Parasitic Infection Flummoxes Victims and Doctors 581
Toxictoy writes "Imagine having a disease that is so controversial that doctors refuse to treat you. Individuals with this disease report disturbing crawling, stinging, and biting sensations, as well as non-healing skin lesions, which are associated with highly unusual structures. These structures can be described as fiber-like or filamentous, and are the most striking feature of this disease. In addition, patients report the presence of seed-like granules and black speck-like material associated with their skin. Sound like a bad plot for a Sci-Fi channel movie? Think again - it could be Morgellon's Syndrome."
Don't panic (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Don't panic (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Don't panic (Score:2, Funny)
Man, you and I are the reasons they invented restraining orders.....
Re:Don't panic (Score:4, Informative)
I've cured my own eczema enough that it doesn't bother me for about 10months out of 12. How? Its a selection of things, but the worse problem for mine was when the air was humid it would go mental.
Also im alerigic to ALOT of shampoos, conditoners and clothes treatment stuff.
Problem is the world doesn't have any time on its hands to find out what causes the problems, so it never knows WHY it has this problem. If you want to stop your excema do as i did, keep an diary and think carefully of what you've eaten, done, where you have been, what your wearing, when were those clothes last washed?
I find the longer i leave my jeans unwashed, the less problems they cause me!. Why this is im not sure but it works fine, i just spray them down with some Kleezne stuff to make them smell normal (not that they need it really).
Nylon causes me no end of problems due to my skin sweating, causing it to get worse.
Dont RUB your skin dry, pat it instead or getting a toweled dressing gown and wear that and just let your body air dry, its far nicer on your skin.
Good luck!
Re:Don't panic (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Don't panic (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Don't panic (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Don't panic (Score:5, Insightful)
Good points! Incredible how important the human body's largest organ is and we know so little.
Isn't leprosy still on the "uncurable" list? Is it even on the "containable"; i.e., halt it where it is, point? akin to tuberculosis. My mom got it when she was young and as a school teacher, has to get x-rays of her lungs every year to show it's still dormant.
One other area to touch on is rehashed so often you'd think people catch on: misuse of anti-bacteria related issues...yet there are a lot of peabrains running loose in an unorganized conspiracy to sink modern medicine. You'd think all of the parties involved were backwoods hillbillies with no educations, IQs smaller than their shoe size, and fewer teeth than toes.[1]
There are three guilty parties: 1) patients; 2) doctors; 3) people in general.
1. Patients are guilty because they think doctors are just quoting a pamphlet when they tell them, "take all of the pills, don't stop just because you start feeling better." And what do people do? that's a rhetorical question. Boom. Compromised antibiotic.
2a. Doctors are guilty because patients come to them when they are ill and it's a cold. The patients harangue them into giving them an antibiotic because they think it'll make them feel better, despite Dr. Quack telling them antibiotics don't work with viruses. Finally, the script pad comes out and voila! Compromised antibiotic!
2b. Doctors are also guilty because each hospital has at least one group where the medical staff and pharmacy administration interact; e.g., "P&T" (Pharmacy & Therapeutics). Issues such as what the formulary items should be, how to deal with non-formulary items, and importantly: what drugs can be administered when. It's supposed to be binding, but doctors don't work for hospitals, so they'll basically do what they want when it comes to that type of thing. The policy can be to only use some new antibiotic for specific patients or diseases|cases and doctors will be more concerned if their shoe is untied when they place the script for the brand new bug-killer and can proudly tell the patient, "We've got somoething brand new and it's going to make you feel a lot better very soon." Shazam! The beginning of the end of that antibiotic. Another compromised antibiotic.
3. Society in general and the marketing departments of various household goods: all of the various soaps & cleansers which promise to kill bugs when you use them. You're only supposed to use soap to clean your hands off - remove the stuff which doesn't belong there - remove as in get it off of your hands, not kill some of the bugs and leave a small number of immune ones in place. Eugenics takes over and we begin breeding superbugs.
[1] Wait. Isn't that a description of NASCAR fans? Sorry for the mixup.
Re:Don't panic (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Don't panic (Score:3, Informative)
Leprosy is dead easy to cure nowadays. At the most it will take a few months of a very simple oral treatment.
The number of cases decreases roughly 20% / year.
Regarding tuberculosis, there currently are multi-drug resistant strains that are indeed problematic. As usual these arise from the poor supervision of medications at a time where the consequences weren't understood.
Apart from that I'm in full agreement with your enumeration.
Re:Don't panic (Score:5, Informative)
3. Society in general and the marketing departments of various household goods: all of the various soaps & cleansers which promise to kill bugs when you use them. You're only supposed to use soap to clean your hands off - remove the stuff which doesn't belong there - remove as in get it off of your hands, not kill some of the bugs and leave a small number of immune ones in place. Eugenics takes over and we begin breeding superbugs.
Antibacterial soaps are a marketing ploy and nothing more...all soaps are antibacterial. How well a given soap removes bacteria from your hands is directly proportional to how well you clean your hands (i.e: do you just get them wet, or do you really soap up and scrub them down). Bacteria aren't some magical things that can survive the same conditions that will remove dirt, grime, oil, protein, salt, and metals from your hands. Some companies throw in a little bit of antiseptic to get people to buy their soap, but it is no more or less effective than regular soap, and at the concentrations present, it is highly unlikely to cause resistant bacterial strains to develop.
Re:Don't panic (Score:3, Informative)
Not entirely if you live in the US. Antibacterial labeled soaps are FDA regulated. This is defined more or less under the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.
If soap is advertised as just soap or a clensing agent, nothing more, it's not under FDA regulation, even if it contains additional antibacterial compounds or perfumes.
If you call a perfume, or what not, it's considered a cosmetic and falls under whatever regs apply as decided by the FDA.
Sim
Re:Don't panic (Score:3, Informative)
Triclosan is a topical biocide applied externally in creams and pastes which allow it to linger. Vancomycin, by contrast, must be administered intravenously becuase it does not cross the intestinal lining. The stronger members of penicillin family are also often administered intravenously because most of them denatu
Re:Don't panic (Score:3, Insightful)
[cut]
>I read the RTFA and I can understand some of the patients described in it who are taking a gun to a dermatologist appointment. I have wanted to do that on couple of occasions myself.
While I understand that being ill tend to make people nervous, don't you that you're a bit self-contradictory: it's true that we don't know much about skin illness unfortunately, so why thinking about shooting dermatologist??
They do wha
Re:Don't panic (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Don't panic (Score:3, Informative)
Been there, Done all that. All wonderfull british carpets are out of the house, no pets, no allergenic plants, household chemicals are vetted for use and taken off the list of allowed stuff at the slightest suspicion, the house is vaccum cleaned at a frequency which makes all my friends think I am mad. On top of that, the horsepiss supplied by UK water companies under the
Re:Don't panic (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Don't panic (Score:5, Funny)
Mental Illness is a Real Illness (Score:4, Interesting)
In the issue at hand, there may be a common, tangible factor causing the numerous instances of Morgellon's Syndrome. Given the horrendous amount of chemicals that accumulate in non-organic foods, would anyone be surprised that these chemicals may be affecting the operation of the human brain?
Has anyone done an analysis of the types of food that victims (of Morgellon's Syndrome) eat? Is there a pattern?
Re:Mental Illness is a Real Illness (Score:5, Interesting)
Some of these things _really_ sound like a bad acid trip to me. I'm not kidding---what if these people do have some bizarre infectious agent that causes rashes and secretes hallucinogenic agents into the bloodstream, making the rashes appear to be outlandish and twirl out of the skin and dance around inside your arms?
Hallucinogens as potent as LSD-25 are extremely difficult to detect. If this is a new, unusual, and very strong hallucinogen (perhaps one that doesn't cause the notorious pupil dilatation that would normally be a tip-off of a chemically-altered mental state) secreted by an infectious agent, it would all add up, at least in my eyes.
Has this possibility even been investigated? It would also be consistent with the disease being treatable with BOTH anti-infectious and anti-psychotic methods.
Of course, this doesn't entirely explain the pictures on the MRF website... but perhaps some of the things being labelled as Morgellons don't involve the same infectious agent at all.
Re:Mental Illness is a Real Illness (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I think there's only one symptom that sounds like a bad acid trip, and that's Formication [wikipedia.org], or delusional parasitosis. It's the feeling of bugs crawling on your skin when there's actually not any bugs crawling on your skin.
I doubt it would be any kind of hallucinogenic drug. The main reason is that there are no other mind-altering symptoms, such as change of body perception (i.e. being a giant, having wings, etc), change of percepti
Re:Mental Illness is a Real Illness (Score:5, Informative)
As compared to the ridiculously small amount of chemicals that accumulate in "organic" food, perhaps? Everything material is "chemical", all matter is composed of chemical elements. It's ridiculous to assume that a chemical compound is automatically suspect of being dangerous if it was produced in a human factory instead of a plant or animal in nature.
Think of all the extremely toxic chemical compounds found in nature: snakes, spiders, scorpions, mushrooms, salmonella, botulism, anthrax. Think of curare, strychnine, nicotine, nature produces many toxins that are more dangerous than the most mortal chemical weapon of mass destruction man has invented.
Re:Mental Illness is a Real Illness (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't panic (Score:3, Informative)
My mother, now in her mid 50s, has been suffering from something precisely like this. I say "something", because she has received absolutely no help to date from the medical community. Dermatologists tell her it is all in her head, and it has made her life completely miserable. Just looking the scarring all over her face, I find it a violation of the hypocratic oath that s
Where's the story? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not seeing the story here, and I'm reluctant to believe there is a grand conspiracy keeping a single sample from making it to the CDC.
before calling the CDC... (Score:5, Interesting)
How to get attention; (Score:5, Informative)
Step 2: Get a phone book or google and find out the nearest university medical research center in your geographic area.
Step 3: Armed with the affadavits in Step 1, contact professors at the university specializing in pathology, dermatology, biology.. just about any -ology except geology, or phrenology, haha. You might have to try a couple, but you WILL find someone interested in your case. Those people have the training, resources, and credentials to find out if there is something novel about your condition. They will pay you no mind without Step 1.
Good luck.
Re:How to get attention; (Score:2, Funny)
Re:How to get attention; (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a rare medical condition (type of intersex condition). Visably androgynous patients tend to get treated pretty poorly by the medical profession (mostly due to anti-gay prejudice.) Although gay or HIV+ patients can usually find a doctor, even "gay-friendly" doctors don't want to deal with intersex patients.
The problem is 1) Most doctors don't want to deal with patients with rare conditions because they take up a lot of time, taking time away from other patients, 2) Doctors don't want to order lab tests, MRIs, etc for rare conditions because they fear insurance companies will deny it, 3) When they do order tests, they try to come up with a very vague diagnosis to see if they can sneak it by the insurance, and 4) Doctors never want to make a written statement that "Patient X has a rare disease" because they might have to defend it later.
So since you have no written diagnosis, and no evidence, no researcher will pay attention to you.
Re:How to get attention; (Score:3, Insightful)
Which says about enough about them... They are quacks.
If one quack's herbs won't help they will just refer you to the next quack's accupuncture needles.
They might calll themselves 'alternative'
Re:Where's the story? (Score:2, Interesting)
Really, I believe that too man
Re:Where's the story? (Score:3, Insightful)
H2O2 is more selective; this sounds like an excellent approach.
Re:Where's the story? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Where's the story? (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ [nizkor.org]
I'd advise looking at http://www.morgellons.org/ [morgellons.org] since that site has more detail for medical professionals.
Who knows (Score:3, Interesting)
. As for the mental part of the disease, it seems that humans over the thousands and thousands of years have developed
Attention! Attention! (Score:2, Funny)
The only way to stop the infected is by destroying the brain or severing the head from the body!
The government advises all citizens to return to their places of residence and begin stockpiling water and food. Do not make contact with any infected persons!
Re:Attention! Attention! (Score:5, Funny)
By the way, you've got red on you!
Re:Attention! Attention! (Score:2)
...or not (Score:5, Insightful)
My local hospital had a patient reporting something very similar - claimed that bugs were eating her and her son, and she was itching all over. Examination showed she did, in fact, have rashes - from direct self-inflicted skin irritation - and the 'bugs' she'd captured in a little baggy were most definitely lint.
She got told to stop scratching and put some cream on it, and she got a nice friendly psych consult.
Never, ever underestimate how many crazies there are. Just ask anyone in retail or another customer-facing industry if you don't believe me.
Re:...or not (Score:5, Interesting)
It's also in the opening chapter of A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick.
Re:...or not (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:...or not (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:...or not (Score:5, Interesting)
It reeks to high heaven of marketing hoopla.
Re:...or not (Score:2)
They could be pulling off the next War of the Worlds with this, if they get enough people to "share the delusion." It works on so many different levels...
Re:...or not (Score:5, Informative)
The wikipedia article was created in Feb of 2005. It contained a one-sentence summary and a link to the website. The website is registered by a dns proxy company, so there's no DNS contact information. Ooh, another bizarre coincidence - the supposed "national news broadcast" has been postponed until "june or july"; release date of the movie is July 7th. When looking at it in a paranoid mindset, lots of things on the site are curious. Including the DISTINCT lack of decent contact information. I've found only a few email addresses so far. Ironically, the only person whose domain I've been able to nail down as non-anonymous is the supposed webmaster. And his site is cheesily amusing in its own right.
The Scanner Darkly had its recent release date, September 16th, pushed back to some time in March, 2006." [canmag.com] - as you can see, it's been bumped around a fair amount.
What the.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What the.. (Score:2)
Re:What the.. (Score:3, Insightful)
All-bold paragraphs, too many different fonts, unpleasant use of primary and secondary colours (especially in solid-colour backgrounds), and, even more than the rest, all-centred paragraphs are almost always found on the websites of conspiracy theorist, UFO nuts or new religions. Seriously, search for some conspiracy or new-age related terms on the web, and you'll see what I mean (this generall
News? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's particularly telling that the 'big' sites that 'cover' this 'malady' don't actually show pictures of symptomatic sufferers or anything noteworthy like that. No, instead we get useless SEM photos of fibres, bits of dust and ECU shots of cat scratches.
New story title ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:New story title ... (Score:2)
So, is that a race or a specific space tyrant? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So, is that a race or a specific space tyrant? (Score:4, Funny)
Nope. It's a verteron pulse.
Re:So, is that a race or a specific space tyrant? (Score:5, Informative)
This is science? (Score:2, Insightful)
HTH, HAND.
It's grey goo! (Score:2)
I am a dermatologist, and I see patients with this (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.emedicine.com/derm/topic939.htm [emedicine.com]
The *sensation* they have is "real", not to sound like Morpheus: feels like bugs in skin. The sensation goes away quickly when Pimozide is prescribed.
It's not all that uncommon.
It's very hard to convince patients that they need Pimozide, and not a can of "Raid" to spray on themselves.
There's another web site that has been around longer relating to the same issue:
http://www.skinparasites.com/ [skinparasites.com]
They misinterpret lint, fibers, dust, and other debris as parasites; sort of a variant of hearing voices/OCD/other disorders where sensations are spurious or can't be correctly decoded.
I'd mod you up if I had poist (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't worry (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Don't worry (Score:2)
haha...why has nobody modded you up? I'll give you - aw... =(
Re:I'd mod you up if I had poist (Score:4, Informative)
No one goes out of their way to step on dog crap.....
You are quite correct--best to get an EKG/watch for extrapyramidal side effects, but, I have found that very low doses of Pimozide are effective, on the order of 1 or 2 mg a day, not a full antipsychotic dose.
Most difficult therapeutic maneuver is building trust--not at all easy to get them to take anything at all. I just try to be very honest, reassuring, kind--sort of like Mr. Rogers.
UCLA Med School: awesome....congrats.
Re:I am a dermatologist, and I see patients with t (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, this is (IMO) one of the more bizarre aspects of psychosis - it's not just the the people suffering from it *believe* in things that aren't true, they actually experience some of them directly.
I've known a couple of people with schizophrenia, and while it's a terrible condition, it gave me a lot of respect for the power of our minds.
Re:I am a dermatologist, and I see patients with t (Score:2)
Pretty disgusting and very paranoid people. Mention anything and all of a sudden you have a parasitic infection and no one will listen.. it's us vs them fancy pance doctors. So give us money and we'll solve this.
Crooks.
It just sounds 'neuro'..... (Score:2)
When there's no evidence that it's a duck, it's delusional. What motivated this late night posting? Perhaps additional delusion.
Not to discount the earnest sentiments of real people, I'll agree that it's a little 'tin-hat' to be taken seriously. But then the medical community has done bad things before, like missing the value of "Lorenzo's Oil" and other odd-but-true associations.
That fact still doesn't explain the posting.
hoax (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A new low (Score:5, Insightful)
When Miles Lawrence sped to the hospital, he was told he had delusional parasitosis and that the weird spines were "just dirt." But over the next week his symptoms got worse. He scratched at his elbows and noticed more fibers, and little black specks. "It was like they were fighting back," he says.
It is more important to Lawrence to insist he is not delusion (or perhaps there are some other incentives, such as being special enough to be written into a Popular Mechanics article, or the attention one receives when one has a scary-sounding disease such as "Morgellons Syndrome") than to end his suffering through several apparently effective cures. Those that allow treatment see the alleviation of symptoms within weeks!
Re:A new low (Score:2)
These people are in need of attention (Score:3, Interesting)
The healthcare professionals (Doctors/etc) should really not be turning these people away quite so easily imho. Yep we have a lot of 'crazy people' out there but it probably doesn't help having them sit in the corner of their houses spraying themselves with Raid/Baygon.
Re:These people are in need of attention (Score:5, Insightful)
It's very difficult to properly treat someone who is delusional. In most of the US, patients cannot be forced into treatment unless they are actively suicidal or homicidal. In my experience, it's not that doctors turn them away, it's that they refuse to accept what's really going on and leave on their own.
Re:These people are in need of attention (Score:2)
Hmm good call - Whilst being somewhat ethically reprehensible (Paging Dr. House!) I wonder wether this might not be a good place for palcebo's combines with whatever drugs help ?
Obligatory Simpsons quote (Score:4, Funny)
The one that really scares me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Since these fibers are obviously ordinary textile fuzz and lint, that means that the poor kid's delusional mom is inflicting the condition upon him. I hope that their doctor had the sense to contact someone in Social Services.
brain parasites not skin (Score:2)
Re:brain parasites not skin (Score:2)
Hmm, hey this could be a cool little story line for ReGenesis [regenesistv.com] - someone call NorBac =)
Re:brain parasites not skin (Score:2)
Maybe that's because crazy people are on the rise. Bush got re-elected, after all.
shingles, etc. (Score:2)
So then you're looking for something to blame and you see a few fibers that you'd never noticed before... that'd do it. Obviously the fiber-like things must be the source of the pain, so they can't be just fibers.
A Joke Right? (Score:2)
/. morons - It could be a actual condition (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:/. morons - It could be a actual condition (Score:2, Insightful)
I have this... (Score:2)
Particularly Disturbing (Score:5, Interesting)
In this case, there's a suspicious connection reported on multiple web sites about people with this disease being co-diagnosed with Lyme disease. While this "Morgellons" parasite-disease may be a delusion, it probably has a neurologic, organic cause, due to suddenness of onset and other factors. I wouldn't be surprised if the cause turned out to be Lyme disease, which can have a wide range of neuropsychiatric effects including delusions, hallucinations, memory problems, suicidal and homicidal ideation, thought disorder, and severe cognitive deficits . One quote from TFA is quite telling:
. The fact that it may respond to antibiotics may indicate some relation to a bacterial illness, in particular Lyme. It's truly an insidious disease that can go undetected and undiagnosed for many years while patients' lives deteriorate - and no doctors are literate enough in the treatment of this disease to treat it adequately.
In any case, the medical establishment is often too quick to diagnose a patient with a complaint it does not understand as a primary-onset psychiatric disorder. By doing this, they cause a great deal of harm by delaying treatment in the case that the disease is *not* a psychiatric disorder. In order for medicine to be able to heal people, it needs to stop this trend and start taking earnest, persistent reports of people's pain seriously - even if it is delusional. If all of the possible organic causes have been researched and exhausted, only then is it time to take out the prescription pad for anti-psychotic or other psychiatric medication.
Re:Particularly Disturbing (Score:4, Informative)
I can fully attest that you can give many doctors more information about what's happening than they can ever image getting from a patient, and still have them tell you it's all in your head.
To be blunt, if you've never been in this sort of situation before, you don't have the slightest clue about what you're talking about.
As for lyme disease specifically, it's very, very well known that the tests for it are horribly inaccurate. Even worse, if you do get a positive result, the doctor probably doesn't have a clue about antibiotic treatment of a neurological condition and making sure that the abx can get past the blood-brain barrier. (ie, your chance for a correct diagnosis is slim, and your chance for correct treatment is even slimmer.)
Late or early? (Score:2)
A homeopathic treatment? (Score:4, Informative)
Taurox has been evaluated by homeopathic experts and is registered with the FDA.
Homeopathic experts?!?
Call Sharon now and use the following Code Number and because we are people "greatly in need," you get an additional 15% discount off of the price.
Right, and who gets a cut from this "Code Number"? Note that the person was already "80% better" (from standard antibiotic treatments) before the miracle of Taurox entered the picture, apparently providing that last 20% boost for the "fatigue" that remained after the mainstream treatment.
And the very odd thing is that the Morgellons Research Foundation site has no mention of Taurox at all.
Better safe than sorry... (Score:3, Interesting)
But rather than freakin' dismissing everything as paranoia, wouldn't it be a good idea to actually *investigate* this? The article, along with a writeup in the American Journal of Clinical Dermatology [morgellons.org] bring a very important point. When diagnosing something as psychosomatic, make sure that the pyschological symptoms are the primary cause of what's going on, not secondary in nature or being caused by something else.
See also an interesting study from the Oklahoma Dept. of Health [headlice.org] I found with 2 minutes of Googling.
Is it a bioengineered weapon from evil crazed oil companies? No. But whatever the underlying medical cause(s) of some of this is, it deserves a legitimate medical investigation. Isn't that what science is about?
A few obvious issues... what a troll (Score:3, Interesting)
The woman in the article mentioned she saw spaghetti-like things crawling out of her son's chest. She pulled, but "couldn't pull it out." That is a very convenient excuse for not being able to produce a sample. Has this woman never heard of scissors, or are these things as tough as steel too?
Parisitologists and infectious disease researchers LIVE to discover new interesting afflictions. Believe me, if we had a new genuine disease causing spectacularly impressive crap to crawl out of victims skin, there would be journal articles about it in a minute. Also, wouldn't such obvious symptoms make it pretty damn easy to diagnose?
Lyme disease, yeah, that was a toughie to initially diagnose because the symptoms are so varied and suble. But fiber-like-stuff crawling out of people is pretty unambiguous.
And, "black flecks coming from pimples"? Err... sounds like blackheads to me.
That website is pathetic. Several pages of pictures, most of which look like shredded yarn scraps. It would have been a lot more convincing if there were pictures of the yarn crap actually coming from people. We do have some blurry shots of skin-like-substance with something on them, but nothing in particular to identify. Have these folks ever heard of "macro" mode?
I have heard of nasty parasitical infections indeed causing a crawling sensation inside the skin, and likewise inexperienced doctors thinking it is psychosomatic. However, in none of those cases was the diagnosis difficult once the actual worm/bug was dug out of the skin.
Either this "syndrome" was concocted by a complete nutjob, or this is the job of some "performance artist" trying to get an articles written up in various places.
SirWired
Re:Lyme (Score:2)
This has all the makings of a crazy disease-conspiracy theory to me. I'm sorry, but no matter how bad the American health care system may have become, I can't believe that every doctor in America who encounters this supposed syndrome refuses to treat it. That's just asinine. Believe it or no
Re:Lyme (Score:2)
not Lyme... but a similar Example (Score:2)
Having had someone I know go to Guatemala in 97 for some Amnesty International work, come back having contracted Maleria (She was living in Georgia at the time). IIRC it took the Staff a good month before they came to the conclusion that... oh, you have Maleria. This despite her own research of the clockwork fevers and weakness. This despite knowing that she had recently returned from a part of the world where Maleria was pervasive.
Doctors aren't perfect, and if something is outside of their experience, of
Re:Like all establishments, medicine is conservati (Score:3, Insightful)
News for nerds? News for credulous nitwits these days. Somebody gave this an "insightful"?
Re:Like all establishments, medicine is conservati (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the classic 'argument from ignorance'. To a some degree, you are correct- Lack of evidence is not the same as evidence of lack. However, this is only an argument of the possibility of something existing, not that something does actually exist. That's a pretty weak argument. It can be equally applied to almost any claim. Heck, it can be applied to Santa Claus existing.
just look at the battles the homeopathic community has to fight; some of them are wackos perhaps, but many of them have treatments superior to those of "modern" medicine.
Ah, now here you make a definitive argument: Homeopathic medicine is effective. However, you don't back it up with any evidence at all (and you've infected it with the old 'modern' medicine is ridgid strawman).
To anyone who thinks Morgellon's must necessarily be a load of nonsense
You've got it backwards. People aren't saying it "must necessarily" be nonsense. They're saying the evidence is weak, so it's not necessarily what the victims say it is. There are lots of possibilities about what is going on, from it being exactly what the victims claim to it being nothing at all, to a whole rainbow of things in between. So don't just accept it so readily. That's really showing a pretty closed mind. (And this goes for Homeopathy too, btw)
Re:Like all establishments, medicine is conservati (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, and that paradigm is: Examine the evidence.
Anything not explainable within that framework tends to be overlooked or ignored
Yep. When there's no evidence, doctors and medical researchers tend to ignore you, as do scientists and indeed all sane people.
just look at the battles the homeopathic community has to fight; some of them are wackos perhaps
And the remainder are frauds.
but many of them have treatments superior to those of "modern" medicine.
No. Modern medicine can provide sugar pills and distilled water just as well as any homeopath.
Re:Like all establishments, medicine is conservati (Score:3, Interesting)
I've got to disagree with you there. Homeopaths do a much more creative and fascinating job of providing sugar pills and distilled water. Homeopathic websites have provided me with hours of entertainment. I guess in truth it should upset me, but I don't really get emotionally envolved until they start applying their nonsense to veterinary medicine. That makes me go ballistic. Poor little guys have no way to say
Hubris and alternative medicine (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, but it's not hubristic to assume homeopathic medicine had everything figured out 200 years ago? You don't need to know about bacteria and viruses, you don't need to know the molecular structure of proteins at all, you don't need to examine the evidence, you don't need to do any tests. Just stating that "like cures like" is enough... Talk about hubris!
If there are diseases for which we do not know the cure, the solution is not to go back to ignorance and superstition. Perhaps we do not have *the* cure for AIDS or the common cold or many types of cancer, but we do get better treatment all the time. Four years ago I had appendicitis. I was treated by laparoscopy, which was done through three small cuts in my belly, about one centimeter each. I spent two days in the hospital and have no visible scars today. How would a similar treatment be performed fifty years ago? Instead of sending a small remotely controlled equipment into the patient's body, the surgeon had to cut him up enough to get both hands inside.
There may be some very rare diseases that haven't caught the attention of modern medicine yet, but the most likely explanation for most of the patients that claim to have such a rare disease is a very common ailment: hypochondria. When I read about this so-called "Morgellon's syndrome", the symptoms seemed familiar, I have read about this before [biofact.com]. Perhaps what's missing in modern medical training is teaching all GPs to send patients who have undiagnosed diseases with symptoms like chronic muscle pain, itching, skin rashes, unusual hair loss, difficulty in concentration and memory loss, etc, to psychiatric treatment.
Re:wow. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:wow. (Score:2)
Re:wow. (Score:3, Insightful)
The limited expierence I have had with hispanic workers of questionable legallity leads me to believe that they work far harder than the general population.
If someone has no concept of their job in a fairly siple procedural one like that it is the manager that is most at fault.
It kind of reminds me of the (made up) story about Sun Tzu where he is tested/dared to make soldiers out of w
Re:looks like lint (Score:2)
Sorry, no. (Score:3, Informative)
So, apparently the hoax and viral marketing theories are both out the window, unless it's a hoax that's been years in the making.