U.S. to Study Bizarre Medical Condition

(AP) -- It sounds like a freakish ailment from a horror movie: Sores
erupt on your skin, mysterious threads pop out of them, and you feel
like tiny bugs are crawling all over you.

Some experts believe it's a psychiatric phenomenon, yet hundreds of
people say it's a true physical condition. It's called Morgellons, and
now the government is about to begin its first medical study of it.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is paying
California-based health care giant Kaiser Permanente $338,000 to test
and interview patients suffering from Morgellons' bizarre symptoms.
The one-year effort will attempt to define the condition and better
determine how common it is.

The study will be done in northern California, the source of many of
the reports of Morgellons (pronounced mor-GELL-uns). Researchers will
begin screening for patients immediately, CDC officials said
Wednesday. A Kaiser official expects about 150 to 500 study
participants.

Morgellons sufferers describe symptoms that include erupting sores,
fatigue, the sensation of bugs crawling over them and - perhaps worst
of all - mysterious red, blue or black fibers that sprout from their
skin. They've documented their suffering on Web sites.

Some doctors believe the condition is a form of delusional
parasitosis, a psychosis in which people believe they are infected
with parasites.

In the study, volunteers will get blood tests and skin exams, as well
as psychological evaluations, said Dr. Michele Pearson, who leads a
CDC task force overseeing the study.

Pearson suggested the study will help determine if Morgellons is the
same as delusional parasitosis or something new.

Study participants will be drawn from Kaiser's 3.4 million health
insurance customers living mainly in the Sacramento and San Francisco
areas and as far south as Fresno.

CDC officials acknowledged the study is limited and the results won't
give a complete picture of the problem.

Randy Wymore, an Oklahoma State University pharmacologist, who
believes the condition is not a psychiatric one, says there is
distrust by some Morgellons sufferers toward the new study.

Some of these patients who are Kaiser Permanente members have said
they don't like the way they've been treated by Kaiser doctors and
probably won't participate, said Wymore, who formerly was a research
director for a patient group and hears constantly from Morgellons
patients.

"They felt that Kaiser was particularly unreceptive to treating them
for anything other than a psychiatric disorder," said Wymore.

A Kaiser official said he had not heard such complaints. No patient
will be excluded from participation, even if a doctor previously
determined the problem was psychological, said Dr. Joe Selby, director
of research for Kaiser Permanente Northern California.

Kaiser researchers will look in their records for previous patients
who in the last 18 months reported Morgellons-like symptoms. They will
be asked to participate in more medical evaluations.

Any fibers or specks that are collected will be analyzed at the Armed
Forces Institute of Pathology, Selby said. Doctors who believe the
condition is psychiatric suspect fibers are likely just threads from
clothing.

The CDC has been getting more than a dozen calls a week from self-
diagnosed Morgellons patients for well over a year, and was urged to
investigate by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California and others.

Some say they've suffered for decades, but the syndrome did not get a
name until 2002, when "Morgellons" was chosen from a 1674 medical
paper describing similar symptoms.

© 2008 The Associated Press.
http://www.physorg.com/news119718971.html

no more. All I know is
that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I
cannot escape.

"As I know not whence I come, so I know not whither I go. I know only that,
in leaving this world, I fall for ever either into annihilation or into the
hands of an angry God, without knowing to which of these two states I shall
be for ever assigned. Such is my state, full of weakness and uncertainty.
And from all this I conclude that I ought to spend all the days of my life
without caring to inquire into what must happen to me. Perhaps I might find
some solution to my doubts, but I will not take the trouble, nor take a step
to seek it; and after treating with scorn those who are concerned with this
care, I will go without foresight and without fear to try the great event,
and let myself be led carelessly to death, uncertain of the eternity of my
future state."

Who would desire to have for a friend a man who talks in this fashion? Who
would choose him out from others to tell him of his affairs? Who would have
recourse to him in affliction? And indeed to what use in life could one put
him?

In truth, it is the glory of religion to have for enemies men so
unreasonable; and their opposition to it is so little dangerous that it
serves, on the contrary, to establish its truths. For the Christian faith
goes mainly to establish these two facts: the corruption of nature, and
redemption by Jesus Christ. Now I contend that, if these men do not serve to
prove the truth of the redemption by the holiness of their behaviour, they
at least serve admirably to show the corruption of nature by sentiments so
unnatural.

Nothing is so important to man as his own state, nothing is so formidable to
him as eternity; and thus it is not natural that there should be men
indifferent to the loss of their

On 2008-01-24, Lance  apparently wrote:
> no more. All I know is
> that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I
> cannot escape.

Hmmm, either the spammers are forging now, or given a truncated spam
I've seen something's wrong with my news software?

 - Richard

-- 
   _/_/_/  _/_/_/  _/_/_/     Richard Corfield 
  _/  _/    _/    _/          
 _/_/      _/    _/                Time is a one way street,               
_/  _/  _/_/    _/_/_/                     except in the Twilight Zone

I'm afraid someone is forging my name. I didn't post that stuff.

Lance

Richard Corfield wrote:
> On 2008-01-24, Lance  apparently wrote:
> > no more. All I know is
> > that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I
> > cannot escape.
>
> Hmmm, either the spammers are forging now, or given a truncated spam
> I've seen something's wrong with my news software?
>
>  - Richard
>
> --
>    _/_/_/  _/_/_/  _/_/_/     Richard Corfield 
>   _/  _/    _/    _/
>  _/_/      _/    _/                Time is a one way street,
> _/  _/  _/_/    _/_/_/                     except in the Twilight Zone

Set a kill filter to kill everything with roadrunner.com in the Path.
Seems to have got most of them.

Peter


Lance  wrote:

> I'm afraid someone is forging my name. I didn't post that stuff.
> 
> Lance
> 
> Richard Corfield wrote:
> > On 2008-01-24, Lance  apparently wrote:
> > > no more. All I know is
> > > that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I
> > > cannot escape.
> >
> > Hmmm, either the spammers are forging now, or given a truncated spam
> > I've seen something's wrong with my news software?
> >
> >  - Richard
> >
> > --
> >    _/_/_/  _/_/_/  _/_/_/     Richard Corfield 
> >   _/  _/    _/    _/
> >  _/_/      _/    _/                Time is a one way street,
> > _/  _/  _/_/    _/_/_/                     except in the Twilight Zone


-- 
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