Sorry, I'm new!! Morgellons disease. (moved by samclem)

[Gary_Robson]

@Spoons

So it’s not a red rash, or a yellow cast to the skin, or a green infection, or even blue varicose veins. Instead, Morgellon’s sufferers break out in … plaid?

Only if they’re Scots, laddie. Only if they’re Scots.

[running_coach]

@Gary "Wombat" Robson

@Spoons

So it’s not a red rash, or a yellow cast to the skin, or a green infection, or even blue varicose veins. Instead, Morgellon’s sufferers break out in … plaid?

Only if they’re Scots, laddie. Only if they’re Scots.

So you don’t die but it gets you kilt?

[silenus]

@runner pat

@Gary "Wombat" Robson

Only if they’re Scots, laddie. Only if they’re Scots.

So you don’t die but it gets you kilt?

: points to runner pat, then points to trout:

:makes threatening gesture:

[Mangetout]

Here’s a related thread from a long time ago - sadly, hardly any of the links in it work any more.

Delusional parasitosis

[Machine_Elf]

@Shmendrik

@cochrane

Scientists have discovered a new disease. There are no known symptoms. It is impossible to detect and there is no cure. Fortunately, no cases have been reported thus far.

Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies are scrambling to develop and market a treatment.

News flash: they’ve found a suitable treatment.

[Cat_Whisperer]

@RealityChuck

I have fibers extruding from my skin. I call them “hair.”

Ew.

[Punoqllads]

@Spoons

In 2001, according to Mary Leitao, her then two-year-old son developed sores under his lip and began to complain of “bugs.” Leitao … says she examined the sores with her son’s toy microscope and discovered red, blue, black, and white fibers…

So it’s not a red rash, or a yellow cast to the skin, or a green infection, or even blue varicose veins. Instead, Morgellon’s sufferers break out in … plaid?

Red, blue, black and white fibers? Apparently her kid is made of money.

[running_coach]

@Punoqllads

@Spoons

So it’s not a red rash, or a yellow cast to the skin, or a green infection, or even blue varicose veins. Instead, Morgellon’s sufferers break out in … plaid?

Red, blue, black and white fibers? Apparently her kid is made of money.

At least she knows he’s not counterfeit.

[Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension]

@Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker

I have nothing to add, but would just like to say that until I saw the term “woo-woo” on this site a month or two ago, I had never heard of it. But I like it!

I hadn’t heard it either, until that guy a coupla months ago started saying it was a hate crime to use the term. Ever since then I’ve liked it too.

@runner pat

@Gary "Wombat" Robson

Only if they’re Scots, laddie. Only if they’re Scots.

So you don’t die but it gets you kilt?

This line justifies the invention of the internet.

[mozchron]

I’m an entomologist. Morgellons is a new flavor of delusional parasitosis. I get people with Morgellons and DP sending me matchboxes filled with hair, lint, skin flakes and other crap (this is actually a clinical sign of DP - its called “matchbox sign”), and emailing me pictures of same. I’ve never once in 10 years been sent something identifiable as being of insect (or even animal) origin.

All I can say to them is that in my professional opinion, the specimens they sent me are not consistent with insect or arthropod infestation, and suggest they see their doctor. I used to suggest they see a mental health professional, but that usually goes down like a lead balloon, and I don’t do it anymore.

Now, I’m not mocking these people. I feel really awful for them, they are usually near their breaking point. DP is a serious mental illness. But its hard to treat, because they are very resistant to treatment. No one likes to be told they are crazy - they just keep flitting from one practitioner to another until they find someone unscrupulous that will take advantage of them peddling quack remedies. Then they get REALLY resistant to treatment - its kind of like being in a cult.

The internet has sped this process up, unfortunately.

[Roadfood]

Is anyone else here familiar with Skeptoid? It’s a very good podcast and website dedicated to critical thinking. Brian Dunning, the man behind it, doesn’t just dismiss or debunk, but he seriously examines a claim (or pop phenomenon, or bit of pseudoscience, etc.), researches it, and only then points out where, how, and why it goes wrong.

He recently did an episode on Morgellons.

[Jackmannii]

@mozchron

No one likes to be told they are crazy - they just keep flitting from one practitioner to another

Someone will bug you over your unfortunate choice of words.

[griffin1977]

An interesting aside from thisarticle about why the CDC got involved in something that is clearly psychosomatic:

In recent years, self-described sufferers clicked on the foundation Web site and sent thousands of form letters to members of Congress. More than 40 members from both parties, including presidential candidates Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain, leaned on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nation’s public health watchdog, to look into the disease. Sen. Barbara Boxer wrote seven times.

As a result, the CDC has budgeted nearly $1 million in the next two years for Morgellons research and is undertaking the first major epidemiological study of what it is calling an “unexplained dermopathy.” Sen. Tom Harkin inserted language in a Labor Health and Human Services bill, later vetoed by President Bush, urging the CDC to continue the Morgellons investigation and “as quickly as possible to plan and begin this important research.”

[Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew]

@Jackmannii

Someone will bug you over your unfortunate choice of words.

A lousy choice of words, in fact. You mite say it ticks me off. Delusional parasitosis is something from which we should all flee.

[Lumpy]

@Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew

@Jackmannii

Someone will bug you over your unfortunate choice of words.

A lousy choice of words, in fact. You mite say it ticks me off. Delusional parasitosis is something from which we should all flee.

Yeah, it really gets under my skin.