How Morgellons Disease Works

some some disease, Like, let's cover some disease. And then I started started reading it and I was just like, what the world mind going on? And I still don't know what's going on. It's totally fascinating. Well you are in the majority, Chuck about not knowing about it. Yeah, yeah, it's a mysterious disease of some sort and there's a great battle going on. But is it even a disease? Very controversial, that's the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah, And we're um and we're talking about it based on an article

from how stuff Works. Um, what we're talking about is I say more gelons, Chuck and Martin Basher say more gelons. I saw on some pronunciation site more jellons. But we're both gonna make a hard g sound. How about that. We can agree on the hard g okay um. But what we're talking about is this disease that was basically discovered, first described in two thousand two. Initially that will make

your radar go up, because that is super new. But the name itself is borrowed from a seventeenth century obscure French medical text Morgelons more gelons, however you want to pronounce. It was first used to describe some weird condition where coarse hair grew out of the backs of children. If you go on to any Morglon's research site and research the origin of the name, you will also usually see right afterwards a sentence that says, that's not what this is.

It's just this lady used the same name the first person to describe it. That's a good way to say that, because her son had it. Yeah, the the lady in questions name was Mary Liteo. That's how I'm pronouncing her name.

No hard g um. But she had a two year old who at the time was saying uh, bugs and pointing to his lip and um, he had some sort of sores around his lips, and when she looked closely, she saw that there was some strange threads or string or some fibers coming out of these sores and his lips, and she became alarmed. She did and uh, she, like almost every sufferer from this odd is it a disease or not, since then, has had a really hard time

getting diagnosis, getting doctors to take her seriously. Um, so much so that she formed a support group h and a website, the More Gellons Research Foundation, And uh, I guess we just need to get into it. I mean, it is one of the oddest things I've ever heard.

It's dermacological, it's about the skin. Um. There are sores, there's a lot of itching, and that The most mysterious thing about it, though, is like you said, these blue, red, black, and I think white fibers And you can look up more gallons if you type in more gallons fibers and immin search that you're gonna see these things. And they just look like little threads coming out of your skin or burrowed beneath your skin. So the thing is chuck,

is you know, fibers associated with sores on somebody's body. Weird, but not the most mysterious thing in the universe. The problem is is there's a guy, a professor of pharmacology at Oklahoma State University named Randy Wymore who took an interest in morgalance Diseasey doesn't have it himself, but he read about it and thought, well, all we all you have to do is you know, look at these fibers. Yeah,

it's probably an ingrown hair or something. And with the research carried out independently by UM Dr why Moore, the weirdness the legend began to grow because it was first identified in two tho two, when I think in two thousand five he heard about it and started researching. So he got in touch with um morgalon sufferers and said, hey, send me some of these weird fibers and I want to check him out. And apparently when he asked for some assistance and identifying what the fibers were, he found

that not all of them could be conclusively identified. Yeah, like not as Oh well I can't tell is it some weird animal hair or is it a cotton fiber? Is it nylon? They weren't able to identify them at all. As a it did not exist in the FBI database. It was not plant or animal um or or and it didn't match any of the eighty thousand plus synthetic fibers that are in in the FBI database. Yeah, so

it literally was um. I mean, he he brought one even to a specialist who I think from a police department that does this for a living, looked at under microscope and he was like, I've never seen anything like this in my life. So the the the mystery took root at that point. Oh yeah, in a big way. Um. And the problem is, though, is the more morgelons are more Gelon sufferers. We have no idea how many there are, because the medical establishment has concluded that there's no such thing. Yeah.

I mean this article is written in what like two thousand ten, it said fourteen thousand confirmed. But um, if you're not being diagnosed, or if you're told you might be crazy, which we'll get to in a minute, Um, then yeah, who knows how many people? And man, it's just it gets more and more interesting, it does, so. Um. In addition to fibers, there's all sorts of horrible symptoms that Morgelon sufferers report. So first of all, you feel like you are infested with bugs. Yeah, that's the big,

the creepiest one. As you literally they all talk about burrowing sensation and they all say bugs, like something is under my skin and it's moving exactly. A lot of them report feeling like a certain kind of grittiness under their skin and um, often on the underside of their eyelids. And a lot of people who have Morgellons say that's those are eggs. They have um all sorts of sores that itch like crazy, that um from which fibers are pitted or come up from or whatever. Yeah. Um, those

fibers can be anywhere on the skin. And the weird thing is they can pop up in places that people can't reach with their arms. Right, and you're gonna start itching during this podcast? We apologize. Were you itching when you were reading this stuff? No, I was surprised. I wasn't, man, I was itching like crazy. It occurred to me. Have we ever done one on itching? I feel like we have, because when I read some of that stuff will get too later from that that one researcher, it felt really familiar.

It did to me too, But I looked it up and there's nothing. There's no podcast in our archive on it. I know we've done something because I remember specifically talking about its being a dull they all pain right spoilers, Okay, that comes later. So Um, like I said, those fibers can appear anywhere on the body, and um sometimes they move too. So if you're a Morgalon suffer, you're you're pretty much convinced that you are infested with some sort

of weird bug, some kind of parasite. Maybe that's that's inhabiting your skin with laying eggs, and um, you have a basically a compulsion and obsession, is how it's described by a lot of Morgalon sufferers to get these things out of your skin wherever they are. There's one person there's this awesome article called The Itch Nobody Can Scratch by will Store, highly recommended. Yeah, it's it's a long form article and it's worth every minute you spend on it.

Um And uh it was it's on medium dot com, I think is where we found it. And uh, there's one one Morgalon suffer who's interviewed in there who's talking about um, noticing a fiber, feeling it on their eyeball and then looking in the mirror the magnifying glass because he's are thought to be very tiny bugs and um seeing this little fiber moving across the prison's eyeball, So they took a pair of tweezers to their eyeball to get this thing out. This is the kind of suffering

that these people are going through. Yeah, this other lady uh soaked her body in baths of bleach. Um. People like we'll get turned away from doctors, are told they're crazy, to the point where they contemplate or commit suicide because it's so maddening and the itching is so maddening, and to not be taken seriously, it's so maddening to be

told it's a psychiatric condition. Uh. But in two thousand eight, UM, after thousands and thousands of people wrote into Congress, people like John McCain and Hillary Clinton and at the time Obama, they urged the CDC to do a study d and uh we will tell you the results of that study right after this message break. Okay, So there is a disease or is it a disease very mysterious in origin.

No one takes the sufferers seriously or not. No one but the medical community at large doesn't take them seriously. And we'll talk about why. But one reason why is because of the findings of the c d C, which said that there was no singer, a single underlying medical condition or infectious source that was identified. Most sores appeared to be the result of chronic scratching and picking without a cause. Materials and fibers obtained from skin biopsy specimens

were mostly cellulose compatible with cotton fibers um. A substantial number of the participants in the study scored highly in screening tests for one or more coexisting psychiatric or addictive conditions, including depression, somatic concerns, which is an indicator preoccupation with

health issues, and drug use. Apparently, of the participants in the study tested positive for drugs, they demonstrated no infectious cause, no evidence of environmental link, no indication that would be helpful to perform additional testing as potential causes, and future efforts should focus on helping patients reduce their symptoms. So there you have it. The CDC loudly said, these are people that are just scratching themselves too much and becoming

obsessed with that. Yes, and with that CDC study, the door kind of closed, at least for the time being, on any help from the medical establishment. Yeah, so let's recap. If you have more glance disease, you have welts all over your body, from which there seemed to be fibers of possibly an unknown origin sprouting. Um. You constantly itch, so you're constantly scratching. So those those welts are getting worse and worse and worse. Um, you feel like stinging sensations.

A lot of people compare them to being stuck with compass needles all over your body. Um, And when you go to your doctor, they tell you that you're wrong, that stop scratching yourself. This is all in your head. One of the very few academic papers that wasn't written by a member of a Morglon's research organization said this

is most likely all in their head. And what you should do if you're a physician and somebody comes to you with what they think is Morgalon's disease, is that you should give them a anti parasitic ointment just to basically get them to trust you, and then prescribe antipsychotics. Because what the medical establishment, and especially now that the CDC study came in, believe is that this is something

called delusional paracitosis. Yeah, the belief that you have bugs living in your skin, that everyone who has morgal one disease is crazy. That's what the medical establishment thinks. Yeah, but they don't say things like crazy. No, they don't know, but they're they're saying like, you are delusional, you have a false belief that you have bugs on your skin. But the thing is, if you look at morgal and suffers,

there's people from all different walks of life. Yeah, this is the I mean, the initial kid was a two year old Oakland A's baseball picture, Billy Cooke. He left the game because, well for a lot of reasons, but this was one of them, because he suffered Joni Mitchell, Yeah, you ever heard of her, famous singer, She suffers from

it um. In this will store article, there's a guy named Paul who's a successful, seeming middle manager type from Texas, and all these people, there's a doctor, a general practitioner who has it. Should talk about him. All of these people are are reporting similar symptoms. So the idea is, if it's all delusional parasitosis, how is it possible that

all these people think they have the same thing. Well, one answer that they think might be the case is the internet because people start itching and they think what in the world is going on with the sore? And they look on the internet and they find more Gallant's disease, and then they self diagnose. All this came about in two thousand two. Is that a coincidence? I don't know, but I know that self diagnosis is a problem. Um. And I still don't know what to think about this.

When you read these stories, you feel awful for these people. Um. That's the science can usually crack the code at some point though everyone is saying there these people. No one is saying that they're not suffering. Like, these people are very much suffering. But the medical establishment is saying, it's all in your head. We have a name for it. It's called delusional parasitosis. Um. The people who have mor Galiss disease are saying, like, no, this isn't in my head.

I've got fibers, like some of them have trapped bugs supposedly, like they're they're saying, you guys aren't listening to me. You can give me anti psychotics all you want, but it's not gonna cure it. Yeah, And it's it's that

also that you fall into the trap. I read The psychopath Test by John Ronson um fantastic book, by the way, but there's a guy in there that tried to get out of a jail sentence for an assault by pretending he was crazy, got sent up to the worst middle institution in England, and it was like, I'll be able to get out of here in no time. The more saying he appeared to try to be, the more crazy

they thought he was. And that's the same thing that goes on with a lot of morgell And sufferers is the more rationally we tried to talk about this, the more they were like, Okay, let's just take it easy and we'll get to the bottom of this. And it's uh. And they point out, I think the uh author of the thing you recommended was called the chicken and egg thing, like it makes them spin out of control and depressed in suicidal and and nuts. So but is that you

know which came first? Exactly? So are you suffering from um these psychotic symptoms right or um mentally imbalanced symptoms because as yeah, and from not being listened to or are you you know, are you suffering this these these physical symptoms because you're out of it a little bit. Yeah, and it is a chicken or the egg kind of question. But um, the idea of the fibers, that one is a big one that a lot of people with morbilon

suffers point to. They're like, well, wait a minute. People have found that these fibers can't be explained by anybody. So is that the case? Well, Uh, your buddy Randy Wymore, Um, he's really taking the mantle here, like I really like this guy has done this. Uh. He the first time, like we said, he went to the police department and they found no known match in the database and couldn't figure out what it was. Later on he asked for um uh samples from sufferers and had them send them

to him. He took those in and uh, it was pretty disappointed by the results when he sent them to a lab to identify because they found that they were somewhere cotton, somewhere nylon. Um. He said, it was pretty disappointing. One was a fungal residue, When was a human hair, When was a rodent hair, One was a goose down. Uh. And so the author, you know, the author of this paper was saying, were you disappointing. He said, well, yeah,

sure I was. But there were um some there was one that was unknown and he said, so it was unknown. He said, well, they said it was a big fungal fiber, but they weren't completely sure, so he was kind of debunked a little bit. So it's weird. It's like, sometimes these fibers are real things, and sometimes it seem like they're not right. So and with the fibers, it's um there's a definite belief among the medical establishment that these

are just ordinary, everyday fibers. And if you start paying attention to any spot on your body right, you're probably going to be able to find a fiber. And if that suddenly has some sort of significance to you and you fixate on that, then you can easily fall down this mental rabbit hole that Morgalon suffers. Supposedly are are under the influence of Yeah, and and here's a tip,

and this is something I didn't know about. If you have anything on your body that you pick off your body or any just strange skin thing, and you put it in a zip block back, take it to your doctor, that's a sign to them. And I've never heard this, but it's called the matchbox sign, and it's been they've been calling it this since the nineteen thirties. And apparently doctors when they see you bring anything and say, hey,

what's this weird thing? They go, okay, here's another another crazy person, right, so you you it's a huge catch twenty two because Morgalon suffers. One of the symptoms of this disease are things that come off your body, whether it's some sort of colored fiber or um little black specs that's that fall off on mass from the body. I forgot about those. They come off your body. And if you're a Morgalon stuffer, well you think, like, I

need to show this to my doctor. Is evidence, But in doing so, as far as the medical establishment is concerned, you are immediately prima facie proving yourself to be mentally imbalanced, and that's your problem. All you're doing by bringing this evidence is supporting this diagnosis of delusional parasitology or parasitism. Yeah, and that's there there go to. Yeah, if you bring it in in a little matchbox or's a bluck bag, they're thinking, all right, here we go. This person thinks

they have bugs under their skin. Exactly. So I'm gonna give a little anti parasitic lotion that may or may not really do anything in real life, could be a placebo. And then after they trust me, I'm gonna recommend they try some antipsychotics. So there are a couple of more people we should talk about here, Um, a couple of doctors actually that have some more interesting findings that will get too right after this break, Josh, Yeah, let's chat

about square space, my friend. Okay, Because if you need a website and you don't have one, there's really no easier way to do so, no, I mean, the whole thing is Dragon Drop is very intuitive. There's no need to learn how to use code. And in case you find yourself in a bit of a pickle, maybe even a bind, they have seven customer support so you can live chat with them twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Yeah, all that stuff is great. But what I love about it is it's beautiful. The designs

are great. It's gonna look clean, it's gonna look professional. Everyone's gonna be tricked into thinking you're like a master code or web designer. Yeah, and if you want to sell stuff and make some money's all plans have commerce options, from hosting an entire store to accepting donations for your personal blog. Plus Chuck, you can get the whole thing risk free. Now, wow, that sounds pretty great. Risk free on your laptop, on your mobile device. It's gonna look

great on your tablet. That sounds like an all in one solution to me. That's right. Like I said, risk free. You can try squarespace if you go to squarespace dot com slash stuff for your fourteen day trial with no credit card necessary. If you like the product, it costs as low as eight dollars a month and includes a free domain name if you sign up for a year. That's right, So just use our offera code stuff to

get that ten percent off your first purchase. All right, let's talk about Dr and Louise Oaklander because the author I keep calling the author who was at the road and again Will Store, Yeah, Will Store got into with this um professor at Harvard Medical School and she is an itch specialist, a neurologist, and he thought, you know, she would quickly dismiss him, but she was actually had heard of it and was into it. And um, what she thinks is that it's a chronic itch disorder that

isn't being taken seriously. Yeah, she feels like the medical establishment is mistreating Morgalon sufferers by just completely discounting them is all crazy, rather than doing any real investigation. Yeah, I'm sure he was stoked to meet her at least,

and that's the case. Also, I should say the general view of the CDC investigation that it was just basically them going through the motions, or at at worst they were looking for evidence to back up their own ideas that it was delusional parasiteis m Yeah, sufferers I think said the study was jump going in, so what is it? Garbage going in, garbage comes out, So they didn't take

much stock in it. Um. But what we were talking about earlier in nine eighty seven, a team of researchers in Germany found the itch wasn't what we all thought it was, which was a weak form of pain um And they said that an itch has its own, separate, dedicated network of nerves, and she thinks that if your brain, you know, she likens it to like a mosquito lands on your skin and you can't you can feel it, you don't realize you're feeling it. But your your brain picks up on it, so you go to itch it

or slap at it. And she thinks that that's why we evolve to itch um, is to prevent insects from landing on us, and that that's all this is. Your brain doesn't differentiate. If you think there's a bug, then your brain thinks there's a bug, whether it is or not. Right. So her idea is that it's an itch disorder where there's not a bug, but your brain is getting those

signals and it's driving you crazy. Um and that this isn't being investigated and as a result, there's tens of thousands, if not more, people out there suffering, being treated like they're crazy and being offered absolutely no relief whatsoever from medicine. And then the doctor was the one that really blew me away. He got the end of the article. The doctor from the UK, the general practitioner. Yeah, his name

is doctor nick Mann. And uh, he didn't even know he was an author when he got in touch with doctor Man. Yeah, he just thought he was just a regular morgel and sufferer. And he described his experience that his legs started itching after a walk. He was convinced something was on him. Um, it got really out of hand, and he eventually stripped down naked in his kitchen and tried to dig one out, and he said, I stood there for three or four hours waiting for one to bite.

As soon as it did, I went for it with a hypodermic needle. His wife came in saw him all bloody, bleeding from the scrotum in other places, his nipple, and was horrified, obviously, and got three of these things into a glass jar and said, look at these, look at these, And she couldn't see anything. She thought he'd just gone

completely off his rocker. Yeah, but he did actually send these in eventually to the UH to a hospital they couldn't identify it, and then to the Natural History Museum, and within one day they identified it as a tropical rat MTE. And so I thought, hey, well that's the answer. Then these are tropical rat mtes. But I think his his was the only case, because I tried to look up more evidence of that than it didn't really find anything besides him. So is that unrelated? Do you think?

Is he just had a mite? I don't know. There are no answers to this. That's why I'm frustrated, And the big problem is that there's nobody really investigating it. There's like a handful of rag tag people who are investigating it, and the problem is that they're running into the structure of medicine and science, the scientific establishment, the establishments of both of these things, and where they cross and form this ven diagram. This is what these people

are running up against. So it's like, if you're going to produce a legitimate academic paper on this thing, and you managed to get it published, and you managed to get another one published, and then another one, and you're a real researcher, but you're the only person producing academic papers on Morgellons, well you just look like a crackpot who has access to a couple of academic journals and can get something published because you're the only one who's

who's writing about that, and anybody else who is who's ever even paid any attention to it, has just dismissed it as delusions of parasitosis. Right. Plus, you're not gonna get any funding. You're not. Well, you can, there's a few research um organizations that do fund that kind of stuff, but even still, it's in the eyes of the normal establishment. You're you're not going to be treated very seriously, so you're you're running into that. And then you know, one

science is made up. It's mind. Apparently nobody's gonna look into it, and so there's no treatment for it whatsoever, because it's been determined these people are delusional and that's that. So why would we spend any more time looking into it? Well, why more even had a problem. I remember at one

point getting labs to look at these fibers. Once they found out for this disease, they were like, oh no, no, no, we're not going to touch that, right, So I guess that would even if that's always the reputation of a lab, even like no one wants to touch this thing, right, And then a lot of Morgalon suffers aren't helping their case by just kind of supposing what could be the problem mites and bugs, since it feels like bugs are an obvious answer, and that itch researcher says, that's just

totally sensible. If you have an itch disorder and your nerves are going, hey, whire, and it feels like bugs, why wouldn't you think it was small, tiny, invisible bugs. It makes sense. But then there's been other ideas proposed to like it's nanotechnology or genetically modified organisms that have

run them buck and it's part of a government cover up. Yes, then these things are um like, these suggestions are not helping the case in the public eye or in the eye of of the academic or scientific establishment that these people are um mentally healthy. Yeah, it's been linked to kim trails. Okay, so and you're not going to get very far. But the thing is is if these people really do have something, whether it's an inch disorder, whether it's a bug that's not whatever it is, or if

it's delusions of parasitosis. Either way they're still suffering. Yeah they still need help, yes, so, but no one's giving it to them. Well, they are in the form of psychiatric treatment, but that's not good enough for a lot of these people because they say I don't need psychiatric treatment because I have a physical issue. Ah. The complaint is is they think I'm crazy and I'm not crazy. It's sad. It is sad. I want to follow up on this, I bet you. I mean, I'm sure they're

things what bothers me about sciences. They may not think that they could discover some new It's just so easily dismissed. It just kind of bugs me, it bugs you. But I mean there are some you in sciences defense or medicine's defense, there are there's some evidence that it is

fictitious or delusion, like supposedly. Uh. And in this will store article, there's one guy who's like his welts were healing up, and the author asked him, you know what, what did you do that's different that's making your wealthy. Lo's like, I just stopped itching. I just stopped scratching, and that makes every doctor in the role go, see there, exactly, stop scratching, You're gonna stop getting the welts because the welts are produced by itching. But then there's the other side.

It's like, well what about the welts there are on parts of the body where it's like I can't reach. How do you explain that? So I guess, yeah, we need to revisit it, Like you say, yeah, I would love to if we have a listener out there the suffering from this, I would love to hear a firsthand account of your experience. Yes, we won't judge you know of it is not if you want to learn more about Morgelon's disease. You can read that really awesome article

that it's Nobody can scratch. It's very compelling by Will Store. I think it's on medium dot com. You can also type in Morgelon's m O r G E L l O n S in the search bar how stuffworks dot com and will bring up another article as well. Since I said search bar, it's time forward listener mail. I'm gonna call this m p A A follow up. Hey guys, I'm a newcomer and have been loving the episodes. I'm also a PhD student in cinema and media studies. I was excited to see you do the m p A episode.

You did a great job covering a lot of its current controversies and explaining the common misconceptions about c A r A. I just wanted to add a little bit explanation to the X rating, which is such a strange portion of the m p a's history. When the ratings code was instituted, Jack Balini used an X rating for films, but he never copy righted the X rating because he did not want to encourage the rating or come off

as monopolistic. Midnight Cowboy, acclaimed for winning Best Picture as an X rated film, actually self rated itself X and began a marketing campaign to exemplify its status as unique and artistic, fair for adults rather than pornography. UH. Soon pornographic films also began self imposing the X rating, and newspapers refused to advertise for X rated films. Theatrical porn was booming. It's so weird to think about theatrical born like going in the theater and watching that with people.

Very weird. UH. Films like Deep Throat placed in the top ten of the year. While Hollywood pushed for legislation against theatrical porn, they also distanced themselves from the rogue X rating that they once controlled. The m p a A quickly expanded the R rating and re rated films

to avoid it. Wes Craven even illegally quote unquote, I'm sorry vote illegally end of quote, spliced in an R rating banner from a different film into his nineteen seventy three film The Last House on the Left because he cannot get the m p a A to grant him an R rating. It's a strange time and somewhat more fluid since pig theater chains and multiplexes were not as

ubiquitous as they are today. Sadly, the n C seventeen doesn't seem like much of an answer to the X rating legacy, since its films only play two limited art house audiences for the most part, You are right that v O D poses hope though, Uh what's that video? Onto? Man? If anyone is interested in this and more in the n B A, this should check out John Lewis's Hollywood The Hardcore. It's a fascinating read. Thanks again, guys, all the best. That is Dan from u c l A.

Go Bruins. Nice Thanks a lot. That's some good info. Yeah, totally, that's basically like a treatise on the history of the X rating. Agreed, good going. Who was that Dan from u c l AN. Thanks Dan and Go Bruins. Indeed. Uh. If you want to get in touch with us to give us more information about something we've talked about, we love that kind of stuff. You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You can join us

on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com and check out our website. What's your problem? Go to www. Dot stuff You should know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it, How stuff works dot com