Morgellons patients believe, or do they come from the external environment — a kind of lint — as the medical skeptics say?
Searching for an Answer
Forensic scientist Ron Pogue at the Tulsa Police Crime Lab in Oklahoma checked a Morgellons sample against known fibers in the FBI’s national database. “No, no match at all. So this is some strange stuff,” Pogue said in 2006. He thought the skeptics were wrong. “This isn’t lint. This is not a commercial fiber. It’s not.”
The lab’s director, Mark Boese, said the fibers are “consistent with something that the body may be producing.” He added that, “These fibers cannot be manmade and do not come from a plant. This could be a byproduct of a biological organism.”
Dill said she looks at pictures of her family and finds them unrecognizable. “My kids have to see not only their dad but their mom disintegrating, and that’s gotta be really scary.”
While they wait for evidence that they hope will convince the medical community to take them seriously, some Morgellon’s sufferers wear pink bracelets that say, simply, “Fortitude.”
Pictures of Morgellons Disea
Pictures can be viewed at the following location: Morgellon’s Disease Pictures
Hope you enjoyed the story and pictures of Morgellons Disease
can anyone help us???
^I mean INTERNAL parasite, obviously, or internal ailment..
hi guys, me and my aunt live in the uk as well, we both have the same sorta thing going on, with regards to the fibres, they seem to be white on us, small enough to look like hair folicles, just wormy-er.. she has worse physical skin marks on her than me and is certain she feels these things moving and see’s them moving and attacking her and just wants to stop it, me personally i have just left the pimples alone, i dont want to pick them, i have a few and i have the same thing but i dont want to spread whatever it is about, my symptoms appear to be the later stages, as in i can bearly se hear or think, my intellegence has declined and i feel like im wearing a tight hood around my head all the time, leaving me stupid and confused.. its very strange, like all of you we have been told we are mad, any help for us?
my deepest sympathies and condolence for all who have, who are,is still suffering in physical and mental and emotional realms being the ist documented victims of the horrifying disease(that finally got ID or some minut attention) my prayers for and with you in your loney and devestating road of this condition. don’t dispair!!!
TRUST yourself to be sane and let the unedicated and even the educated ignorance and arrogance discourage you. II was phauge with this but didn’t know nor did any of the small rual minds mds iin my area knew anything about this. I wwas given antibodics (3rounds in 8months) and given steriods to build up mmy stystem. they said it was staph infection, lupus, and then a blood infectio. I finially took matters into mown legs(where it took hold)I made an oold healers brew I somehow recieved tthru a healing helpers dream from my mmother(who was the 6th medicine/healer bborn to her linage)the witches brew (named because I use to mock my mothers uunsual methods of treatments.)was made fwith 1/3 tabacco, 1/3 baking soda, m mmanderine/orange/citrus teas, and wwrapped my blistering stinging rotting llegs up in hot towels soaked in brew ofor several hours a day for weeks till tthe pain stopped gradually and the wwounds even looked like they might hheal.It was hell here on earth to be wwith ridden by this evil curse, to top ooff a death of a dear but heavy friend aand to have to find new home(went into mmotel living) it’s truely a cruelty of awretched curse from where we are yet tto know and the cure for now is to hhave hope. hold on sanity,self trust.and take care of you by keeping safe,sanitary lots of tlc rest.
Maybe not a cure, but worth taking a look at for all the Morgellon’s sufferers. I take colloidal silver daily to keep healthy, came across this while scouring the net. If it helps just one or two people, then it’s definitely worth it. Good luck and God bless everyone who is suffering from this ailment.
Must disagree with Ahopeful that morg is not manmade. The fibers are sometimes difficult to burn and they are not killed with alcohol, ammonia or even straight bleach. If you soak a morg victim’s hairbrush in a glass of pure clorox bleach for 2 hours or more, the human hair completely disolves…but the morg fiber remain in full tact…and some are still active. Soooo, I do believe we need another way to combat and disassemble these non-organic creatures. All we know now is to boost our immune systems, stay as clean as possible, keep researching and to pray.
try using pure peppermint essential oil.
I AM SO GLAD I HAVE FIGURED OUT WHAT( OF COURSE ON MY OWN )WHAT IS GOING ON IN MY BODY AND MY SONS AND DAUGHTERS( MY HUSBAND AS WELL) BUT HE IS IN DENIAL AND JUST CONTINUES TO TELL ME I AM CRAZY ALONG WITH MY MOTHER AND THE DOCTORS. I TREATED MYSELF WITH A SCABIES CREAM AND THESE UNEXPLAINABLE THINGS STARTED HAPPENING IN MY HOUSE AND MY BODY. I SAVED EVERYTHING I WAS SEEING AND SENT IT TO INDY DERMATOLOGY WITH ME. HE TOLD ME IT WAS “DIRT, SCABS AND EVEN MAYBE JELLY DRIED IN MY DAUGHTERS HAIR EVEN THOUGH WE HAD ALL JUST SHOWERED BEFORE WE WENT. HE WAS RIGHT WE DID NOT HAVE SCABIES WE HAVE SOMETHING MUCH WORSE. I HAVE EXHAUSTED MYSELF TRYING TO EDUCATED THESE UNDER EDUCATED DOCTORS IN MY SMALL HOME TOWN. JUST LIKE ALL YOU OTHER SUFFERS THEY LOOK AT ME LIKE YOUR LOOSING IT. I WAS OFFERED A SCRIPT OF XANAX AND TOLD TO “QUIT” PICKING. MY OWN DAMN HUSBAND OF 13 YEARS WILL NOT LOOK OR LISTEN TO WHAT I AM SAYING. I HAVE NOTICED THAT THERE ARE LARGE AMOUNTS OF THEM IN NICOTINE, MARIJUANA, AND SUGARS????? I APRRECIATE ALL THE HELPFUL HINTS AND THANK GOD I AM NOT ALONE. I FEEL AS IF THE GOVERMENT WILL NOT GIVE THE MONEY NEEDED TO THE CDC FOR THE RESEARCH NEEDED BECAUSE THEY KNOW WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT IS FROM. DOES EVERYBODY HAVE THIS??? IS THIS THE CAUSES OF ALL DISEASE?? ONLY GOD CAN HELP US NOW(
my condition excels if i have little sleep the night before. i have come to find that dip, prefferably copenhagen or kodiak (due to large amounts of nicotine) definitely piss these guys off. By “these guys,” i mean seemingly hundreds, maybe thousands, of little hair-like worm things that tend to pop up out of the skin “disguised” as hair.
i have used no substance to intentionally relieve myself of these little itchy, sometimes painful problems, other than large amounts of alcohol and nicotine, two natural pesticides lol. On a serious note, i believe i have made some credible discoveries about the “fibers” inside of me;
-i have come across black AND white/silver fibers
-i have shaven these fibers from my skin, and it’s almost like they retaliate, as i feel a stinging sensation in one or several areas around the same area.
-i have seen both “shaven” (cutting them in half does NOT kill them…) and unshaven fibers (still halfway-lodged in my skin) more-or-less “spit” smaller, lint-like fibers and particles either into the air or into nearby areas of the skin.
Weird as it sounds, i am serious. i believe that these fibers are either emitting offspring, or creating some sort of mass structure (hense, the “layers” of fibers described in the article). I have used no microscopes, magnifying glasses, hell, even my video camera isn’t high-quality enough to pick up these skinny things. However, i am close to positive. I have placed “plucked” fibers and “shaved” fibers into two seperate ziploc baggies, and not long after the larger (still tiny..) fibers are soon immersed in smaller, similar, seemingly less-mature fibers. Don’t know what this means, but these little things aren’t playing games. It’s a miserable life that I can’t escape from. ESPECIALLY knowing that these things are constructing and multiplying and even “slithering” (yes, i hav observed ‘hairs’ slithering through shallow layers of skin on my hands) throughout my body. This includes ALL skin surfaces, my inner nose, scalp, inner ears, and even my eyeballs and eyelids. I have plucked them from my very eyelids only to literally see them “squirm” into the very fingers that excavated them. It hurts when this happens.
Like i said, it’s horrible and they aren’t playing games.
just want to say, the government have alot to answer for my friends. check out abovetopsecret.com and the possible link between chemtrails, you know these long lasting vapour trails in our skies that spread until the whole sky is clouded over. they are doing experiments on the public with airborn spraying, just look at the skies on a clear day and watch the planes spray, make your own mind up. the illuminati nwo plan is population control and reduction, don’t be afraid to question what these scumbags are upto, all the best dan uk.