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Some of us are actually diagnosed with this illness by doctors these days! (Due to the overwhelming evidence concerning all the organ disfunction the INTERNAL mutative growths cause perhaps?)
A formal request for scientific peer review of this article is initiated. Anyone deleting it will be referred to the owners of this website. RamyB777 03:05, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Im one of these people who suffer from this desease. After more than 3 years im happy to see that something is happening. BakuninXL 10:17, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
I removed sections titled MRF controversy and Delusional Parasitosis as they seemed unnecessay for the flow and were POV without need. -- Dematt 15:53, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
With all due respect, I disagree with your perspective!!! As a master's student, your entire discussion lacks credible scientific method and presentation. It is significantly biased towards the anti-Morgellons perspective Dematt! What is your graduate degree that makes you a scientific evaluator of the evidence? and furthermore, what is your ability to stand back from the situation and speak with neutrality towards the issue? In your writing, you have taken a very anti-Morgellons stance here and it is greatly lacks scholarly presentation. Please do a better presentation of both sides of the story. I have entered in bold on your article another perspective balancing the view which in my opinion makes the article more neutral. RamyB777 03:04, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
After 20 doctors, I finally was diagnosed with Morgellins from a parasitic specialist. I was successfully treated by Ivermectin 18 mg once a week for 6 weeks. The entire household had to be treated. This took 18 months from contracting this till full recovery, due to the fact no one knew what was going on. 4 months later - I was re-infected by a friend who had been infected from me, but did not know. During the 18 months my family had this - we infected @ 15 people/families. This is a parasite, the fibers are egg sacks. Oil or ointment, disolves the "glue" which holds these fibers under the skin, so when applied, in @ 10 minutes these fibers pop up & out of the skin. Depending on how long the parasites have been laying these fibers, will depend on how long these fibers look as they come up. Some look like worms, some look like black specs or splinters, these specs can be so small that they will fit in the groove of a fingerprint. Fibers that are forced outof the skin can be seen at 300x magnification, round eggs in these fibers. The parasite itself, looks kinda like a bed bug, but actually the head & legs look more like a shrimp. Acticin or Premrethryn is also effective over the entire body & scalp for 8 hours, once a week for 6 weeks. But anyone that you have infected also needs to be treated. It takes sbout 4 months to be completely infested to the point where they are hatching in your skin continuously and they will walk off of you and onto whomever is sitting next to you. Since these parasties are contagious and do go from person to person, when someone else gets infected - it usually reslults in a boil, which most hospitals or doctors diagnose as a spider bite, mrsa or an infection from itching. If you can get diseases from mosquitoes, sucking blood from one person then moving on to another, what diseases can be spread from these parasites? The symptoms are very similar to scabies, but scabies are easy to ditect, these need much more invstigating. I hope this helps someone who has this. This was a horrible nightmare. 72.81.66.230 04:25, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Excuse me, but you Dyanega use the most fallable logic. Ivermectin and permethrin are also used to kill nematodes (which are categorized as parasites because they live off of their host). Are you an MD??? I simply cannot believe the kind of foolish logic you apply in your arguments to the postings of others. Your knowledge of these two medicines is limited. You print only that which you want to print to confirm your bias. Morgellons is NOT scabies. There is no mite and there is no lice. You may have had scabies, but from what the individual posted, they did not. You are applying a very negative type of medicine ("rapport-enhancing") as published in the American Journal of Dermatology as though it is the GOLDEN RULE of medicine. What happened to "unconditional positive regard" (Carl Rogers) and treating people as real people. What you have proposed here is an application of what is called "junk medicine" by many medical practitioners who are actually seeking to find a cure. Why don't you read the Physicians Desk Reference for Ivermectin and Permethrin and print the wide gammut of uses of those two medicines instead of printing your own narrow view. RamyB777 01:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Out of the 20 doctors that I had seen, 10 of them were dermatologists. I had @ 12 skin samples taken, I thought I had scabies that what I kept telling these dr's to look for scabies, due to the symtpoms that I had. Each one ruled out scabies and the skin samples did not show this mite. I had infected bites on my face, in my ears and nose. I was told also that scabies do not go on the face. The university of PA is who saw the fibers and sent me to the parasitic specialist. Thats when my son & I were diagnosed with Morgellons. I was told these fibers were produced by our bodies, but I was having allergic reactions to the fibers. I was also given sulfur mixed in cream and that helped keep the reaction down. I was told that your body cannot be allergic to itself, so if thats true, why am I allergic to these fibers if my body is making them? After the treament of ivermectin , both my son & I were cured (well for 8 months). We were reinfected when we went over a friends house that I had not seen for 9 months. I had found out that 9 of his friends had been in the Emergency Room, over the previous year for these infected bites or boils, some of his friends were diagnosed with spider bites, or an infection from scratching. The boils get worse until the mite is killed, So I told my friend, he was infected and I proved it to him. He treated himself with over the counter head lice shampoo for 10 minutes and had these worm looking things come up out of his skin. The poeple I infected, none of them believed me until I provede it to them as well. They all had either little wart like bumps, or rashy or scaly patches, the one girl had little red specs on her stomach , the size of a pin. When I put oil on her stomach, within minutes the red dots came up & out of her skin as well as tan splinter looking things. Under the microscope at 100x these were fibers and the red specs were blood. Others had blood scabs, these were not the normal looking white skin scabs, these were dried blood patches. I have tried talking to CDC but have gotten no where. The one black spec that came up out of the center of a infected bite was moving by itself, so this spec was sent to the Univ of Penn and that spec was diagnosed as a bed bug, even though they do no burrow into the skin, but since they had no other reference that is where it ended. The other mite that was hatching out of the fibers (seen at 300X), was diagnosed as the normal bugs that everyone has living on their skin. It did not matter that it was hatching out of the egg in the denter of a fiber. Again with no reference written in black and white, no one is willing to think outside this box. 72.81.89.252 19:31, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
I am. I've been running research outside the box for months now. RamyB777 01:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Let's review this now - we have an anonymous editor who keeps chaging IP numbers, and is deleting and reverting quotes from medical professionals published in medical journals, and replacing them with POV statements. What is there about this that seems like a sincere attempt at collaboration? THERE IS NO EVIDENCE to support the editing of the introduction to read as if Morgellons is a recognized medical condition. I'm very sorry to say that WP is based upon the principle of verifiability, and use of known scholarly sources. At this point, none of the scholarly sources are supporting the recognition of Morgellons, and they do in fact seem to be universally denying its existence, in no uncertain terms. This MUST be made clear to the readers of this article. NPOV does not now and never has dictated that both sides of an argument are given equal weight - UNLESS they have equal supporting evidence; the present example is not such a case. Persistent attempts to hijack this article to a pro-Morgellons stance are not appreciated. When there are peer-reviewed studies published by researchers who are not affiliated with the MRF, then feel free to add that information. Dyanega 21:08, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
The CDC Declared it a disease on January 30, 2007. That is evidence enough. What I see very clearly here is that you do not want ANY REFERENCE to ANY US ORGANIZATION including the National Institutes of Health declaring it as a RARE DISEASE included in your article. This is called confirmation bias and it is the worst kind of research because you are not willing to hear from the side that supports Morgellons as a real disease!!!! RamyB777 23:56, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Well many sufferers wrote me that too, that there is some user deleting all related Links to Morgellons Sites. This User is from Germany (T-Online DSL Service) and I can investigate on his IP-Address to find his name and why he is doing this. It seemed first that he is pushing more Mary Laitao `s site and giving bad comments on the other sites, on mine too. I don`t think so that my site is not acceptable, because I get a lot of good responses from sufferers because I speak out what can be possibly the truth. With certain picture material and documentation about. A lot of work just for nothing? This kind of competition between morgies is just a sidekick show, but not helpful at all. Every user can decide where to go and not being isolated just because one guy is always cancelling related links such as mine www.morgellons-research.org or from rense.com. Please stop that, you unknown terminator... Neumann 18:15, 7 June 2007 (CET)
What marks Wikipedia's article as grossly biased from the get-go is the statement early on that medical opinion "is divided" about whether Morgellons is a "medical illness", i.e. an infectious disease. There is extremely little support in the medical community for this concept, as the vast majority of MDs (including dermatologists) think it's a psychiatric disorder. In fact, this is a _central complaint_ among people who think they have Morgellons - that MDs won't take their "evidence" of infection seriously. So who's kidding whom here? Whoever has edited this article to suggest that "well, some docs believe it and some don't" is creating their own reality, when the truth is that MDs aren't buying Morgellons. Argue if you want that there's a chance research will turn up something astonishing, but don't misrepresent the current state of the science and opinion on this matter. DB
A recent edit of Morgellons included two actions that were, reverted; one was a violation of the WP:NPOV provisions, the other was not attributable. In the latter case, the link given [1] was NOT a citation that classifies Morgellons as a disease - it is a database of disease names that happens to include Morgellons (thus, it is not an attribution; no one outside the Morgellons Research Foundation has yet actively published that it is definitely a disease). That is a very important distinction. Second, giving the citation (and link) from Savely and Leitao is inappropriate UNLESS you state that they are part of the MRF, and not independent researchers. Since the MRF derives its funding from the presumption that Morgellons is a real disease, this is a conflict of interest; accordingly, nothing they publish should be taken at face value (i.e., it is not NPOV). It is no different than using promotional literature from the Church of Scientology as a source for the WP articles on Scientology. Maybe this needs to be spelled out more explicitly in the introduction to avoid further edits of this nature. Dyanega 16:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
For the CDC to include the Morgellons link means that they actually find the research credible. RamyB777 02:10, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Second - the article by Savely & Leitao was already listed and cited mutiple times in the article, and still is. There have been cases of things published in reputable journals that have proven to be false ( cold fusion comes to mind); it is not the journal that gives credibility, it is the researchers AND the research itself, and in this case, (1) the researchers were being paid by an institution whose financial support is predicated on the existence and reality of this "disease", and (2) it was an opinion piece, NOT a research study. This needs to be made as clear as possible to readers here. Dyanega 21:27, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
APPARENTLY, the CDC DID FIND MRF CREDIBLE and included them on their list as a reference for the rare disease. The CDC did not make a mistake. You are not higher than the governmental authority issuing the credence for the disease. RamyB777 02:12, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Do you have any idea what it takes for the CDC to recognize a disease as a disease?? The Mayo Clinic is now researching this disease and The New Morgellons Order has five MD's developing a case description for the disease which can be found at www.cherokeechas.com. The CDC does not add diseases to the National Institute of Health Rare Diseases list unless it is recognized as a valid disease. What I see here amongst the writers of this article is very, very poor argument, that is full of confirmation bias against Morgellons. What would make this article more credible would be an actual valid argument that is supported by actual science instead of the people here who are running their mouths against the disease and the foundation who is fighting to get it recognized. Try accessing the documents at www.cherokeechas.com and look for Morgellons USA, as well as the News Organizations that have documentaries on YouTube. Talk to the 9,500 families who have registered with the Morgellons Foundation through Oklahoma State University and interview them as to their symptoms. Perform an actual scientific study if you are not satisfied with the clinical evidence that already exists. What I do see here is unscholarly writing about Morgellons that negates the realities of 9,500 families suffering from Morgellons and that only represents the families that have registered. There are sufferers all over the globe. Stop publishing only those reports that look at this disease through a specific angle. Look at this disease through a parasitology angle, look at it through a nematode-genetic splicing angle, open your lens and do some real investigating instead of this mumbo-jumbo and bickering that does not represent the truth that Morgellons suffers are real and valid, and yes, there is valid research money to be spent on developing a cure. Think for a moment just how spreadable Morgellons is if it is a parasite that cannot be killed by chlorine in the water. That means that Morgellons is being passed into the water supply at a rapid rate. If it is a parasite, then it is also multiplying because it has not been treated adequately to stop it. It continues to thrive in the people suffering from it. If I continue to read such poorly written scholarship, I will personally request that your entire article be scrubbed from the Wikipedia website on the basis that it is flagrantly biased against Morgellons sufferers, the Morgellons Research Foundation, Morgellons research and anyone attempting to validate it and is therefore slanderous and out not be a part of something called an "encyclopedia."
RamyB777
00:23, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
No one here, myself included, is attempting to "negate" anyone's suffering. I have no doubt that there are many thousands of people suffering, and I have met (and continue to meet) a fair number of them myself, which is how I have come to be acquainted with the condition, its history, and the medical research surrounding it. What this article serves to do is give an objective assessment as to the NATURE of these people's suffering; one sufferer chose to give it a name, that name has become widely-known, and accordingly that name has been given an entry in Wikipedia. However, what that person believes about the condition, and what the medical community believes about the condition, are at odds - again, there is no dispute over the existence of the suffering people themselves, just a dispute over the cause of their suffering. Both sides of the dispute are presented here, but since the two sides differ dramatically in their credibility, the more credible side of the dispute is given proper emphasis. If and when any facts should be made known that differ from what is presently given here, then have no fear that the article will be updated to reflect them. But there are no facts to support your claim that it is a parasite, nematode or otherwise, being spread in the water supply. That sort of claim is irresponsible and sensationalist, and has NO place in Wikipedia. Dyanega 21:25, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I happened upon the Morgellons article yesterday, and took time to read it, because the word was strange to me, and the illness so bizarre. I pondered it overnight, Googled for background information, and began editing it for clarity and brevity today. My concern is not that it may be biased, but simply that it is difficult to read and understand.
I didn't consult the Discussion page before starting, and after reviewing its content and length, I'm glad I didn't! Most of the discussion appears to be about the alleged illness per se, rather than the content of this Wikipedia article.
The obvious issue is whether Morgellons is in fact a genuine, little-known illness; a handy catchall for a host of previously recognized medical conditions; a mental condition; or perhaps, even a hoax. It appears that Ms. Leitao and her Morgellons Research Foundation are responsibile for the name and publicity campaign since 2002. The clearest and briefest outline of the condition I've seen is that of the OSU CHS: http://www.healthsciences.okstate.edu/morgellons/index.cfm.
IMHO, this article need do little more than describe the alleged condition, identify Ms. Leitao and the MRF and their activities, and note that research may determine whether Morgellons is an actual, and perhaps significant, public health issue. I may edit a little more for clarity, hoping that other contributors will agree, and do the same. -- Mukrkrgsj 07:20, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
I generally agree, Dyanega. The Wiki format and policies make it difficult to outline the circumstances of a controversy without taking sides, and I don't think the content I edited did so.
I agree the intro should include a statement "that the medical community has not accepted the condition as a disease"--with a link to a responsible medical source. If you know a good source, please add it.
I said the OSU page was the "clearest and briefest outline", not that it was accurate or unbiased. Please bear with me as I edit a little more. -- Mukrkrgsj 20:30, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
When I wrote the above, I didn't know you had reversed my edit of the intro, and reintroduced some of your own bias. I briefly reverted to my earlier version, then merged some of yours with mine. -- Mukrkrgsj 21:39, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for stating clearly that your position is that Morgellons is not a disease. The recent text of the intro, and your revisions to my corrections, already strongly implied that anyone claiming to have Morgellons actually had delusional parasitosis, a mental illness.
But if there's no such thing as Morgellons, why do you insist on calling it a "controversial medical condition"? Why don't you just write: "There's no such thing as Morgellons, and those who think they have it are nuts!", and let it go at that?
I think it's fascinating that an unknown number of Americans--maybe thousands--claim to be extruding wads of multi-colored, polyester fiber from lesions on their bodies! Victims of rare, new, and imagined ailments often coalesce into support groups, and the groups themselves are real phenomena, and worthy of scientific study.
I think many Wikipedia users will be interested in reading about Morgellons, and making up their own minds as to what it is. It would be great to get the MRF's permission to use some of their more remarkable photos in this article.
Please try to remember that this article is about Morgellons. Whether it is a genuine physical or mental illness is just part of the total story. -- Mukrkrgsj 02:24, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
I understand your position very well: you want to retain the present near-total bias of the article, but you would like to be perceived as being fair and objective. There is no "controversy". The essence of this article is your own position: that medical science considers Morgellons a mental disorder, not a physical disease.
What I don't understand is your continued refusal to permit any description of the alleged disease and its principal proponents, Ms. Leitao and her MRF--except to say they are wrong. The article clearly fails to "present both sides".
I'm arguing for a fair and complete description of the organization and its beliefs as a contemporary social phenomenon. I think Wikepedia users want, will enjoy, and can independently judge such an article for themselves. -- Mukrkrgsj 06:13, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm surprised and disappointed to find such belligerent, intellectual dishonesty from a scientist and academician, at a site like Wikipedia. As I review the references, it appears that as an entomologist, you and your colleagues at UC Davis' Bohart Museum of Entomology are promoting the diagnosis of "Delusional Parasitosis" quite as fervently as your opponents are lobbying for recognition of Morgellons. I strongly recommend you disqualify yourself from any further involvement with this article. -- Mukrkrgsj 05:53, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
The Bohart Museum's website says--as does the Wiki article on Delusional parasitosis, that apparently was copied from it--"Delusional parasitosis or Ekbom's Syndrome is a rare disorder in which sufferers hold a delusional belief they are infested with parasites" ; and later, "The exact prevalence of this syndrome is unknown, although it is apparently rare to uncommon." [emphasis added]. Yet you say, "I deal with it all the time, as do many professional entomologists, including those at UC Davis, I'm sure."
You also say, "if I were determined to 'promote' DP, then I could edit the page so it reads simply 'DP and Morgellons are the same' and cite those medical studies which say exactly that". As I have been saying, that is precisely the thrust of the Morgellons article at this time.
Most dermatologists and psychiatrists have no special expertise in insect taxonomy; and I doubt that many entomologists are qualified to diagnose dermatological and psychiatric conditions. I urge you again to leave this article to independent editors who have no axes of their own to grind. -- Mukrkrgsj 11:31, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I have edited the present introduction to make it more objective. Dyanega has been fiercely protective of the article's flagrant bias, so I am posting the first draft here, for comment:
Sections to follow would be titled: The Morgellons Research Foundation (brief outline); Symptoms; Diagnosis and treatment (including that of "Delusional Parasitosis" and antipsychotics), [possibly more to come]. The sections References and External links would be retained.
The existing content would be edited for balance. All necessary and appropriate links and references would be included.
Please do not edit this draft, or reply within it. Add your comments below.
-- Mukrkrgsj 02:04, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
I like the Mayo Clinic's Definition.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/morgellons-disease/SN00043
Similarly I encourage all you brainy science types to look into nano technology....
http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=1015.php (the preceding unsigned comment posted by 69.157.81.115 at 00:27, 10 April 2007)
Vassyana has opened the mediation process, in response to Dyanega's complaint. To see and participate in the discussion, go here: Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2007-03-06 Morgellons -- Mukrkrgsj 03:29, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
I smell a rat here. Why has the CDC postponed the investigation several times? If an unknown condition that has been reported consistently in a specific area ,i would think has a scientist of a epidemic evolving. Secondly what has the CDC given has the reason for postponement? In this day and age with the threat of biological warfare and the increase of exotic conditions through global warming the CDC appears to be incompetent .-- Redblossom 19:36, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
http://www.eblue.org/article/PIIS0190962207001958/fulltext
Volume 56, Issue 4, Pages 705-706 (April 2007)
Morgellons disease William T. Harvey, MD, MPH
To the Editor: The recent editorial by Dr Koblenzer,1 titled “The Challenge of Morgellons Disease,” appears with two referenced letters.2, 3 All authors imply that the term “Morgellons” and the related Morgellons Research Foundation are unwelcome imposters appearing on immutable turf. No author suggests awareness of either the Morgellons origin or the origin of delusions of parasitosis (DP) nor the assumptions and facts underpinning each.
The first approach we considered in responding to the editorial and letters was to address individual points raised by each. Repeated perusal suggested another more relevant approach. Each author provided abundant examples of an expansive medical system constrained by legal and fiscal (insurance) pressures that have resulted in the production of certified practitioners with little awareness of the necessary tools of critical thinking. The result of each is a hollow argument addressing a perceived issue without reference to the genesis, history, or information sources of either DP or Morgellons.
Serious students of the most basic sciences learn early that reality is the singular essence of each. “Truth” in this context is simply a semantic label given to current human understanding of that reality.4 Human truth never reaches reality, but as the Ancient Mariner, drifts forever, perhaps asymptotically approaching what is real. So it is with medical truth. Yesterday's texts are already trash, placing an enormous burden on each of us to look beyond our passed-on guidebooks, created as best they could be with the tools and knowledge available at the time.
Carl Sagan5 captured this essential professional obligation in an essay titled “The Burden of Skepticism.” He saw the essential task of every truth seeker to balance credulity and skepticism equally, impossible without the trait of intense humility in the presence of an unknowable universe. Within such a context, we as physicians must see disease names simply as labels and defined disease boundaries as crude guesses that continually evolve.
What then do we make of texts and distinguished tutors who tell us that all delusional people focused on dermal symptoms: (1) have created the physical signs they show us; and (2) their belief that parasites are responsible for their sickness is the product of a damaged mind? Those who try to freeze the present embrace skepticism of a new idea called Morgellons, but curiously, will cling fervently to a concept held as immutable fact, DP. The truth seeker will question both equally, and gather all that can be known about the assumptions and facts from which each were built. Most importantly, he or she will know the answer is, as always, in the patient and nowhere else.
All we had to do on encountering our first patient with DP was to examine the lesions with a child's portable microscope, query the patient about other signs and symptoms, then use current laboratory tests to characterize all distressing symptoms. Next was to examine others with the same signs, particularly babies, and scrutinize similar lesions unreachable by infant hands. Increasing numbers of similar patients (some not self-diagnosed) holding responsible professional positions successfully made it clear that DP lesions and psychosis were not linked by cause and effect.
As Koblenzer1 noted, inquiry into the history of Morgellons reveals that the term was adopted by a biologist-mother with affected children. When no physician could either name the illness or treat it, she found a placeholder title to aid communication while she sought to find answers. Thus, came the Morgellons Research Foundation,6 with 8263 registrant households.
To anyone willing to look and listen, all patients with Morgellons carry elevated laboratory proinflammatory markers, elevated insulin levels, and verifiable serologic evidence of 3 bacterial pathogens. They also show easily found physical markers such as peripheral neuropathy, delayed capillary refill, abnormal Romberg's sign, decreased body temperature, and tachycardia. Most importantly they will improve, and most recover on antibiotics directed at the above pathogens.
In the final analysis, everything we know is perception. What we perceive is still up to us, even as individual professionals. In the current climate of evidence-based medicine, more than ever, what we use as evidence and how we use it is paramount. Pez1103 09:41, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20070227-000003.html
While most physicians seem to lean toward the delusional parasitosis diagnosis, there are a handful of people who think there's something real going on here. About a year ago, Oklahoma State neuroscientist Randy Wymore stumbled upon Leitao's Morgellons site and became intrigued. Wymore called Leitao and asked if there were any fiber samples he could look at. Within days, Ziplocs were arriving in the mail from around the country. Though the fibers all resembled one another, he says, they looked like no other synthetic or natural fiber he compared them to. Ultimately, he asked the fiber experts on the Tulsa police department's forensics team to examine them. First they employed a type of spectroscopy that identifies the chemical structures of fibers and compared them to their database of 800 fibers. No match. Next they subjected fibers to gas chromatography. Compounds put through this process are encased in a vacuum chamber and exposed to high heat; the temperature at which they reach boiling point is a clue to what compound they are made of. The forensic experts had a database that included the boiling point of 90,000 organic compounds with which to compare the fibers. But the machine ran to its highest temperature, 1,400 degrees, and apart from some slight blackening, nothing happened. The fiber experts were mystified. "The conclusion we were left with is that they are unknown fibers, not simply contaminants from clothing sticking to scabs," says Wymore. Wymore, who is not a physician, also asked Rhonda Casey, the chief of the pediatrics department at Oklahoma State University Hospital, to take a look at some of the patients for him, to get a medical opinion. "Honestly, when he first told me about it, I thought, they're all nuts," says Casey. But she changed her mind. "There was not one patient I saw who did not look ill," she says. What's more, they all looked ill in the same way, with neurological symptoms, including confusion, foot drop, in which a person loses control of their foot and has trouble walking, and a sagging mouth when they spoke. Many had been diagnosed with atypical forms of neurological diseases like Parkinson's or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease). She examined their skin via a dermatoscope, a light tool with a magnifying lens. And she did biopsies on both their lesions and apparently healthy skin. She says she saw fibers embedded in both places. The white ones, she says, are hard to see. A dermatologist who either didn't look at all, or didn't use a dermatoscope, might not see them under the skin. But some—the black, red, and blue ones—are blatantly obvious, she says. One young girl had a small pimple on her thigh with a bundle of black fibers just barely protruding from it. Many doctors have accused these patients of embedding fibers in the sores themselves, but Casey doesn't believe it. "As a physician, I can't imagine reproducing what I saw in that little girl's leg." There's also some evidence of an overlap with Lyme disease. Ginger Savely, a San Francisco nurse practitioner with a long history of treating Lyme patients, now sees Morgellons patients and says 90 percent of them test positive for Lyme disease. "I think that one of two things is happening," she says. "Either there's a co-infection people are getting at the same time they get Lyme, because there are a lot of infections spread by ticks." Or whatever is causing Morgellons is something ubiquitous that many of us are exposed to, but the disease develops only in people with weakened immune systems, like those with Lyme disease. Pez1103 09:45, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
The last we heard from Vassyana, the volunteer mediator, was 28 days ago, on the Mediation page: [ [6]]. Vassyana just left me this message on my Talk page:
Vassyana, it should be obvious that the article is still an incoherent, unreadable mess, that can only bewilder Wikipedia users. After a brief respite, the editorial process again is a public brawl, with Dyanega continuing to bully anyone who dares to disagree with his personal bias.
After the 28-day hiatus, I see no point in your resuming informal mediation. If there is anyone at Wikipedia who takes ultimate responsibility for the quality of its articles, it's far past time they took control of this one. Mukrkrgsj 00:36, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Though I am not a direct party to this debate, it is apparent to me that Mukrkrgsj is assuming bad faith. Murkrkrgsj - Dyangea posted his responses to your questions and arguments in the informal meditation: your choice not to respond was your own, and it does not lend credence to your assertion of bias. Tempers are running high, and as informal mediation appears to have been ineffective, I suggest that this be ratcheted up to a formal request for arbitration. In particular parties on both sides appear to be violating
WP:FAITH,
WP:NPOV,
WP:Civility, and most importantly
WP:Verifiability. -
Interested2
18:02, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Interested2, I'm glad you agree that the informal mediation was ineffective, and it's time for formal arbitration. You don't have to be a "direct party to this debate" to comment; but your comments would be more constructive if you would read and understand the article itself, the last few weeks of discussion here, and the mediation pages.
In fact, there was no informal mediation. I had expected the mediator to mediate. Instead, Vassyana adopted the case on March 28; asked some pertinent questions, which Dyanega and I promptly answered; and disappeared, until the April 30 message I copied above.
The informal mediation process was not a private debate between Dyanega and myself. Vassyana asked us to: "answer all the questions with the assumption of good faith on the other side and address the content not the other editors. Please keep all answers short." I did. Mukrkrgsj 21:36, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Mukrkrgsj - I've been following this for a while now, mostly since the informal mediation went up. It's not my place to criticize members of the mediation cabal, but the fact does remain that the mediation was, in this case, completely ineffective. I suspect both parties involved here have vested interests in the article, but I feel as of this writing that the article is reasonably NPOV. Likewise, I am not criticizing your answers to the mediation questions, but rather the usefulness of the mediation itself. The biggest issues I've seen in the discussion are violations of
WP:Verifiability and
WP:NPOV, and I think that barring a consensus among the users on this page as to what constitutes a legitimate source, arbitration is required for this dispute to be resolved. --
Interested2
23:58, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Interested2, we agree that there was no effective mediation. As to your suspicion that Dyanega and I "have vested interests in the article", I stated in the Discussion above that I had never heard of Morgellons until I read the Wikipedia article on March 21, 2007.
Dyanega, however, has been outspoken here about his personal interest in Morgellons, and his conviction that it is not a disease; and his professional interest in a rare disorder called "Delusional Parasitosis". The website of the Bohart Museum, at the University of California, Davis, has a 17-page section on Human Skin Parasites & Delusional Parasitosis: [7].
I wrote during the preliminary discussion at the Mediation page:
"It is pertinent that Dyanega's WP profile says: 'I'm the collection manager of a major US insect collection, at the University of California, Riverside'. A Google search indicates that he is the Senior Museum Scientist at the Entomology Research Museum at U.C. Riverside, a facility similar to the Bohart at U.C. Davis. Its website says, 'The museum serves as a valuable resource for the pest control industry, agriculture, public health, forensic medicine and criminology, environmental biology, as well as the general public.' [emphasis added]
Dyanega says above: 'I have no personal or professional stake in the matter'; yet he wrote March 24, on the Morgellons discussion page: 'I most certainly do not have any connection with the Bohart Museum's website, and I'll be darned if I can see anything that either they or I have done is "promotion" of a diagnosis. Delusional parasitosis exists, I deal with it all the time, as do many professional entomologists, including those at UC Davis, I'm sure. We are certainly well-qualified to inform the public about it. Many of us read about it, do research on it, and learn as much as possible about it, so we can work to help those people who suffer from it.' [emphasis added]
Thus it appears that Dyanega, and his colleagues at U.C. Davis, are as fervently biased in their belief in 'Delusional parasitosis', as they claim the people at the MRF are, in their belief in 'Morgellons'. I submit that at this time, the Morgellons article strongly reflects that bias; and is likely to leave WP users with the prejudicial belief that anyone claiming to have 'Morgellons' is neurotic or psychotic." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2007-03-06_Morgellons/Archive1
Mukrkrgsj 02:31, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Dyanega here unequivocally states his opinion that "many" Morgellons patients suffer from "delusory parasitosis":
He calls it "delusory parasitosis", but his internal link redirects to the Wikipedia article on "Delusional parasitosis". "Delusional parasitosis" is the rare disorder advertised by the website of the Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis--a sister institution to the Entomology Research Museum at U.C. Riverside, where Dyanega works: [8].
The Bohart's website says:
The page continues:
It's notable that the Bohart says "Delusional parasitosis" is both "a rare disorder", and an "increasingly common syndrome".
The Introduction to the Bohart's 17 web pages on "Human Skin Parasites & Delusional Parasitosis" says:
So the Bohart says "Delusional parasitosis" is "a mistaken belief that one is being infested by parasites"; and "a rare disorder in which sufferers hold a delusional belief they are infested with parasites"; and it specifically cites "organisms called Morgellons. 'Morgellons' is a term used to describe what are purported to be fiber-like parasites of the skin".
And fellow UC museum entomologist Dyanega just said here, that "many" Morgellons patients suffer from "Delusional parasitosis".
Are "many", if not all, who wonder if they have "Morgellons", actually suffering from "Delusional parasitosis"?
Apparently not.
The Morgellons Research Foundation, which claims to represent 9,941 "registered families", says:
The MRF says the symptoms of "Morgellons" sufferers include certain "sensations", "lesions", and "structures" that are "fiber-like or filamentous". Whatever Dyanega and the Bohart may think, the MRF doesn't claim that anyone is "infested by parasites".
We still don't know what "Morgellons" is, what causes it, or how to treat it; but if the "Morgellons" patients the MRF speaks for don't think they're infested with organic "parasites such as mites, lice, fleas, spiders, worms, [and] bacteria", they certainly don't have "Delusional parasitosis". Mukrkrgsj 11:32, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
[Below is an exchange between Interested2 and Dyanega, under the heading "Possible Arbitration", copied from the Talk page of the Mediation article: [
[12]]]
It is my concern that this mediation has been unsuccessful. Both parties continue their previous behavior on the
Talk:Morgellons page and in the article itself. I feel it would be beneficial to request a formal arbitration. --
Interested2
20:20, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I continue to agree with Interested2 that formal arbitration is long overdue. Mukrkrgsj 02:19, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
The following text was posted in the main article, and now moved here by me -- Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 10:17, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Hello from the antipodes.
For the sake of all the suffering we have endured, what a journey! Please try this one... Take several hypericum; St John's Wort tablets and place them in a deep vessel. Put enough water on the capsule to make a paste, this can take a while as the capsules are finely powdered, and dense. Apply the paste directly to lesion, you will be amazed at the sensation of coolness which ensues. If the paste is allowed to dry it has a very tenacious grasp on the wound. If dryness causes irritation, one can apply a mentholated ointment to soften the hypericum which totally covers the lesion. Once the paste has been applied and one has slept pus will exude from the lesion, which is a quantum shift in morgellons treatment, once the pus is formed, by effective destruction of the morgellons biota, the bodies immune system is able to, finally respond. The fibres seem to adhere to the paste and as Dr Schwartz described with diatomeacious earth, it may asphyxiate them. However, under the crust of hypericum paste will be a sinus of loose mobile pus, which can be removed by gentle pressure around the affected area, which, the ability to be able to squeeze such painful areas, is, in itself amazing. After the pus is removed, preferably, OFF TO THE LAB!!, the crust can be removed along with the cluster, matrix or labyrinth of fibers which will be there. My conjecture as to the evolution of morgellons in the body, its causitive agent and treatment steps are as follows: At the point/s of INTRUSION into the body the quorum sensing abilities of this agent "hive" in a mycoplasma with nodules projecting through to the sub-dermis. From the initial trauma of intrusion, the upper dermis remains intact, whilst underneath broils in a mealstrom of biological activity, porphyria, lupus, thc n' lsd....What a great genetic splice...The first signs will be an intact watery blister, accompanied with shooting spasms of electric intensity. After an insidious period of unfamiliar muscular and skeletal pain, adherent neurological maladies occur, brain fog....too much lsd n' thc I'm sorry to say. We are simply genetically engineered proto types, which underlies the imperative for good to prevail over the malodorous evil which is ensconced in this disease. Suppuration may or may not occur in the early stages but by the time it does the entire body is affected. But my belief is that this disorder has an Achilles heel. It must maintain the "hive/s" to survive. Kill the hive, destroy the quorums base, problem solved.
Best regards, Al —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.10.242.169 ( talk • contribs) 10:07, 2 May 2007
Well. I definitely agree with the "too much lsd n' thc." As for... any of the rest... Well, thanks for posting this so the world can read it. 74.36.55.28 04:34, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
I quoted two articles -- one from Psychology Today and one from the Amercian Journal of Dermatology. I did NOT even give my opinion -- just quotes -- and that violates Wiki rules? That's completely ridiculous. Anything that suggests that Morgellons isn't DOP is a violation. Qotes from Derms who believe that it's DOP are OK; quotes from doctors who believe it is not, are banned. Pez1103 12:29, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Pez1103 is correct, that Dyanega continues to misinterpret "the rules".
Dyanega says here, "Look up WP:RS, WP:SPS, and WP:COI"; and later, "I do in fact understand what WP:NPOV means."
Let's do that, beginning with WP:NPOV: [emphasis added]
"All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), representing fairly and without bias all significant views (that have been published by reliable sources)."
What does that mean?
WP:SPS: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. "Verifiable" in this context means that any reader should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or is likely to be challenged, or it may be removed."
Dyanega may prefer the "truth", as he sees it; but WP requires just verifiability. Verifiability means that "any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged needs a source"; and that source is not limited to "peer-reviewed journals":
WP:RS: "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published sources. This page is a guideline, not a policy, and is mandatory only insofar as it repeats material from policy pages. The relevant policies on sources are Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:No original research, and Wikipedia:Neutral point-of-view.
Wikipedia:Verifiability says that any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged needs a source, as do quotations, and the responsibility for finding a source lies with the person who adds or restores the material."
"Reliable sources are credible published materials with a reliable publication process; their authors are generally regarded as trustworthy, or are authoritative in relation to the subject at hand."
"Wikipedia welcomes material written by scientists, scholars, and researchers, particularly material published by peer-reviewed journals. However, these may be outdated by more recent research, or may be controversial in the sense that there are alternative scholarly and non-scholarly treatments. Wikipedia articles should therefore ideally rely on all majority and significant-minority treatments of a topic, scholarly and non-scholarly, so long as the sources are reliable."
Finally, WP:COI pertains to a conflict of interest on the part of the editor, not the source:
WP:COI: "A Wikipedia conflict of interest is an incompatibility between the purpose of Wikipedia, to produce a neutral encyclopedia, and the aims of individual or organized groups of editors. These include editing for the sake of promoting oneself, other individuals, causes, organizations, companies, or products, as well as suppressing negative information, and criticizing competitors." Mukrkrgsj 21:47, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Articles should rely on reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Sources should be appropriate to the claims made: exceptional claims require exceptional sources.
Sources of questionable reliability In general, sources of questionable reliability are sources with a poor reputation for fact-checking or with no fact-checking facilities or editorial oversight. Sources of questionable reliability should only be used in articles about themselves. (See below.)
Exceptional claims require exceptional sources
Certain red flags should prompt editors to examine the sources for a given claim.
Exceptional claims should be supported by multiple reliable sources, especially regarding scientific or medical topics, historical events, politically charged issues, and biographies of living people.
But it is not enough, to express the Wikipedia non-bias policy, just to say that we should state facts and not opinions. When asserting a fact about an opinion, it is important also to assert facts about competing opinions, and to do so without implying that any one of the opinions is correct. It is also generally important to give the facts about the reasons behind the views, and to make it clear who holds them. It is often best to cite a prominent representative of the view.
Undue weight
NPOV says that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a verifiable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each. Now an important qualification: Articles that compare views should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views, and may not include tiny-minority views at all. For example, the article on the Earth only very briefly refers to the Flat Earth theory, a view of a distinct minority.
We should not attempt to represent a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deserved as much attention as a majority view, and views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views. To give undue weight to a significant-minority view, or to include a tiny-minority view, might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation among experts on the subject, or among the concerned parties. This applies not only to article text, but to images, external links, categories, and all other material as well.
Dyanega continues to obfuscate. A quick glance at the sections cited demonstrates that I quoted from the fundamental statements of principle at the top of the pages, while he delved deep, in search of tenuous support for his misinterpretations.
As I made clear above, "Verifiability means that 'any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged needs a source'; and that source is not limited to 'peer-reviewed journals'". Nor must all the sources be dermatologists; indeed, the article's primary sources on "Delusional parasitosis" are entomologists like Dyanega himself, not medical specialists.
It's especially notable that he quotes from Verifiability/Sources of questionable reliability: "Sources of questionable reliability should only be used in articles about themselves." One would think the Morgellons Research Foundation could at least be cited in the article about Morgellons, yet Dyanega says here: "nearly everything in the Morgellons article that pertains to the MRF and things claimed by its board of directors and advisors, should NOT be included in Wikipedia"! Mukrkrgsj 02:30, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
I've just reedited the Introduction, and the Delusional parasitosis sections. IMHO, the new text of these two sections is the clearest and fairest since I happened upon this article, and began tentatively editing for clarity and brevity on March 21.
Comments? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mukrkrgsj ( talk • contribs) 03:36, 4 May 2007 (UTC).
I'd still like to hear from anyone who doesn't have a personal or professional interest in this article.
Mukrkrgsj
10:39, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Dyanega's comment above didn't say he reverted my recent edits as soon as he saw them. Anyone who wants to see how the Introduction and Delusional parasitosis sections can be improved will have to read them in the history files. I'm not surprised he didn't want anyone to see the difference.
Looks like there's no hope for an honest article about Morgellons until Dyanega is prohibited from vandalizing it. Mukrkrgsj 11:00, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
I apologize for my extended absence. I was offline for a few weeks and I'm getting back into the wiki swing of things. I am checking in to see if the comments left on the informal mediation page are still an accurate representation of how people view this article. Additionally, I would like to pose two questions to the editors here. What do you most disagree with in the recent edits of others? What do you most agree with in the edits of the same people? What points are you willing to compromise on? Vassyana 06:48, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Dyanega reverted my recent edits as soon as he saw them, so anyone who wants to see how the Introduction and Delusional parasitosis sections can be improved will have to read them in the history files. I'm not surprised he didn't want anyone to see the difference. Looks like there's no hope for an honest article about Morgellons until Dyanega is prohibited from vandalizing it.
Mukrkrgsj
10:56, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Interested2 wrote above, "I'm on your side in this dispute, Dyanega - I strongly feel that Morgellon's is delusional parasitosis." Whatever Morgellons may be, by definition it certainly is not the rare condition called "delusional parasitosis" that is promoted by Dyanega's entomologist colleagues at the University of California, Davis.
Nevertheless, I have agreed with Interested2 that informal mediation has not been productive--in fact, the volunteer mediator began the process, and then vanished for 28 days--and recommended the article go to formal arbitration. I also agree the article should be locked pending arbitration--but not "as-is".
I have repeatedly stated the obvious: the current article is incoherent, but it is heavily weighted in favor of Dyanega's--and Interested2's--prejudices regarding Morgellons and the MRF. I therefore recommend the article be removed entirely pending arbitration. Mukrkrgsj 20:02, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Temporary removal of this severely biased article would certainly serve the public interest. Dyanega's continual defense and maintenance of its bias are the obvious reasons Morgellons has not been objectively defined and described in the present article.
Mukrkrgsj
01:25, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
I reiterate that the two quotes above from JAAD and Psychology today should be added to the research section to balance it out and the quote from Schwartz should be removed. I am seeking agreement from someone NEUTRAL on this. Pez1103 10:40, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Here are the new Introduction and “Delusional parasitosis” sections Dyanega doesn’t want the public to see. I think they are far more readable, coherent, and accurate than the present mess.
It’s obvious that I didn’t make any radical changes—and in fact, left in some historic content that probably should be removed. What troubled Dyanega is probably the reduced emphasis on his personal and professional prejudices.
In particular, I have begun to clarify that whatever Morgellons may be, it certainly isn’t the rare condition called “Delusional parasitosis”; and that it is not a “controversial” condition per se. The primary source of controversy appears to be some entomologists like Dyanega, who have a vested interest in identifying insect parasites for dermatologists.
Introduction
Morgellons or Morgellons disease is characterized by symptoms of "crawling, stinging and biting sensations", and "non-healing skin lesions" associated with "fiber-like or filamentous" structures. "[M]any sufferers also report symptoms of disabling fatigue, severe mental confusion, short term memory loss, joint pain, sharp decline in vision, and serious neurological disorders." [13] The cause is unknown, and no diagnostic criteria have been established.
Dissatisfied with doctors' diagnosis of her two-year-old son's rash, Mary Leitao, of McMurray, Pennsylvania, coined the name Morgellons, and formed the Morgellons Research Foundation (MRF) in 2002. She is currently its Executive Director. Leitao tentatively named it after a condition in Sir Thomas Browne's 1690 monograph A Letter to a Friend.
The MRF says Morgellons has been reported in every American state, and 15 other countries. Most of the U.S. cases are in California, Texas, and Florida [1]. The National Institutes of Health Office of Rare Diseases presently links their entry on Morgellons [2] to the MRF.
Researchers from the MRF consider Morgellons a distinct and novel disease, however it shares characteristics with a number of recognized medical conditions, including attention-deficit disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Nanette Orman, an adjunct clinical professor from Stanford University, believes it may be related to Lyme disease. [14]
The condition the MRF describes is controversial because some authorities, including dermatologists and entomologists, identify it with delusional parasitosis: a rare mental illness involving false beliefs about infestation by organic parasites. The Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology printed two letters, and a commentary on them, in its November 2006 issue. Their consensus was that dermatologists should humor patients who think they have "Morgellons disease", but treat them for delusional parasitosis. [3] [4] [5].
A Nature Medicine article reported [6], "Most dermatologists deny the disease exists, saying the people who claim to suffer from it have either common skin illnesses or psychological disorders such as delusional parasitosis, in which people become irrationally convinced that they harbor parasites." Morgellons has been successfully treated with the antipsychotic medication Pimozide [7], which has been used to treat delusional parasitosis
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has scheduled an investigation, but postponed it six times since June 2006.
Delusional parasitosis
The primary source of controversy is whether Morgellons is a rare mental disorder called Delusional parasitosis. To date, studies from the medical community indicate that Morgellons and delusional parasitosis are the same condition referred to by different names [3] [4] [5]. No formal clinical studies have yet demonstrated an etiology of Morgellons, though one study has demonstrated that patients can be cured using Pimozide, reinforcing the contention that the condition is synonymous with delusional parasitosis, which is treated with the same drug [7].
The website of the Bohart Museum of Entomology, of the University of California, Davis, says: [15]
The Bohart says "Delusional Parasitosis is a mistaken belief that one is being infested by parasites such as mites, lice, fleas, spiders, worms, bacteria, or other organisms"; and further describes it, saying: [16]
Some entomologists have joined dermatologists in calling Morgellons a mental condition, rather than a physical disease. Entomologist Nancy C. Hinkle, in her article Delusory Parasitosis [8], outlines thirteen indications attributed to delusional parasitosis, including these:
The belief that fibers are emerging from their skin is still present in these patients. This belief is generally regarded by doctors as either delusional, or a result of simply mistaking fibers from clothing (lint) as fibers emerging from the body. [9]
Patients who suffer from delusional parasitosis, and who also believe they have Morgellons, will often move from doctor to doctor in search of one who will offer them the diagnosis they are seeking. As a result, some doctors have adopted the use of the term "Morgellons disease" as "a rapport-enhancing term for delusions of parasitosis" [5]. In the letter cited, Dr. Jenny Murase wrote,
In February 2005, a report on a Fox affiliate in Duval County, Florida, prompted the Duval County Health Department (DCHD) to investigate. The DCHD report noted there was a significant spike in reported cases after the news report, and said "this is attributed to the airing of Fox News’ coverage of the illness and is not a true cluster of disease." [10]
The DCHD report concluded:
"… it was determined after extensive reviewing of these articles that Morgellons Disease is synonymous with delusional parasitosis (CDC, 1999). DCHD Epidemiology consulted a pediatric dermatologist within the health department for his professional opinion. It was concluded that this is a psychological condition that has been mentioned in literature for hundreds of years." [11]
One doctor, declining to be named for a news article, indicated that he treats patients simply by placing a cast over the affected area of skin, protecting it from the patient's scratching, which results in healing in a matter of weeks. [12] This lends weight to the theory that perceived skin abnormalities interpreted as the manifestation of Morgellons are a side-effect of habitual scratching.
Mukrkrgsj 22:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
The proposed text clearly does not deny that there is controversy; nor does it "pretend this is an established disease". You didn't specify what to see at pubmed; but a search for "Morgellons" goes to a page listing eight articles--seven of which have "Morgellons disease" in the title.
It is not the purpose of a Wikipedia article to condemn the subject of an article in the first sentence. This article is not supposed to be either for, or against its subject. This article is simply about Morgellons--whatever it is, or may ultimately be demonstrated to be.
The purpose of any article here is first, to briefly define and describe the subject. All that is readily available to the public about Morgellons is that it is a little-known medical condition, for which the Morgellons Research Foundation advocates. Having said that, the proposed Introduction gives equal space to those who think it controversial--despite the fact that Morgellons obviously doesn't fit their definition of "delusional parasitosis". Mukrkrgsj 00:49, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Morgellons or Morgellons disease is a controversial medical condition, often described as having symptoms of "crawling, stinging and biting sensations", and "non-healing skin lesions" associated with "fiber-like or filamentous" structures. "[M]any sufferers also report symptoms of disabling fatigue, severe mental confusion, short term memory loss, joint pain, sharp decline in vision, and serious neurological disorders." [18] The cause is unknown, and no diagnostic criteria have been established.
Morgellons is controversial because many medical, public health, and scientific authorities, including dermatologists and entomologists, identify many Morgellons patients as having delusional parasitosis: a mental illness involving false beliefs about infestation by organic parasites. The Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology printed two letters, and a commentary on them, in its November 2006 issue. Their consensus was that dermatologists should agree with patients who have self-diagnosed "Morgellons disease", but treat them for delusional parasitosis. [3] [4] [5].
Researchers from the MRF consider Morgellons a distinct and novel disease, however it shares characteristics with a number of recognized medical conditions, including attention-deficit disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Nanette Orman, an adjunct clinical professor from Stanford University, believes it may be related to Lyme disease. [19]
The primary source of controversy is whether some Morgellons patients suffer from a mental disorder called Delusional parasitosis. To date, studies from the medical community indicate that Morgellons and delusional parasitosis are, in large part, the same condition referred to by different names [3] [4] [5]. No formal clinical studies have yet demonstrated an etiology of Morgellons, though one study has demonstrated that patients can be cured using Pimozide, reinforcing the contention that the condition may be synonymous with delusional parasitosis, which is treated with the same drug [7].
Some entomologists have joined dermatologists in stating that in some cases, Morgellons is a psychological condition, rather than a physical disease. Entomologist Nancy C. Hinkle, in her article Delusory Parasitosis [8], outlines thirteen indications attributed to delusional parasitosis, including these:
I refer readers to my original content, and ask them not to be confused by Dyanega's obfuscation. I would add only that:
Mukrkrgsj 03:02, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
I have read the article and the talk page and have looked at the references and outside links.
The article itself is confusing. At times it appears to be describing a real disease, at others a psychiatric disorder. There is undue weight given to the claims of proponents of this being a disease as there is a lack of any 'evidence' that would be or has been accepted by the medical profession. The Tulsa Police Department Laboratory claim, unless backed up by a report from said department is suspect and should be removed unless verified, few reputable labs will do any studies without authorization and paperwork.
The media reports, in general, have little weight, in that the 'story' is compelling and contains the common theme of 'underdog against the establishment' that is good reading but is not science.
The external links have many problems. One or two are basically Wikimirrors, and to outdated versions of this article. The 'pro' links are all a rehash of the same information and should be pruned down to one or two, the addition of the others seems to be an attempt to promote the 'pro' POV by sheer numbers. Two of the 'pro' links (to the same German site), lead to a page selling a cream purported to be a treatment for this condition. This is clearly spam and they should be removed. I believe that any page with advertising is unacceptable per the external links policy, several of the EL's contain ads. The www.carnicom.com site is especially misleading in that it uses scientific jargon by someone with no claim to credentials to seemingly assign biological attributes and scientific method to the images. The operator of the site also claims that some sort of biological warfare is being carried out by NASA, his evidence being pictures of airplane contrails. No, I did not attempt to read much of this site, the fringe nature of which is obvious to even a casual perusal. If this section is not cleaned up I will remove the offending links in a day or two
The medical establisnment has been glaringly wrong before, Lyme disease and heliobacter pylori are good examples, but they are much more often right. -- killing sparrows (chirp!) 05:43, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
As you point out, most of the articles listed by pubmed--and cited as authorities here--"are in no way supportive of the existence of Morgellons as a disease, rather they seem to consider it in terms of an aspect of treating patients with delusional parasitosis." That is what's fundamentally wrong with this article--and Morgellons by definition is not "delusional parasitosis"!
Mukrkrgsj
03:29, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
I would like to add the following:
http://www.eblue.org/article/PIIS0190962207001958/fulltext Volume 56, Issue 4, Pages 705-706 (April 2007)
William T. Harvey, MD, MPH, chairman of the MRF, wrote a letter to the editor of the American Journal of Dermatology in which stated his finding regarding the dozens of Morgellons patients he has seen. "To anyone willing to look and listen, all patients with Morgellons carry elevated laboratory proinflammatory markers, elevated insulin levels, and verifiable serologic evidence of 3 bacterial pathogens. They also show easily found physical markers such as peripheral neuropathy, delayed capillary refill, abnormal Romberg's sign, decreased body temperature, and tachycardia. Most importantly they will improve, and most recover on antibiotics directed at the above pathogens."
Dr. Harvey receives no compensation from the MRF Pez1103 10:18, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Addendum
The letter states,
You state in your request to add this to the article that this is the result of examing "dozens" of patients, yet the MRF, of which Dr William T Harvey is Chairman of the Board, states on its website that there are thousands of people with this disease all over the world. In the above quote Dr Harvey states that all patients with Margollens exhibit these symptoms. Are his claims then based on thousands or dozens?
The letter states,
yet the nature of the pathogens and the names of the antibiotics are not listed.
He may be right. Everyone else may be wrong. I have a friend who suffered for years from ulcers and was told to stop eating spicy food and reduce stress, when the answer, unrecognized by the medical cummunity, was antibiotic therapy for heliobacter pylori, but Wikipedia is not the place to propose or promote unproven theories. This is why such material is not acceptable for use here.-- killing sparrows (chirp!) 00:16, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
It remains notable that Harvey wrote in rebuttal to three previous JAAD articles, which are References 2, 3, and 4 here. We need to look a little closer at those articles, on which so much of the bias here is based.
Mukrkrgsj
01:37, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
I have gone through the links in relation to the guidelines set out in WP:EL. I will remove the unacceptable links unless there are objections that reference these guidelines.
Acceptable link to organization concerned with Morgellons
Unacceptable link. This site contains little or no additional information and includes advertising for a product purported to treat Morgellons.
Unacceptable link. No additional information from first link. Contains attack pages on opponents of the recognition of Morgellons that include animated gifs of said opponents with flames coming out of their mouths, elongated noses (ala Pinocchio), heads shaking 'no', (apparently in denial of the existence of Mogellons), etc.
Unaceptable link. Soliciting for fee translation of medical documents and sale of products purported to treat Morgellons
Tenuous connection to OSU, possibly acceptable. I will contact OSU and see if this research is in fact sponsored and approved by the University.
Unacceptable link. This site contains a plethora of ads for various products and services unrelated to the subject. In addition it contains misleading and innacurate information about the subject..."researchers discovered a link to what was called Morgellons in the 1600's..." No such research has been conducted according to this article, it was the claim of the parent named in the article. No information here that is not available on the morgellons.org site.
Redundant link. Blurry photomicrographs of something with claims by layperson as to identification and biological activity. Other images are available on morgellons.org site
Unacceptable link. This is a forum/blog
Unacceptable link. This is a survey for sufferers to self-report symptoms.
Unacceptable link. A forum/blog to discuss the above site. It contains 3 posts.
Unacceptable link. An especially misleading site in that it uses scientific jargon by someone with no claim to credentials to seemingly assign biological attributes and scientific method to the images. The operator of the site also claims that some sort of biological warfare is being carried out by NASA, his evidence being pictures of airplane contrails. No, I did not attempt to read much of this site, the fringe nature of which is obvious to even a casual perusal.
Redundant link. Other images are available on morgellons.org site
Acceptable link, but barely. Basically one person's opinion debunking Morgellons. Little factual information and many forum posts.
Unacceptable link. This site contains little or no additional information and includes advertising for a product purported to treat Morgellons. Basically a sub or sister site to morgellons-research.org (above)
Unacceptable link. All information available on morgellons.org site. Misleading wording regarding research.
Unacceptable link. Again a rehash of info on morgellons.org. Also has mention in FAQ of possible bio-terror, bio-experimentation which it does not confirm or deny.
Again a rehash of morgellons.org info. No new info on the iste.
The first words on this page are an ad stating..."Accidental" breakthrough: Miracle-Pill halts Disease. Learn the truth in this Special Report! This says much about the credibility of this site which is yet another rehash of previous info and images, and links to articles about the dangers of nanotech. Has one valuable link to a Psychology Today article that could be used in itself as it presents the most balanced view I have seen so far.
I am posting this as a courtesy in light of the heated discussions on this talk page but I believe the questioned links could be deleted without comment. If you have any objections, please reference the appropriate WP:EL guidelines as they relate to the specific link. -- killing sparrows (chirp!) 18:53, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Six weeks ago, before I happened upon this article, I had never heard of Morgellons. After reviewing the article, its sources, and this discussion--and some active participation in the discussion--I have one major question:
What is it about Morgellons, and its support group the MRF, that inspires so much anger and hostility?
What is it about an almost unknown medical condition, that reportedly affects an unknown number of unidentified patients, including children and infants, that makes some editors demand that Wikipedia ruthlessly condemn them as fakers and loonies?
I've seldom seen so much bitter, mean-spirited, hostile prejudice, without even a hint of justification for it. Mukrkrgsj 03:55, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
A white knight? We just gave informal mediation the benefit of the doubt, and the mediator disappeared for four weeks. If your offer is sincere, I think you'll find that Dyanega won't let you do what you promise to do. And if you are not, you and Dyanega will have prevented any improvements by objective editors for another two weeks.
Thanks, but no confidence. This article needs to go to formal arbitration, NOW! Mukrkrgsj 05:44, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
Per my concerns listed above I have remove the links. I feel that any additions to this section need to be justified per the external links guidelines. I will also look at the 'In the news' section and evaluate them per the same guidelines, I think many are redundant. If there is reference to 'many media reports' in the main article, some of these could possibly be added as reference to that statement. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Killing sparrows ( talk • contribs) 06:16, 7 May 2007 (UTC).
I have no personal experience with Morgellons, but I saw the photos of affected skin on the Morgellons Research Foundation website. Could Morgellons be caused by microfiber blankets, etc? Microfibers are extremely thin artificial fibers that are being used to make blankets, clothing etc. It's a booming business, and pretty new. If you have fibers that are extremely thin, then naturally their ends will be extremely sharp.
For a while I was sleeping on a torn mattress, with the foam rubber showing through. I noticed that some of my own hairs worked their way deep into the foam of the mattress, just as a result of the repeated rubbing caused by my natural movements during sleep, or while resting on the mattress.
Similarly, could it be that people are getting microfibers under their skin, by repeated rubbing caused by their natural movements against blankets while sleeping or resting, or something similar with microfiber clothing?
Does anyone have experience with both Morgellons and microfiber blankets or other products? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 208.100.198.155 ( talk) 18:08, 16 May 2007 (UTC).
I am new to posting here and am a layman. I followed this post because of a bedbug infestation. The company from which I bought treatment for the bedbugs also sent me a pdf on "collembola" syndrome, which was linked to Morgellons syndrome. So I did some research. About springtails, and insect parasites. Interestingly, the only additional references I found to the problem were offered by other companies selling cures, complicated cures at high prices. I felt their literature was designed to inspire fear and prey on peoples vunerablities. No other references were found from CDC, google, dermatological sites. This fact, and the language of the pdf makes me believe that Morgellons/Collembola is a marketing ploy. I believe this could be a contributing factor to this discussion. Frankly, if you have fibers, granules extruding from your skin, chronic dermatitis, and you experience confusion and fatigue, you seek a doctor. It bugs you day and night. The doctor says, hey you're crazy. Perhaps you let it go at that, but I assume that a statistically significant portion of sufferers would carry it further, and seek second, third, fourth opinions. Someone, many people, would contribute samples which would be examined. I believe that researchers, upon finding a new disease,microbe,virus,pathogen, would become very excited! It would be on the news, Nobel Peace Prize, Pulliter Prize, Fox News goes crazy. But instead, nothing. I think it's the business of snake oil salespeople. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Linty ( talk • contribs) 02:58, 17 May 2007
How will the upcoming film version of the play "Bugs" impact this discussion and national attention to the topic (and this page)?
(cur) (last) 17:15, 1 June 2007 Interested2 (Talk | contribs) (22,401 bytes) (rv to "but especially with". The observable symptoms are similar to those of DP, and it does a disservice to those afflicted to suggest that its as likely as ADD.) (cur) (last) 06:26, 1 June 2007 24.6.34.203 (Talk) (22,385 bytes) (?Background - "but especially with", not supported by facts. Delusional parasitosis not consistent with fibers and granules are coming out of the skin, short-term memory loss, fatigue.) (cur) (last) 05:25, 1 June 2007 24.6.34.203 (Talk) (22,401 bytes) (?Delusional parasitosis) (cur) (last) 05:15, 1 June 2007 24.6.34.203 (Talk) (22,402 bytes) (?Delusional parasitosis)
On June 1 I edited two quotations because they were incomplete. I added a few sentences to include the full text which puts the quotations in better context.
I also changed "but especially with" to "and" for reasons I stated. Interested2 reversed the edit on June 2 stating, "The observable symptoms are similar to those of DP, and it does a disservice to those afflicted to suggest that its as likely as ADD."
I disagree. The sentence does not talk about symptoms. It states, "Morgellons shares characteristics with a number of recognized medical conditions,...". Nowhere in Wikipedia,or in any reference is the term "but especially with DP" based on data. Many Dermatologists associate Morgellons with delusional parasitosis (and some do not), but that is only one characteristic and should not override all others.
Symptoms are not substantiated or quantified for Morgellons vs. other diseases in literature nor in Wikipedia. Therefore the statement "The observable symptoms are similar to those of DP, and it does a disservice to those afflicted to suggest that its as likely as ADD.", is not accurate because the sentence can not proport to quantitatively correlate Morgellons symptoms or characteristics to other illnesses. (Hence my edit).
For example: Of the illnesses mentioned many have sensations of skin crawling and none, including classical DP, of fibers coming out of skin. Also, short term memory loss, communicability, and fatigue are not part of classical DP.
Almost any illness (cancer, heart disease, etc.) has a subset of depression, (In any given 1-year period, 9.5 percent of the population has depression), which can then be associated with almost any symptom. Standard argument used over and over by the Psychiatric community. 24.6.34.203 01:32, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
It has not been proved or disproved but is widely reported by patients and families. Should we ignore a growing body of evidence? 24.6.34.203 01:32, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Whoever these "people" are, the argument is flawed by a mounting body of evidence that something is different here in the number of publications (medical and news), videos, pictures, and demographics of Morgellons patients. IE: not little old ladies, but children, professional baseball players, doctors, and middle class families. Kind of like, at what point does global warming become proven? 24.6.34.203 06:50, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
No, there are pictures from the medical community that have been shown in reference 2.
Dyanega, I believe you are wrong about this. From the American Journal of Clinical Dermatology:
Internal Review by Editorial Staff The Journal Editor and/or therapeutic area editor will perform an initial appraisal of each manuscript. Manuscripts are judged on the interest and importance of the topic, use of scientific method, clarity of presentation, and relevance to the Journal's readers. Articles meeting the appropriate criteria and accompanied by the appropriate documentation are then passed to external peer review.
External Peer Review The aim of the peer review process is to ensure publication of unbiased, scientifically accurate and clinically relevant articles. All articles are peer reviewed by members of the Journal's international Editorial Board and/or other specialists of equal repute before a decision on publication is made. Peer reviewer identities are kept confidential, but author identities are known to the reviewers. Peer reviewers are asked to disclose potential conflicts of interests that may affect their ability to provide an unbiased review of an article.
Though "The Mystery of Morgellons Disease" is listed under Current Opinion, it is also listed as an Article. It is written with an abstact and structured like an article, not like a letter. I have written to the American Journal of Clinical Dermatology and asked them to clarify if the piece was peer reviewed or not.
By the way, references 4,& 5 are listed in the American Journal of Clinical Dermatology as notes and comments under the classification of letters. Reference 6 is classified as correspondence and reference 3 as commentary.
Using your criteria, the statement in Morgellons WP article, "Morgellons has been successfully treated with the antipsychotic medication Pimozide[6], which has been used to treat delusional parasitosis." may not qualify as scientific evidence because it may not have been peer reviewed.
Does anyone have reference 6? I would like to check some other facts on the article as it pertains to the Morgellons WP article. 24.6.34.203 06:50, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
There are many that have come from patients and news reports. As far as I know no one has proven them to be fake. 24.6.34.203 01:32, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Look at reference 2., and do not ignore the doctors and professionals that have come forward in publications and other media. Peer review is well and good, but WP does not require peer review. Yes I am familiar with chain of custody. It's not the chain of custody that you are talkin about, but it's a very short chain of custody when a professional or doctor sees and pulls a fiber out of a person's skin. The reports from the patients that many professionals have no interest in even looking at the fibers in their skin seems to be very arrogant. 24.6.34.203 06:50, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
The above is opinionated, biased, and wrong because you do not believe Morgellons to be a "REAL DISEASE". You apply one standard for Morgellons and another for your viewpoint of the "REAL DISEASE".
How can you know, "the doctors doing research into Morgellons are not getting grants from anywhere other than the MRF"? In fact, you don't because the CDC is setting up research into Morgellons and they are not getting money from MRF. Furthermore, even if true, SO WHAT. "Promotes the disease" is a loaded term. MRF and the patients they represent believe the cause of their disease is something other than you believe, and they are spending their money to "prove or disprove" it. That does NOT make them wrong, evil, or any different than other organizations spending money to research illness (except maybe our government that spends it liberally). The money spent by the MRF has to be documented in public records, and the research done will be documented, reviewed and published if a journal accepts it. Organizations grant money to research according to how valuable the LEADERS OF THE ORGANIZATION BELIEVE the research to be. No research has to be "correct" (whatever that means) to apply for and receive money from organizations, that is why it is called research.
The last sentence of your paragraph applies to ALL research except for your "doubt" which is pure speculation on your part. Ward 24.6.34.203 22:19, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
I am very concerned with the possibility people with Morgellons are being harmed by those that advocate they are delusional. When you label someone delusional, society tends to ignore them and their situation. That is not the way it is supposed to be, and many will deny it, but it is true. Ward 24.6.34.203 00:12, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Dyanega, I am not aware of any references for your assertion of fibers in the skin of classical DP that predates Morgellons year 2002, can you supply some?
Please do not try to bully me, you said, "fibers in or on one's body", close enough!
I did run a pub med search and found no references where it is typical that classic DP patients claim fibers emerged from the flesh. "The matchbox sign yes", but that is factually different than claims of fibers emerging from the skin. 24.6.34.203 06:50, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
To be more clear, my statement of what is factually different was meant to indicate: Most Morgellons patients say fibers emerge from their skin, and present the fibers. Most classical DP patients DO NOT say fibers emerge from their skin, and present skin scrapings that may or may not contain fibers or lint. Ward 24.6.34.203 22:35, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
I believe you said you have seen Morgellons patients. Did you look at or for the in vivo fibers they said were in their skin? 24.6.34.203 01:32, 2 June 2007 (UTC) 24.6.34.203 05:01, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Dyanega thanks for the information. 24.6.34.203 06:50, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
So Interested2, let's resolve this and move on. Thanks.
Dyanega, this exchange has been interesting but I doubt it has changed very much. I want to get back to the topic of the reversion "and" to "but especially with".
Here is what I think is a very strong argument for my "and" edit:
Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, is one of Wikipedia's three content policies. The neutral point of view The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting views. The policy requires that, where there are or have been conflicting views, these should be presented fairly. None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being the truth, and all significant published points of view are to be presented, not just the most popular one. It should also not be asserted that the most popular view or some sort of intermediate view among the different views is the correct one. Readers are left to form their own opinions. 24.6.34.203 06:50, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
DIRECT EXCERPT:
Undue weight
NPOV says that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a verifiable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each. Now an important qualification: Articles that compare views should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views, and may not include tiny-minority views at all. For example, the article on the Earth only very briefly refers to the Flat Earth theory, a view of a distinct minority.
We should not attempt to represent a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deserved as much attention as a majority view, and views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views. To give undue weight to a significant-minority view, or to include a tiny-minority view, might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation among experts on the subject, or among the concerned parties. This applies not only to article text, but to images, external links, categories, and all other material as well.
Background: My name is Ward K. I do not have Morgellons. I was a Mechanical Research Engineer at Xerox. I do have a chronic illness that for 20 years has been controversial. I would rejoice to take a psychotropic drug and have my illness go away. I have, it didn't. Many emerging diseases have been claimed by the Psychiatric community. The most famous recent one is AIDS. There were others, epilepsy, diabetes, tourette's syndrome, autism. What happens is a fight over turf and jurisdiction with science taking a back seat over politics, sometimes for decades. That is exactly what is happening on this topic and it should stop for the sake of science and suffering patients. Be objective, people's lives and futures are literally at stake here! 24.6.34.203 23:58, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
As I see it, the exchange between Dyanega and myself has shown he is more inclined to believe Morgellons is DP than I. More importantly, we may have been discussing some the heart of the dispute.
He has talked about similarities of Morgellons and DP and I about differences.
We (and others) have discussed/debated the various levels of proof required for medical and scientific research vs. levels of proof required for WP and public information.
It seems to me information on Morgellons (and the forms of information dissemination) is diverse and rapidly changing. IE. researching for my replies yesterday I found The CDC Delusional Parasitosis page has been removed and a response to an inquiry of the CDC as to why the information was removed (that probably should be in the article). I found on YouTube some fascinating videos reporting to be Morgellons' fibers. But as Dyanega pointed out, chain of custody and discussion of scientific method is lacking. However, NIH investigators may have some compelling things to look at if they get off their ass.
The proposal is: we incorporate in the article in a neutral way reasons for the dispute similar to the topics above. That way viewers of the Morgellons WP article are shown more insight why the article is controversial. Ward 24.6.34.203 19:39, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
X-Originating-IP: [XXX.XXX.XXX.XX] Subject: Peer review of Morgellons disease article for Am J Clin Dermatol Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2007 21:14:40 -0500 X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: Thread-Topic: Peer review of Morgellons disease article for Am J Clin Dermatol Thread-Index: AcepcsTwPlHI+Fj0ThasL2F/2iSlVA== From: "Olney, Roger" <> To: <> Cc: "<>,<> X-OriginalArrivalTime: 08 Jun 2007 02:14:40.0509 (UTC) FILETIME=[C55052D0:01C7A972]
Dear Mr XXXXX
Thank you for your e-mail.
As stated in the journal under 'Aim and Scope', 'All manuscripts are subject to peer review by international experts', and I can confirm that this was the case with this article.
I hope that is helpful to you. On that point, it wasn't clear from your e-mail why you would be interested in this information and I wonder if you would mind letting us know the reason for your request on this point.
Yours sincerely
Roger Olney Editor American Journal of Clinical Dermatology
Ward 24.6.34.203 04:05, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
Under Morgellons theories and research
What is, "reporting on Ms. Leitao's plight" doing in here? it does not make sense to me.
"The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, reporting on Ms. Leitao's plight, noted that Dr. Randy Wymore, Oklahoma State University assistant professor of pharmacology and physiology, and former MRF director, recruited two Oklahoma State faculty physicians who tweezed fibers from beneath the skin of some Morgellons patients."
Ward 24.6.34.203 06:17, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
TSIA. - Interested2 14:52, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
Any expert who claims they are able to write or speak on this disease must first meet with and analyze the skin, mucous and other "products" of a patient with this disease before they should be allowed to comment. This can be done scientifically. I am willing to be that person (cisfl2004@netzero.com). Otherwise they have no idea at all what they are talking about and should not be allowed to edit no matter what advanced degrees they have. They have NO REAL knowledge of this syndrome. It is new and they have never seen anything like it. The only expert is one has has had this for many years and has a clean bill of mental health from a mental health professional.
Marc, consider removing link to Morgellons Research Organization because of a number of items.
1. they sell products there 2. there will be objections to too many links talking about disease vs DP. 3. The external links section should be small according to WP, and I believe The New Morgellons Order at http://www.cherokeechas.com/index.htm is a more scientific and neutral link than Morgellons Research Organization.
Dyanega, I can't find on the page "The Mayo Clinic page specifically states "According to the Morgellons Research Foundation...")".
I found these three attributes to the MRF on the page:
The Morgellons Research Foundation lists, the Morgellons Research Foundation doesn't, The Morgellons Research Foundation reports.
Also, the page is signed By Mayo Clinic Staff Mar 2, 2007, and is copyrighted by the Mayo Foundation
The phrase. "Based on information supplied by the Morgellons Research Foundation, the Mayo Clinic created a webpage titled:" infers the MRF and the Mayo Clinic staff collaborated. This seems to be speculation and may or may not be true. Attribution is not the same as collaboration.
Even if there were collaboration on the page. We are only using the sentence, "Morgellons disease shares characteristics with various recognized conditions, including attention-deficit disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, Lyme disease, obsessive-compulsive disorder and a mental illness involving false beliefs about infestation by parasites (delusional parasitosis)." That statement may have been written by the Mayo Clinic Staff so the phrase you put would not be relevant. We should confirm these points.
Ward 24.6.34.203 17:53, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
Mayo response to my inquiry on MRF input to "Morgellons disease: Managing a mysterious skin condition Article"
From: "Contact Us - Mayo Information" <mayoinfo@mayoclinic.com> To: xxxxx@xxxxx Subject: RE: MayoClinic.com (Thread:496023)
Dear Ward:
Thank you for your patience. In general, it is our editorial policy to cite organizations within articles when information is attributable to a specific organization.
Non-attributable statements of fact generally have been synthesized from a variety of sources. All statements are reviewed by our experts for medical accuracy. Before producing this health topic, the product development team collected and reacted to ideas over a period of multiple months using a number of sources.
Sincerely, Dana Mayo Clinic Online Services
Ward
24.6.34.203
22:48, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
For use of:
"Morgellons disease: Managing a mysterious skin condition," which states "Morgellons disease shares characteristics with various recognized conditions, including attention-deficit disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, Lyme disease, obsessive-compulsive disorder and a mental illness involving false beliefs about infestation by parasites (delusional parasitosis)."
and
"Reports of Morgellons disease have been made in every state in the United States and 15 countries around the world. Most reported cases are clustered in Calfironia, Texas and Florida."
On page http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/morgellons-disease/SN00043
Ward 24.6.34.203 09:27, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
The verbatim quote (quoted even) is from Mayo. Savely et al published details first.
Present WP version: The MRF states that reports of Morgellons disease have been made in every state in the United States and 15 countries around the world. Most reported cases are clustered in California, Texas and Florida.[2].
Mayo text: "Reports of Morgellons disease have been made in every state in the United States and 15 countries around the world. Most reported cases are clustered in California, Texas and Florida."
Savely et al text: "The US states of California, Texas, and Florida appear to have the highest number of reports of Morgellons disease, with primary clusters noted in Los Angeles and San Francisco, California, and in Houston, Dallas and Austin Texas. California accounts for 26% of the cases in the US. All 50 US states and 15 nations, including Canada, the UK, Australia, and the Netherlands, have reported cases of Morgellons disease."
Think about best approach. Maybe quote the original Savely text, I believe the Mayo version better.
Reinserted link to Mayo text that is also a direct quote.
Ward 24.6.34.203 21:43, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Herd,
Concerning the link removal to talk page.
The wording in that paragraph is predicated on the e-mail received from Mayo about its webpage. The e-mail is displayed in talk section #33. Removing the link removes the background behind the wording. I think it needs to be there because of that. The previous wording was not correct in it's context. Please reply. Thanks.
Ward 24.6.34.203 02:08, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Actually, " articles should rely on reliable published secondary sources. This means that we present verifiable accounts of views and arguments of reliable scholars, and not interpretations of primary source material by Wikipedians." [23]
Wikipedia gives editors examples of boilerplate letters to solicit information and permissions from sources. I don't believe there is a way to e-mail and receive those directly to WP, so editors must present information received to WP somehow. The e-mail I published on talk page gives all information necessary for verification.
"Material from self-published sources and sources of questionable reliability may be used in articles about themselves, so long as: there is no reasonable doubt as to who wrote it." [24]
Ward 24.6.34.203 20:53, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't believe it is valid to replace a citation from a peer reviewed published journal article with a preliminary and not peer reviewed symptom list from a website, even if more recent. What does UTC stand for?
Ward20 01:30, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
Well I would say a preliminary list that is a work in progress and not peer reviewed may not be a more accurate version, and certainly should not carry as much weight as one from a peer reviewed journal
Ward20 09:19, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
I removed the paragraph of George Schwartz, he's been disbarred for peddling narcotics and he self-published his book. He's a fringe figure on the Morgellons story, and his inclusion (and his speculation about parasites and global warming) adds nothing to the article. Herd of Swine 22:26, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
does any one claim to have used Olanzapine, or Pimozide to sucessfully treat Morgellons.
Ward20 01:22, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
Of the
psychotropics, I still find that pimozide, in a dose of anywhere from 0.5 mg to 2 mg once daily, works more quickly and more reliably than others of the atypical antipsychotics, perhaps because of its known action on opioid pathways,6,10 although risperidone
and aripiprazole are also reportedly effective.18,19
The letter "The challenge of Morgellons disease"
has many problems.
1. Not peer reviewed
2. Letter first talks about diagnosis of DP and various forms, then proceeds to say Morgellons must be the same disease and describes symptoms of typical DP but without any note of any particular differences of Morgellons, or that any of her patients said or believe they have Morgellons.
Then says, "My own approach has been to explain to "the patient"....and then treatment above.
3. Letter does not discuss any proof her treatment has successfully treated Morgellons, or give any patient numbers (not even one case) of successful treatment of Morgellons.
4. For efficacy of the drugs she uses, she cites papers below that have nothing to do with Morgellons.
6. Wallengren J, Dahlback K. Familial brachoradial pruritus. Br J Dermatol 2005;153:1016-8. 10. Munro A. Delusional disorder. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1999. pp. 78-93. 18. Lee CS, Koo JYM. The use of psychotropic medications in dermatology. In: Koo JYM, Lee CS, editors. Psychocutaneous medicine. New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc; 2002. pp. 427-51. 19. Koblenzer CS. Psychotropic drugs in dermatology. In: James WD, Cockerell CJ, Dzubow LM, Paller AS, Yancey KB, editors. Advances in dermatology (vol 15). St Louis: Mosby, Inc; 2000. pp. 183-201.
Ward20 03:52, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
What you say has a germ of truth, as any illness has a psychological component.
But, that is not the thrust of my argument. Koblenzer basically says if she is treating DP patients then by definition they MUST ALSO be Morgellons patients. She makes no distinction between them as a group and offers no discussion of numbers of patients successfully (or unsuccessfully) treated in either case. Her letter is worthless as far as discussing successful psychotropic drug treatment of Morgellons.
You are very smart, you know there is a difference in what you said and she says.
Besides that, it is a letter, it is not peer reviewed, and as Dyanega argues, should not be given much as scientific credibility.
Ward20 05:10, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
There are many reasons to doubt Koblenzer has ever treated any Morgellons patients with Pimozide in either letter. In her Oct 2006 letter Pimozide at Least as Safe and Perhaps More Effective Than Olanzapine for Treatment of Morgellons Disease she speculates Pimozide may be more effective than Olanzapine for Morgellons. But never states in that Oct letter she has treated any Morgellons patients with Olanzapine or Pimozide at all. In the references she talks about Olanzapine treatment by Meehan for patients who are definitely not Morgellons patients. You must read the Meehan letter in order to realize that.
Then one month later she publishes another letter about The Challenge of Morgellons disease and talks about Pimozide treatment of "the patient" but not identifying her patients specifically as Morgellons patients. So the question begs to be asked why did she not also state in her Oct 2006 letter she treated Morgellons patients with Pimozide? Surely she didn't get "the patient"s and treat only for approximately one month. An obvious answer is she is playing fast and loose with the facts. The whole thing reeks of unscholarly writing on her part.
Ward20 09:12, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
The point is presently the article does not state facts variable by sources.
Ward20 06:50, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, my statement was worded badly. It should have said: The point is presently the WP article makes assertions of facts with references that are not varifiable within the references. Koblenzer's article(s) very simply do not say Morgellons has been successfully treated or cured (she never specifically states she treated any patient with Morgellons, her letters are full of inference and innuendo) with the antipsychotic medication Olanzapine or Pimozide. Any information that is wrong in the WP article does not belong there. The text I deleted said, "one study published in the American Academy of Dermatology has demonstrated that patients can be cured using Pimozide." What was wrong (letter is not study, wrong Journal, letter did not demonstrate that patients can be cured using Pimozide). The reference can stay if the information attributable to the reference is verifiable (and by verifiable I mean the reference supports what is presented in WP), otherwise not.
I do not know which study you are refering to, could you please elaborate?, "Koblenzer's opinion about it is JUST as verifiable, if not more so, than Randy Wymore's, Mary Leitao's and any of the other people cited in the article, because it is backed up by a clinical study."
Ward20 20:42, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Belongs in Nature Medicine news article which is it's source.
Randy Wymore, former director of the Morgellons Research Foundation, claims that Morgellons patients have masses of dark fibers visible at 60x magnification under the unbroken skin, while unaffected individuals do not. "That took away any possibility that this was not a real thing," Wymore says.
But anyone can have a medical opinion. What weight it carries in what forum is a different debate.
Let's not get into that debate, Wymore's statement is more an opinion of what he physically observed then it is a medical opinion. Herein is a central crux of Morgellons. Are there real fibers under and coming out of the skin of patients? His is one (1) published opinion of a scientific observation of that phenomena. It is a data point and nothing more. The differing opinions expressed in letters and studies are also data points. If the data points are presented in a non biased manner, hopefully a truer picture of Morgellons will be revealed.
As to the discussion of what is or is not appropriate in the the paragraph: I would like to point out the phrase quoted in the WP paragraph, "Most dermatologists deny the disease exists, saying the people who claim to suffer from it have either common skin illnesses or psychological disorders such as delusional parasitosis, in which people become irrationally convinced that they harbor parasites.", was a statement by the author, Nature correspondent Emma Marris, who is a reporter. In addition, no doctor quoted in the Nature Medicine news article said Morgellons patients have common skin illnesses or psychological disorders. And, she included Wymore's statement as a counterpoint to the doctors that talked about "patients with symptoms similar to Morgellons" and "those with parasitic delusions".
Therefore, Wymore's statement rightfully belongs after the Nature Medicine news article "Most dermatologists....."
Ward20 05:50, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
The recent edits by Ward20 removed statements indicating to readers when the authors of cited works belong to the MRF. When a quote comes from an unreliable source, then this should be made clear to the readers. From WP:RS: "Reliable sources are credible published materials with a reliable publication process; their authors are generally regarded as trustworthy, or are authoritative in relation to the subject at hand." The authors in question are therefore, by definition, not reliable sources, and so it is essential that readers be alerted whenever these unreliable sources are being quoted. Otherwise, WP policy would support the exclusion of any such references in the first place, and I'm sure that this would be considered similarly unacceptable to the present editor. If we assume, for the sake of argument, that the MRF is to be treated as a reliable source, then how exactly is it factually incorrect to indicate when the authors of an article belong to the organization? If it is not factually incorrect, there is no reason to delete the information. They are not - demonstrably not - being "singled out"; throughout the article, most of the authors of various cited works are named, and their affiliations stated. Given the pattern of edits thus far, I find it hard to assume that Ward20's removal of statements regarding MRF affiliation represents a good faith edit, and I maintain that it is in violation of WP policy.
I will offer further support for my stance here, again quoting from WP policy on "Sourcing and attribution" from WP:FRINGE:
"While proper attribution of a perspective to a source satisfies the minimal requirements of Wikipedia's neutral point of view, there is an additional editorial responsibility for including only those quotes and perspectives which further the aim of creating a verifiable and neutral Wikipedia article. Quotes that are controversial or potentially misleading need to be properly contextualized to avoid unintentional endorsement." And similarly: "Including ... a controversial quote needs to be carefully contextualized as a particular point-of-view."
If quotes from MRF researchers and board members are not attributed to them, when they are EXTREMELY controversial, as in the present case, then they are not being properly contextualized, and are instead being endorsed. It must be made clear that these are, in fact, statements made from a particular point-of-view. Dyanega 01:58, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
Someone changed the lead section from the old summary, to a chunk of text from the Mayo page. I reverted this. See Wikipedia:Lead_section for reasons why. It could still do with some work (as could the entire article, which is getting very messy). Herd of Swine 00:59, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
I fear this article is devolving into a mess of cherry-picked quotes that are aimed at simply bolstering the positions of the various authors. Wikipedia articles are a synthesis of sources in an encyclopedic style, intended to give the best current understanding of a subject from a neutral point of view. For Morgellons, this should a description of what Morgellons is (a condition defined by a list of symptoms), background (the history of the Morgellons Research Foundation), current state of research (CDC planning to do something & OSU having Randy Wymore) and a description of the controversy (dermatologists say it is nothing new, just re-labeling of existing conditions, patients and a few doctors disagree). This should all be do-able without quotes, and simply referencing things. It can only be done, however, if we stick to a neutral point of view.
The idea is not to fight, trying to present one side or another. This is not the place to debate if Morgellons has a distinct cause or not. Here we should simply describe the agreed-upon facts, which includes describing the controversy. This requires some clean-up of the article, removing needless quotes, and paraphrasing them if they contain relevant information.
Regarding the lead section, I think the CDC page describes Morgellons very well, but that's not the entire scope of the article, and while a short paraphrasing of the CDC page would be appropiate, the history, research and controversy need to be included. Herd of Swine 22:13, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
There are quotes throughout the article. The quotes from the CDC and the Mayo clinic should be added back to the intro.
The "morgellons" article is no longer about a multisystemic disease with marked dermal manifestations. It has become a place for badly vetted, quack psychiatric ideas to metastasize. The entire article needs a complete rewrite, starting with all the current information that is known about the disease. The psychiatric quackery discussion should occur in a page called "Morgellons Controversy" just like the opposing ILADS vs. IDSA viewpoints are featured in a "Lyme Controversy" page.
Please note that the CDC's effort to study Morgellons occurs within the CDC's "National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne, and Enteric Diseases" NOT the "center for delusional parasitosis and quack psychiatry"
http://www.cdc.gov/unexplaineddermopathy/
The above site was created 6/12/2007. Perhaps the people that keep defacing the wiki with a bunch of psychiatric quackery need to take a look at the current state of affairs in the Morgellons world. Here is an excerpt from the aforementioned CDC page:
............
Unexplained Dermopathy (aka "Morgellons")
Introduction
Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) received an increased number of inquiries regarding an unexplained skin condition that some refer to as “Morgellons.” Persons who suffer from this unexplained skin condition report a range of cutaneous (skin) symptoms, including crawling, biting, and stinging sensations; granules, threads, or black speck-like materials on or beneath the skin; and/or skin lesions (e.g., rashes or sores). In addition to skin manifestations, some sufferers also report fatigue, mental confusion, short term memory loss, joint pain, and changes in vision.
The etiology of this condition is unknown, and the medical community has insufficient information to determine whether persons who identify themselves as having this condition have a common cause for their symptoms or share common risk factors.
To assist in learning more about this condition, CDC plans to conduct an epidemiologic investigation and has convened a multidisciplinary working group to provide guidance on the design of the investigation. The goals of the investigation are to better characterize the clinical and epidemiologic features of this condition and to generate hypotheses about factors that may cause or contribute to sufferers’ symptoms.
............
It is my understanding that the CDC task force is now headed by a veterinarian. When's the last time you took your pet to a veterinarian concerned about parasites and came back with a diagnosis "your dog is delusional"?? Actually, if the psychiatric quacks had their way, they'd want the vet to accuse the pet owner of "munchhausens by proxy"
People bandying around psychiatric terms should actually know something about psychiatry. What would the entomologist that keeps defiling this wiki know about psychiatry?
NielsMayer 17:03, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
The "Morgellons" page is complete garbage and needs a rewrite. The current contents of "Morgellons" best fits under the rubric of "Delusional Parasitosis and quack psychiatry." The page is a completely one-sided piling on of half-baked psychiatric nonsense in an attempt to distract people from a real disease... this is reminiscent of the decades of accusations against Gulf War Veterans suffering from "Gulf War Syndrome" as malingerers and headcases, which prevented or delayed treatment in hundreds of thousands of people from getting proper treatment for a mycoplasma infection.
Is wikipedia really the place to promote misinformation that leads to non-treatment or treatment delays in people suffering from a real disease?
Howcome the bogus psychiatric viewpoints are presented as medical facts, rather than the opinions of doctors and psychiatrists who receive big-pharma kickbacks for needlessly addicting patients to expensive, non-generic psychotropics like Zyprexa and Risperdal. Meanwhile, opposing viewpoints from within the psychiatric community are censored on ths wiki: e.g., http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/42/11/24-b
Please note that the CDC's effort to study Morgellons occurs within the CDC's "National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne, and Enteric Diseases" NOT the "center for delusional parasitosis and quack psychiatry"
http://www.cdc.gov/unexplaineddermopathy/
The above site was created 6/12/2007. Perhaps the people that keep defacing the wiki with a bunch of psychiatric quackery need to take a look at the current state of affairs in the Morgellons world. Here is an excerpt from the aforementioned CDC page:
Unexplained Dermopathy (aka "Morgellons")
Introduction
Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) received an increased number of inquiries regarding an unexplained skin condition that some refer to as “Morgellons.” Persons who suffer from this unexplained skin condition report a range of cutaneous (skin) symptoms, including crawling, biting, and stinging sensations; granules, threads, or black speck-like materials on or beneath the skin; and/or skin lesions (e.g., rashes or sores). In addition to skin manifestations, some sufferers also report fatigue, mental confusion, short term memory loss, joint pain, and changes in vision.
The etiology of this condition is unknown, and the medical community has insufficient information to determine whether persons who identify themselves as having this condition have a common cause for their symptoms or share common risk factors.
To assist in learning more about this condition, CDC plans to conduct an epidemiologic investigation and has convened a multidisciplinary working group to provide guidance on the design of the investigation. The goals of the investigation are to better characterize the clinical and epidemiologic features of this condition and to generate hypotheses about factors that may cause or contribute to sufferers’ symptoms.
It is my understanding that the CDC task force is now headed by a veterinarian. When's the last time you took your pet to a veterinarian concerned about parasites and came back with a diagnosis "your dog is delusional"?? Actually, if the psychiatric quacks had their way, they'd want the vet to accuse the pet owner of "munchhausens by proxy"
People bandying around psychiatric terms should actually know something about psychiatry. What would the entomologist that keeps defiling this wiki know about psychiatry?"
NielsMayer 17:35, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
The symptoms and diagnosis section was recently replaced by ward20 ( talk · contribs) with the entire text from http://morgellons.org/case.htm, morgellons.org clear states "No part of this website may be reproduced without expressed written permission from the Morgellons Research Foundation." [25]. It seems copying an entire page is a breach of copyright, and not what Wikipedia is about. I reverted that section. I don't think that the entire list of symptoms needs to be there anyway. Really all that is needed are the key symptoms, (itching, lesions, fibers in the skin and malaise) Herd of Swine 16:12, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
This should be subordinate to theories and research because it is one of the theories. I wanted to get discussion because it is a large change.
Actually there are only two mainstream theories at this point, I think I may work on that point in lead and background.
Ward20 18:10, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
I think the point about there not being any published records of analysis of Morgellons fibers is quite verifiable - in exactly the same way that one can verify that no one has published a chemical profile of the blood of Bigfoot, or published an analysis of the bones of the Loch Ness Monster; there are such a limited number of references to the topic, that one can easily examine all of them, and see what is and is not present in the source material. The only claim ever made regarding testing of Morgellons fibers was that the Tulsa Police supposedly compared them to fibers in their database, but no actual results were published - and Savely herself has stated "There is preliminary information that the fibers are made of cellulose, but this information has neither been formally studied, nor confirmed." I would cosider that an adequate citation to the lack of chemical analysis, wouldn't you? In fact, I'll go ahead and add the quote now. Dyanega 07:32, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
Some of us are actually diagnosed with this illness by doctors these days! (Due to the overwhelming evidence concerning all the organ disfunction the INTERNAL mutative growths cause perhaps?)
A formal request for scientific peer review of this article is initiated. Anyone deleting it will be referred to the owners of this website. RamyB777 03:05, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Im one of these people who suffer from this desease. After more than 3 years im happy to see that something is happening. BakuninXL 10:17, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
I removed sections titled MRF controversy and Delusional Parasitosis as they seemed unnecessay for the flow and were POV without need. -- Dematt 15:53, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
With all due respect, I disagree with your perspective!!! As a master's student, your entire discussion lacks credible scientific method and presentation. It is significantly biased towards the anti-Morgellons perspective Dematt! What is your graduate degree that makes you a scientific evaluator of the evidence? and furthermore, what is your ability to stand back from the situation and speak with neutrality towards the issue? In your writing, you have taken a very anti-Morgellons stance here and it is greatly lacks scholarly presentation. Please do a better presentation of both sides of the story. I have entered in bold on your article another perspective balancing the view which in my opinion makes the article more neutral. RamyB777 03:04, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
After 20 doctors, I finally was diagnosed with Morgellins from a parasitic specialist. I was successfully treated by Ivermectin 18 mg once a week for 6 weeks. The entire household had to be treated. This took 18 months from contracting this till full recovery, due to the fact no one knew what was going on. 4 months later - I was re-infected by a friend who had been infected from me, but did not know. During the 18 months my family had this - we infected @ 15 people/families. This is a parasite, the fibers are egg sacks. Oil or ointment, disolves the "glue" which holds these fibers under the skin, so when applied, in @ 10 minutes these fibers pop up & out of the skin. Depending on how long the parasites have been laying these fibers, will depend on how long these fibers look as they come up. Some look like worms, some look like black specs or splinters, these specs can be so small that they will fit in the groove of a fingerprint. Fibers that are forced outof the skin can be seen at 300x magnification, round eggs in these fibers. The parasite itself, looks kinda like a bed bug, but actually the head & legs look more like a shrimp. Acticin or Premrethryn is also effective over the entire body & scalp for 8 hours, once a week for 6 weeks. But anyone that you have infected also needs to be treated. It takes sbout 4 months to be completely infested to the point where they are hatching in your skin continuously and they will walk off of you and onto whomever is sitting next to you. Since these parasties are contagious and do go from person to person, when someone else gets infected - it usually reslults in a boil, which most hospitals or doctors diagnose as a spider bite, mrsa or an infection from itching. If you can get diseases from mosquitoes, sucking blood from one person then moving on to another, what diseases can be spread from these parasites? The symptoms are very similar to scabies, but scabies are easy to ditect, these need much more invstigating. I hope this helps someone who has this. This was a horrible nightmare. 72.81.66.230 04:25, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Excuse me, but you Dyanega use the most fallable logic. Ivermectin and permethrin are also used to kill nematodes (which are categorized as parasites because they live off of their host). Are you an MD??? I simply cannot believe the kind of foolish logic you apply in your arguments to the postings of others. Your knowledge of these two medicines is limited. You print only that which you want to print to confirm your bias. Morgellons is NOT scabies. There is no mite and there is no lice. You may have had scabies, but from what the individual posted, they did not. You are applying a very negative type of medicine ("rapport-enhancing") as published in the American Journal of Dermatology as though it is the GOLDEN RULE of medicine. What happened to "unconditional positive regard" (Carl Rogers) and treating people as real people. What you have proposed here is an application of what is called "junk medicine" by many medical practitioners who are actually seeking to find a cure. Why don't you read the Physicians Desk Reference for Ivermectin and Permethrin and print the wide gammut of uses of those two medicines instead of printing your own narrow view. RamyB777 01:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Out of the 20 doctors that I had seen, 10 of them were dermatologists. I had @ 12 skin samples taken, I thought I had scabies that what I kept telling these dr's to look for scabies, due to the symtpoms that I had. Each one ruled out scabies and the skin samples did not show this mite. I had infected bites on my face, in my ears and nose. I was told also that scabies do not go on the face. The university of PA is who saw the fibers and sent me to the parasitic specialist. Thats when my son & I were diagnosed with Morgellons. I was told these fibers were produced by our bodies, but I was having allergic reactions to the fibers. I was also given sulfur mixed in cream and that helped keep the reaction down. I was told that your body cannot be allergic to itself, so if thats true, why am I allergic to these fibers if my body is making them? After the treament of ivermectin , both my son & I were cured (well for 8 months). We were reinfected when we went over a friends house that I had not seen for 9 months. I had found out that 9 of his friends had been in the Emergency Room, over the previous year for these infected bites or boils, some of his friends were diagnosed with spider bites, or an infection from scratching. The boils get worse until the mite is killed, So I told my friend, he was infected and I proved it to him. He treated himself with over the counter head lice shampoo for 10 minutes and had these worm looking things come up out of his skin. The poeple I infected, none of them believed me until I provede it to them as well. They all had either little wart like bumps, or rashy or scaly patches, the one girl had little red specs on her stomach , the size of a pin. When I put oil on her stomach, within minutes the red dots came up & out of her skin as well as tan splinter looking things. Under the microscope at 100x these were fibers and the red specs were blood. Others had blood scabs, these were not the normal looking white skin scabs, these were dried blood patches. I have tried talking to CDC but have gotten no where. The one black spec that came up out of the center of a infected bite was moving by itself, so this spec was sent to the Univ of Penn and that spec was diagnosed as a bed bug, even though they do no burrow into the skin, but since they had no other reference that is where it ended. The other mite that was hatching out of the fibers (seen at 300X), was diagnosed as the normal bugs that everyone has living on their skin. It did not matter that it was hatching out of the egg in the denter of a fiber. Again with no reference written in black and white, no one is willing to think outside this box. 72.81.89.252 19:31, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
I am. I've been running research outside the box for months now. RamyB777 01:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Let's review this now - we have an anonymous editor who keeps chaging IP numbers, and is deleting and reverting quotes from medical professionals published in medical journals, and replacing them with POV statements. What is there about this that seems like a sincere attempt at collaboration? THERE IS NO EVIDENCE to support the editing of the introduction to read as if Morgellons is a recognized medical condition. I'm very sorry to say that WP is based upon the principle of verifiability, and use of known scholarly sources. At this point, none of the scholarly sources are supporting the recognition of Morgellons, and they do in fact seem to be universally denying its existence, in no uncertain terms. This MUST be made clear to the readers of this article. NPOV does not now and never has dictated that both sides of an argument are given equal weight - UNLESS they have equal supporting evidence; the present example is not such a case. Persistent attempts to hijack this article to a pro-Morgellons stance are not appreciated. When there are peer-reviewed studies published by researchers who are not affiliated with the MRF, then feel free to add that information. Dyanega 21:08, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
The CDC Declared it a disease on January 30, 2007. That is evidence enough. What I see very clearly here is that you do not want ANY REFERENCE to ANY US ORGANIZATION including the National Institutes of Health declaring it as a RARE DISEASE included in your article. This is called confirmation bias and it is the worst kind of research because you are not willing to hear from the side that supports Morgellons as a real disease!!!! RamyB777 23:56, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
Well many sufferers wrote me that too, that there is some user deleting all related Links to Morgellons Sites. This User is from Germany (T-Online DSL Service) and I can investigate on his IP-Address to find his name and why he is doing this. It seemed first that he is pushing more Mary Laitao `s site and giving bad comments on the other sites, on mine too. I don`t think so that my site is not acceptable, because I get a lot of good responses from sufferers because I speak out what can be possibly the truth. With certain picture material and documentation about. A lot of work just for nothing? This kind of competition between morgies is just a sidekick show, but not helpful at all. Every user can decide where to go and not being isolated just because one guy is always cancelling related links such as mine www.morgellons-research.org or from rense.com. Please stop that, you unknown terminator... Neumann 18:15, 7 June 2007 (CET)
What marks Wikipedia's article as grossly biased from the get-go is the statement early on that medical opinion "is divided" about whether Morgellons is a "medical illness", i.e. an infectious disease. There is extremely little support in the medical community for this concept, as the vast majority of MDs (including dermatologists) think it's a psychiatric disorder. In fact, this is a _central complaint_ among people who think they have Morgellons - that MDs won't take their "evidence" of infection seriously. So who's kidding whom here? Whoever has edited this article to suggest that "well, some docs believe it and some don't" is creating their own reality, when the truth is that MDs aren't buying Morgellons. Argue if you want that there's a chance research will turn up something astonishing, but don't misrepresent the current state of the science and opinion on this matter. DB
A recent edit of Morgellons included two actions that were, reverted; one was a violation of the WP:NPOV provisions, the other was not attributable. In the latter case, the link given [1] was NOT a citation that classifies Morgellons as a disease - it is a database of disease names that happens to include Morgellons (thus, it is not an attribution; no one outside the Morgellons Research Foundation has yet actively published that it is definitely a disease). That is a very important distinction. Second, giving the citation (and link) from Savely and Leitao is inappropriate UNLESS you state that they are part of the MRF, and not independent researchers. Since the MRF derives its funding from the presumption that Morgellons is a real disease, this is a conflict of interest; accordingly, nothing they publish should be taken at face value (i.e., it is not NPOV). It is no different than using promotional literature from the Church of Scientology as a source for the WP articles on Scientology. Maybe this needs to be spelled out more explicitly in the introduction to avoid further edits of this nature. Dyanega 16:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
For the CDC to include the Morgellons link means that they actually find the research credible. RamyB777 02:10, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Second - the article by Savely & Leitao was already listed and cited mutiple times in the article, and still is. There have been cases of things published in reputable journals that have proven to be false ( cold fusion comes to mind); it is not the journal that gives credibility, it is the researchers AND the research itself, and in this case, (1) the researchers were being paid by an institution whose financial support is predicated on the existence and reality of this "disease", and (2) it was an opinion piece, NOT a research study. This needs to be made as clear as possible to readers here. Dyanega 21:27, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
APPARENTLY, the CDC DID FIND MRF CREDIBLE and included them on their list as a reference for the rare disease. The CDC did not make a mistake. You are not higher than the governmental authority issuing the credence for the disease. RamyB777 02:12, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Do you have any idea what it takes for the CDC to recognize a disease as a disease?? The Mayo Clinic is now researching this disease and The New Morgellons Order has five MD's developing a case description for the disease which can be found at www.cherokeechas.com. The CDC does not add diseases to the National Institute of Health Rare Diseases list unless it is recognized as a valid disease. What I see here amongst the writers of this article is very, very poor argument, that is full of confirmation bias against Morgellons. What would make this article more credible would be an actual valid argument that is supported by actual science instead of the people here who are running their mouths against the disease and the foundation who is fighting to get it recognized. Try accessing the documents at www.cherokeechas.com and look for Morgellons USA, as well as the News Organizations that have documentaries on YouTube. Talk to the 9,500 families who have registered with the Morgellons Foundation through Oklahoma State University and interview them as to their symptoms. Perform an actual scientific study if you are not satisfied with the clinical evidence that already exists. What I do see here is unscholarly writing about Morgellons that negates the realities of 9,500 families suffering from Morgellons and that only represents the families that have registered. There are sufferers all over the globe. Stop publishing only those reports that look at this disease through a specific angle. Look at this disease through a parasitology angle, look at it through a nematode-genetic splicing angle, open your lens and do some real investigating instead of this mumbo-jumbo and bickering that does not represent the truth that Morgellons suffers are real and valid, and yes, there is valid research money to be spent on developing a cure. Think for a moment just how spreadable Morgellons is if it is a parasite that cannot be killed by chlorine in the water. That means that Morgellons is being passed into the water supply at a rapid rate. If it is a parasite, then it is also multiplying because it has not been treated adequately to stop it. It continues to thrive in the people suffering from it. If I continue to read such poorly written scholarship, I will personally request that your entire article be scrubbed from the Wikipedia website on the basis that it is flagrantly biased against Morgellons sufferers, the Morgellons Research Foundation, Morgellons research and anyone attempting to validate it and is therefore slanderous and out not be a part of something called an "encyclopedia."
RamyB777
00:23, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
No one here, myself included, is attempting to "negate" anyone's suffering. I have no doubt that there are many thousands of people suffering, and I have met (and continue to meet) a fair number of them myself, which is how I have come to be acquainted with the condition, its history, and the medical research surrounding it. What this article serves to do is give an objective assessment as to the NATURE of these people's suffering; one sufferer chose to give it a name, that name has become widely-known, and accordingly that name has been given an entry in Wikipedia. However, what that person believes about the condition, and what the medical community believes about the condition, are at odds - again, there is no dispute over the existence of the suffering people themselves, just a dispute over the cause of their suffering. Both sides of the dispute are presented here, but since the two sides differ dramatically in their credibility, the more credible side of the dispute is given proper emphasis. If and when any facts should be made known that differ from what is presently given here, then have no fear that the article will be updated to reflect them. But there are no facts to support your claim that it is a parasite, nematode or otherwise, being spread in the water supply. That sort of claim is irresponsible and sensationalist, and has NO place in Wikipedia. Dyanega 21:25, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I happened upon the Morgellons article yesterday, and took time to read it, because the word was strange to me, and the illness so bizarre. I pondered it overnight, Googled for background information, and began editing it for clarity and brevity today. My concern is not that it may be biased, but simply that it is difficult to read and understand.
I didn't consult the Discussion page before starting, and after reviewing its content and length, I'm glad I didn't! Most of the discussion appears to be about the alleged illness per se, rather than the content of this Wikipedia article.
The obvious issue is whether Morgellons is in fact a genuine, little-known illness; a handy catchall for a host of previously recognized medical conditions; a mental condition; or perhaps, even a hoax. It appears that Ms. Leitao and her Morgellons Research Foundation are responsibile for the name and publicity campaign since 2002. The clearest and briefest outline of the condition I've seen is that of the OSU CHS: http://www.healthsciences.okstate.edu/morgellons/index.cfm.
IMHO, this article need do little more than describe the alleged condition, identify Ms. Leitao and the MRF and their activities, and note that research may determine whether Morgellons is an actual, and perhaps significant, public health issue. I may edit a little more for clarity, hoping that other contributors will agree, and do the same. -- Mukrkrgsj 07:20, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
I generally agree, Dyanega. The Wiki format and policies make it difficult to outline the circumstances of a controversy without taking sides, and I don't think the content I edited did so.
I agree the intro should include a statement "that the medical community has not accepted the condition as a disease"--with a link to a responsible medical source. If you know a good source, please add it.
I said the OSU page was the "clearest and briefest outline", not that it was accurate or unbiased. Please bear with me as I edit a little more. -- Mukrkrgsj 20:30, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
When I wrote the above, I didn't know you had reversed my edit of the intro, and reintroduced some of your own bias. I briefly reverted to my earlier version, then merged some of yours with mine. -- Mukrkrgsj 21:39, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for stating clearly that your position is that Morgellons is not a disease. The recent text of the intro, and your revisions to my corrections, already strongly implied that anyone claiming to have Morgellons actually had delusional parasitosis, a mental illness.
But if there's no such thing as Morgellons, why do you insist on calling it a "controversial medical condition"? Why don't you just write: "There's no such thing as Morgellons, and those who think they have it are nuts!", and let it go at that?
I think it's fascinating that an unknown number of Americans--maybe thousands--claim to be extruding wads of multi-colored, polyester fiber from lesions on their bodies! Victims of rare, new, and imagined ailments often coalesce into support groups, and the groups themselves are real phenomena, and worthy of scientific study.
I think many Wikipedia users will be interested in reading about Morgellons, and making up their own minds as to what it is. It would be great to get the MRF's permission to use some of their more remarkable photos in this article.
Please try to remember that this article is about Morgellons. Whether it is a genuine physical or mental illness is just part of the total story. -- Mukrkrgsj 02:24, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
I understand your position very well: you want to retain the present near-total bias of the article, but you would like to be perceived as being fair and objective. There is no "controversy". The essence of this article is your own position: that medical science considers Morgellons a mental disorder, not a physical disease.
What I don't understand is your continued refusal to permit any description of the alleged disease and its principal proponents, Ms. Leitao and her MRF--except to say they are wrong. The article clearly fails to "present both sides".
I'm arguing for a fair and complete description of the organization and its beliefs as a contemporary social phenomenon. I think Wikepedia users want, will enjoy, and can independently judge such an article for themselves. -- Mukrkrgsj 06:13, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm surprised and disappointed to find such belligerent, intellectual dishonesty from a scientist and academician, at a site like Wikipedia. As I review the references, it appears that as an entomologist, you and your colleagues at UC Davis' Bohart Museum of Entomology are promoting the diagnosis of "Delusional Parasitosis" quite as fervently as your opponents are lobbying for recognition of Morgellons. I strongly recommend you disqualify yourself from any further involvement with this article. -- Mukrkrgsj 05:53, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
The Bohart Museum's website says--as does the Wiki article on Delusional parasitosis, that apparently was copied from it--"Delusional parasitosis or Ekbom's Syndrome is a rare disorder in which sufferers hold a delusional belief they are infested with parasites" ; and later, "The exact prevalence of this syndrome is unknown, although it is apparently rare to uncommon." [emphasis added]. Yet you say, "I deal with it all the time, as do many professional entomologists, including those at UC Davis, I'm sure."
You also say, "if I were determined to 'promote' DP, then I could edit the page so it reads simply 'DP and Morgellons are the same' and cite those medical studies which say exactly that". As I have been saying, that is precisely the thrust of the Morgellons article at this time.
Most dermatologists and psychiatrists have no special expertise in insect taxonomy; and I doubt that many entomologists are qualified to diagnose dermatological and psychiatric conditions. I urge you again to leave this article to independent editors who have no axes of their own to grind. -- Mukrkrgsj 11:31, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I have edited the present introduction to make it more objective. Dyanega has been fiercely protective of the article's flagrant bias, so I am posting the first draft here, for comment:
Sections to follow would be titled: The Morgellons Research Foundation (brief outline); Symptoms; Diagnosis and treatment (including that of "Delusional Parasitosis" and antipsychotics), [possibly more to come]. The sections References and External links would be retained.
The existing content would be edited for balance. All necessary and appropriate links and references would be included.
Please do not edit this draft, or reply within it. Add your comments below.
-- Mukrkrgsj 02:04, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
I like the Mayo Clinic's Definition.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/morgellons-disease/SN00043
Similarly I encourage all you brainy science types to look into nano technology....
http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=1015.php (the preceding unsigned comment posted by 69.157.81.115 at 00:27, 10 April 2007)
Vassyana has opened the mediation process, in response to Dyanega's complaint. To see and participate in the discussion, go here: Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2007-03-06 Morgellons -- Mukrkrgsj 03:29, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
I smell a rat here. Why has the CDC postponed the investigation several times? If an unknown condition that has been reported consistently in a specific area ,i would think has a scientist of a epidemic evolving. Secondly what has the CDC given has the reason for postponement? In this day and age with the threat of biological warfare and the increase of exotic conditions through global warming the CDC appears to be incompetent .-- Redblossom 19:36, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
http://www.eblue.org/article/PIIS0190962207001958/fulltext
Volume 56, Issue 4, Pages 705-706 (April 2007)
Morgellons disease William T. Harvey, MD, MPH
To the Editor: The recent editorial by Dr Koblenzer,1 titled “The Challenge of Morgellons Disease,” appears with two referenced letters.2, 3 All authors imply that the term “Morgellons” and the related Morgellons Research Foundation are unwelcome imposters appearing on immutable turf. No author suggests awareness of either the Morgellons origin or the origin of delusions of parasitosis (DP) nor the assumptions and facts underpinning each.
The first approach we considered in responding to the editorial and letters was to address individual points raised by each. Repeated perusal suggested another more relevant approach. Each author provided abundant examples of an expansive medical system constrained by legal and fiscal (insurance) pressures that have resulted in the production of certified practitioners with little awareness of the necessary tools of critical thinking. The result of each is a hollow argument addressing a perceived issue without reference to the genesis, history, or information sources of either DP or Morgellons.
Serious students of the most basic sciences learn early that reality is the singular essence of each. “Truth” in this context is simply a semantic label given to current human understanding of that reality.4 Human truth never reaches reality, but as the Ancient Mariner, drifts forever, perhaps asymptotically approaching what is real. So it is with medical truth. Yesterday's texts are already trash, placing an enormous burden on each of us to look beyond our passed-on guidebooks, created as best they could be with the tools and knowledge available at the time.
Carl Sagan5 captured this essential professional obligation in an essay titled “The Burden of Skepticism.” He saw the essential task of every truth seeker to balance credulity and skepticism equally, impossible without the trait of intense humility in the presence of an unknowable universe. Within such a context, we as physicians must see disease names simply as labels and defined disease boundaries as crude guesses that continually evolve.
What then do we make of texts and distinguished tutors who tell us that all delusional people focused on dermal symptoms: (1) have created the physical signs they show us; and (2) their belief that parasites are responsible for their sickness is the product of a damaged mind? Those who try to freeze the present embrace skepticism of a new idea called Morgellons, but curiously, will cling fervently to a concept held as immutable fact, DP. The truth seeker will question both equally, and gather all that can be known about the assumptions and facts from which each were built. Most importantly, he or she will know the answer is, as always, in the patient and nowhere else.
All we had to do on encountering our first patient with DP was to examine the lesions with a child's portable microscope, query the patient about other signs and symptoms, then use current laboratory tests to characterize all distressing symptoms. Next was to examine others with the same signs, particularly babies, and scrutinize similar lesions unreachable by infant hands. Increasing numbers of similar patients (some not self-diagnosed) holding responsible professional positions successfully made it clear that DP lesions and psychosis were not linked by cause and effect.
As Koblenzer1 noted, inquiry into the history of Morgellons reveals that the term was adopted by a biologist-mother with affected children. When no physician could either name the illness or treat it, she found a placeholder title to aid communication while she sought to find answers. Thus, came the Morgellons Research Foundation,6 with 8263 registrant households.
To anyone willing to look and listen, all patients with Morgellons carry elevated laboratory proinflammatory markers, elevated insulin levels, and verifiable serologic evidence of 3 bacterial pathogens. They also show easily found physical markers such as peripheral neuropathy, delayed capillary refill, abnormal Romberg's sign, decreased body temperature, and tachycardia. Most importantly they will improve, and most recover on antibiotics directed at the above pathogens.
In the final analysis, everything we know is perception. What we perceive is still up to us, even as individual professionals. In the current climate of evidence-based medicine, more than ever, what we use as evidence and how we use it is paramount. Pez1103 09:41, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20070227-000003.html
While most physicians seem to lean toward the delusional parasitosis diagnosis, there are a handful of people who think there's something real going on here. About a year ago, Oklahoma State neuroscientist Randy Wymore stumbled upon Leitao's Morgellons site and became intrigued. Wymore called Leitao and asked if there were any fiber samples he could look at. Within days, Ziplocs were arriving in the mail from around the country. Though the fibers all resembled one another, he says, they looked like no other synthetic or natural fiber he compared them to. Ultimately, he asked the fiber experts on the Tulsa police department's forensics team to examine them. First they employed a type of spectroscopy that identifies the chemical structures of fibers and compared them to their database of 800 fibers. No match. Next they subjected fibers to gas chromatography. Compounds put through this process are encased in a vacuum chamber and exposed to high heat; the temperature at which they reach boiling point is a clue to what compound they are made of. The forensic experts had a database that included the boiling point of 90,000 organic compounds with which to compare the fibers. But the machine ran to its highest temperature, 1,400 degrees, and apart from some slight blackening, nothing happened. The fiber experts were mystified. "The conclusion we were left with is that they are unknown fibers, not simply contaminants from clothing sticking to scabs," says Wymore. Wymore, who is not a physician, also asked Rhonda Casey, the chief of the pediatrics department at Oklahoma State University Hospital, to take a look at some of the patients for him, to get a medical opinion. "Honestly, when he first told me about it, I thought, they're all nuts," says Casey. But she changed her mind. "There was not one patient I saw who did not look ill," she says. What's more, they all looked ill in the same way, with neurological symptoms, including confusion, foot drop, in which a person loses control of their foot and has trouble walking, and a sagging mouth when they spoke. Many had been diagnosed with atypical forms of neurological diseases like Parkinson's or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease). She examined their skin via a dermatoscope, a light tool with a magnifying lens. And she did biopsies on both their lesions and apparently healthy skin. She says she saw fibers embedded in both places. The white ones, she says, are hard to see. A dermatologist who either didn't look at all, or didn't use a dermatoscope, might not see them under the skin. But some—the black, red, and blue ones—are blatantly obvious, she says. One young girl had a small pimple on her thigh with a bundle of black fibers just barely protruding from it. Many doctors have accused these patients of embedding fibers in the sores themselves, but Casey doesn't believe it. "As a physician, I can't imagine reproducing what I saw in that little girl's leg." There's also some evidence of an overlap with Lyme disease. Ginger Savely, a San Francisco nurse practitioner with a long history of treating Lyme patients, now sees Morgellons patients and says 90 percent of them test positive for Lyme disease. "I think that one of two things is happening," she says. "Either there's a co-infection people are getting at the same time they get Lyme, because there are a lot of infections spread by ticks." Or whatever is causing Morgellons is something ubiquitous that many of us are exposed to, but the disease develops only in people with weakened immune systems, like those with Lyme disease. Pez1103 09:45, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
The last we heard from Vassyana, the volunteer mediator, was 28 days ago, on the Mediation page: [ [6]]. Vassyana just left me this message on my Talk page:
Vassyana, it should be obvious that the article is still an incoherent, unreadable mess, that can only bewilder Wikipedia users. After a brief respite, the editorial process again is a public brawl, with Dyanega continuing to bully anyone who dares to disagree with his personal bias.
After the 28-day hiatus, I see no point in your resuming informal mediation. If there is anyone at Wikipedia who takes ultimate responsibility for the quality of its articles, it's far past time they took control of this one. Mukrkrgsj 00:36, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Though I am not a direct party to this debate, it is apparent to me that Mukrkrgsj is assuming bad faith. Murkrkrgsj - Dyangea posted his responses to your questions and arguments in the informal meditation: your choice not to respond was your own, and it does not lend credence to your assertion of bias. Tempers are running high, and as informal mediation appears to have been ineffective, I suggest that this be ratcheted up to a formal request for arbitration. In particular parties on both sides appear to be violating
WP:FAITH,
WP:NPOV,
WP:Civility, and most importantly
WP:Verifiability. -
Interested2
18:02, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Interested2, I'm glad you agree that the informal mediation was ineffective, and it's time for formal arbitration. You don't have to be a "direct party to this debate" to comment; but your comments would be more constructive if you would read and understand the article itself, the last few weeks of discussion here, and the mediation pages.
In fact, there was no informal mediation. I had expected the mediator to mediate. Instead, Vassyana adopted the case on March 28; asked some pertinent questions, which Dyanega and I promptly answered; and disappeared, until the April 30 message I copied above.
The informal mediation process was not a private debate between Dyanega and myself. Vassyana asked us to: "answer all the questions with the assumption of good faith on the other side and address the content not the other editors. Please keep all answers short." I did. Mukrkrgsj 21:36, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Mukrkrgsj - I've been following this for a while now, mostly since the informal mediation went up. It's not my place to criticize members of the mediation cabal, but the fact does remain that the mediation was, in this case, completely ineffective. I suspect both parties involved here have vested interests in the article, but I feel as of this writing that the article is reasonably NPOV. Likewise, I am not criticizing your answers to the mediation questions, but rather the usefulness of the mediation itself. The biggest issues I've seen in the discussion are violations of
WP:Verifiability and
WP:NPOV, and I think that barring a consensus among the users on this page as to what constitutes a legitimate source, arbitration is required for this dispute to be resolved. --
Interested2
23:58, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Interested2, we agree that there was no effective mediation. As to your suspicion that Dyanega and I "have vested interests in the article", I stated in the Discussion above that I had never heard of Morgellons until I read the Wikipedia article on March 21, 2007.
Dyanega, however, has been outspoken here about his personal interest in Morgellons, and his conviction that it is not a disease; and his professional interest in a rare disorder called "Delusional Parasitosis". The website of the Bohart Museum, at the University of California, Davis, has a 17-page section on Human Skin Parasites & Delusional Parasitosis: [7].
I wrote during the preliminary discussion at the Mediation page:
"It is pertinent that Dyanega's WP profile says: 'I'm the collection manager of a major US insect collection, at the University of California, Riverside'. A Google search indicates that he is the Senior Museum Scientist at the Entomology Research Museum at U.C. Riverside, a facility similar to the Bohart at U.C. Davis. Its website says, 'The museum serves as a valuable resource for the pest control industry, agriculture, public health, forensic medicine and criminology, environmental biology, as well as the general public.' [emphasis added]
Dyanega says above: 'I have no personal or professional stake in the matter'; yet he wrote March 24, on the Morgellons discussion page: 'I most certainly do not have any connection with the Bohart Museum's website, and I'll be darned if I can see anything that either they or I have done is "promotion" of a diagnosis. Delusional parasitosis exists, I deal with it all the time, as do many professional entomologists, including those at UC Davis, I'm sure. We are certainly well-qualified to inform the public about it. Many of us read about it, do research on it, and learn as much as possible about it, so we can work to help those people who suffer from it.' [emphasis added]
Thus it appears that Dyanega, and his colleagues at U.C. Davis, are as fervently biased in their belief in 'Delusional parasitosis', as they claim the people at the MRF are, in their belief in 'Morgellons'. I submit that at this time, the Morgellons article strongly reflects that bias; and is likely to leave WP users with the prejudicial belief that anyone claiming to have 'Morgellons' is neurotic or psychotic." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2007-03-06_Morgellons/Archive1
Mukrkrgsj 02:31, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Dyanega here unequivocally states his opinion that "many" Morgellons patients suffer from "delusory parasitosis":
He calls it "delusory parasitosis", but his internal link redirects to the Wikipedia article on "Delusional parasitosis". "Delusional parasitosis" is the rare disorder advertised by the website of the Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis--a sister institution to the Entomology Research Museum at U.C. Riverside, where Dyanega works: [8].
The Bohart's website says:
The page continues:
It's notable that the Bohart says "Delusional parasitosis" is both "a rare disorder", and an "increasingly common syndrome".
The Introduction to the Bohart's 17 web pages on "Human Skin Parasites & Delusional Parasitosis" says:
So the Bohart says "Delusional parasitosis" is "a mistaken belief that one is being infested by parasites"; and "a rare disorder in which sufferers hold a delusional belief they are infested with parasites"; and it specifically cites "organisms called Morgellons. 'Morgellons' is a term used to describe what are purported to be fiber-like parasites of the skin".
And fellow UC museum entomologist Dyanega just said here, that "many" Morgellons patients suffer from "Delusional parasitosis".
Are "many", if not all, who wonder if they have "Morgellons", actually suffering from "Delusional parasitosis"?
Apparently not.
The Morgellons Research Foundation, which claims to represent 9,941 "registered families", says:
The MRF says the symptoms of "Morgellons" sufferers include certain "sensations", "lesions", and "structures" that are "fiber-like or filamentous". Whatever Dyanega and the Bohart may think, the MRF doesn't claim that anyone is "infested by parasites".
We still don't know what "Morgellons" is, what causes it, or how to treat it; but if the "Morgellons" patients the MRF speaks for don't think they're infested with organic "parasites such as mites, lice, fleas, spiders, worms, [and] bacteria", they certainly don't have "Delusional parasitosis". Mukrkrgsj 11:32, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
[Below is an exchange between Interested2 and Dyanega, under the heading "Possible Arbitration", copied from the Talk page of the Mediation article: [
[12]]]
It is my concern that this mediation has been unsuccessful. Both parties continue their previous behavior on the
Talk:Morgellons page and in the article itself. I feel it would be beneficial to request a formal arbitration. --
Interested2
20:20, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I continue to agree with Interested2 that formal arbitration is long overdue. Mukrkrgsj 02:19, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
The following text was posted in the main article, and now moved here by me -- Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 10:17, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Hello from the antipodes.
For the sake of all the suffering we have endured, what a journey! Please try this one... Take several hypericum; St John's Wort tablets and place them in a deep vessel. Put enough water on the capsule to make a paste, this can take a while as the capsules are finely powdered, and dense. Apply the paste directly to lesion, you will be amazed at the sensation of coolness which ensues. If the paste is allowed to dry it has a very tenacious grasp on the wound. If dryness causes irritation, one can apply a mentholated ointment to soften the hypericum which totally covers the lesion. Once the paste has been applied and one has slept pus will exude from the lesion, which is a quantum shift in morgellons treatment, once the pus is formed, by effective destruction of the morgellons biota, the bodies immune system is able to, finally respond. The fibres seem to adhere to the paste and as Dr Schwartz described with diatomeacious earth, it may asphyxiate them. However, under the crust of hypericum paste will be a sinus of loose mobile pus, which can be removed by gentle pressure around the affected area, which, the ability to be able to squeeze such painful areas, is, in itself amazing. After the pus is removed, preferably, OFF TO THE LAB!!, the crust can be removed along with the cluster, matrix or labyrinth of fibers which will be there. My conjecture as to the evolution of morgellons in the body, its causitive agent and treatment steps are as follows: At the point/s of INTRUSION into the body the quorum sensing abilities of this agent "hive" in a mycoplasma with nodules projecting through to the sub-dermis. From the initial trauma of intrusion, the upper dermis remains intact, whilst underneath broils in a mealstrom of biological activity, porphyria, lupus, thc n' lsd....What a great genetic splice...The first signs will be an intact watery blister, accompanied with shooting spasms of electric intensity. After an insidious period of unfamiliar muscular and skeletal pain, adherent neurological maladies occur, brain fog....too much lsd n' thc I'm sorry to say. We are simply genetically engineered proto types, which underlies the imperative for good to prevail over the malodorous evil which is ensconced in this disease. Suppuration may or may not occur in the early stages but by the time it does the entire body is affected. But my belief is that this disorder has an Achilles heel. It must maintain the "hive/s" to survive. Kill the hive, destroy the quorums base, problem solved.
Best regards, Al —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.10.242.169 ( talk • contribs) 10:07, 2 May 2007
Well. I definitely agree with the "too much lsd n' thc." As for... any of the rest... Well, thanks for posting this so the world can read it. 74.36.55.28 04:34, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
I quoted two articles -- one from Psychology Today and one from the Amercian Journal of Dermatology. I did NOT even give my opinion -- just quotes -- and that violates Wiki rules? That's completely ridiculous. Anything that suggests that Morgellons isn't DOP is a violation. Qotes from Derms who believe that it's DOP are OK; quotes from doctors who believe it is not, are banned. Pez1103 12:29, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Pez1103 is correct, that Dyanega continues to misinterpret "the rules".
Dyanega says here, "Look up WP:RS, WP:SPS, and WP:COI"; and later, "I do in fact understand what WP:NPOV means."
Let's do that, beginning with WP:NPOV: [emphasis added]
"All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), representing fairly and without bias all significant views (that have been published by reliable sources)."
What does that mean?
WP:SPS: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. "Verifiable" in this context means that any reader should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or is likely to be challenged, or it may be removed."
Dyanega may prefer the "truth", as he sees it; but WP requires just verifiability. Verifiability means that "any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged needs a source"; and that source is not limited to "peer-reviewed journals":
WP:RS: "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published sources. This page is a guideline, not a policy, and is mandatory only insofar as it repeats material from policy pages. The relevant policies on sources are Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:No original research, and Wikipedia:Neutral point-of-view.
Wikipedia:Verifiability says that any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged needs a source, as do quotations, and the responsibility for finding a source lies with the person who adds or restores the material."
"Reliable sources are credible published materials with a reliable publication process; their authors are generally regarded as trustworthy, or are authoritative in relation to the subject at hand."
"Wikipedia welcomes material written by scientists, scholars, and researchers, particularly material published by peer-reviewed journals. However, these may be outdated by more recent research, or may be controversial in the sense that there are alternative scholarly and non-scholarly treatments. Wikipedia articles should therefore ideally rely on all majority and significant-minority treatments of a topic, scholarly and non-scholarly, so long as the sources are reliable."
Finally, WP:COI pertains to a conflict of interest on the part of the editor, not the source:
WP:COI: "A Wikipedia conflict of interest is an incompatibility between the purpose of Wikipedia, to produce a neutral encyclopedia, and the aims of individual or organized groups of editors. These include editing for the sake of promoting oneself, other individuals, causes, organizations, companies, or products, as well as suppressing negative information, and criticizing competitors." Mukrkrgsj 21:47, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
Articles should rely on reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Sources should be appropriate to the claims made: exceptional claims require exceptional sources.
Sources of questionable reliability In general, sources of questionable reliability are sources with a poor reputation for fact-checking or with no fact-checking facilities or editorial oversight. Sources of questionable reliability should only be used in articles about themselves. (See below.)
Exceptional claims require exceptional sources
Certain red flags should prompt editors to examine the sources for a given claim.
Exceptional claims should be supported by multiple reliable sources, especially regarding scientific or medical topics, historical events, politically charged issues, and biographies of living people.
But it is not enough, to express the Wikipedia non-bias policy, just to say that we should state facts and not opinions. When asserting a fact about an opinion, it is important also to assert facts about competing opinions, and to do so without implying that any one of the opinions is correct. It is also generally important to give the facts about the reasons behind the views, and to make it clear who holds them. It is often best to cite a prominent representative of the view.
Undue weight
NPOV says that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a verifiable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each. Now an important qualification: Articles that compare views should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views, and may not include tiny-minority views at all. For example, the article on the Earth only very briefly refers to the Flat Earth theory, a view of a distinct minority.
We should not attempt to represent a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deserved as much attention as a majority view, and views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views. To give undue weight to a significant-minority view, or to include a tiny-minority view, might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation among experts on the subject, or among the concerned parties. This applies not only to article text, but to images, external links, categories, and all other material as well.
Dyanega continues to obfuscate. A quick glance at the sections cited demonstrates that I quoted from the fundamental statements of principle at the top of the pages, while he delved deep, in search of tenuous support for his misinterpretations.
As I made clear above, "Verifiability means that 'any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged needs a source'; and that source is not limited to 'peer-reviewed journals'". Nor must all the sources be dermatologists; indeed, the article's primary sources on "Delusional parasitosis" are entomologists like Dyanega himself, not medical specialists.
It's especially notable that he quotes from Verifiability/Sources of questionable reliability: "Sources of questionable reliability should only be used in articles about themselves." One would think the Morgellons Research Foundation could at least be cited in the article about Morgellons, yet Dyanega says here: "nearly everything in the Morgellons article that pertains to the MRF and things claimed by its board of directors and advisors, should NOT be included in Wikipedia"! Mukrkrgsj 02:30, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
I've just reedited the Introduction, and the Delusional parasitosis sections. IMHO, the new text of these two sections is the clearest and fairest since I happened upon this article, and began tentatively editing for clarity and brevity on March 21.
Comments? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mukrkrgsj ( talk • contribs) 03:36, 4 May 2007 (UTC).
I'd still like to hear from anyone who doesn't have a personal or professional interest in this article.
Mukrkrgsj
10:39, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Dyanega's comment above didn't say he reverted my recent edits as soon as he saw them. Anyone who wants to see how the Introduction and Delusional parasitosis sections can be improved will have to read them in the history files. I'm not surprised he didn't want anyone to see the difference.
Looks like there's no hope for an honest article about Morgellons until Dyanega is prohibited from vandalizing it. Mukrkrgsj 11:00, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
I apologize for my extended absence. I was offline for a few weeks and I'm getting back into the wiki swing of things. I am checking in to see if the comments left on the informal mediation page are still an accurate representation of how people view this article. Additionally, I would like to pose two questions to the editors here. What do you most disagree with in the recent edits of others? What do you most agree with in the edits of the same people? What points are you willing to compromise on? Vassyana 06:48, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Dyanega reverted my recent edits as soon as he saw them, so anyone who wants to see how the Introduction and Delusional parasitosis sections can be improved will have to read them in the history files. I'm not surprised he didn't want anyone to see the difference. Looks like there's no hope for an honest article about Morgellons until Dyanega is prohibited from vandalizing it.
Mukrkrgsj
10:56, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Interested2 wrote above, "I'm on your side in this dispute, Dyanega - I strongly feel that Morgellon's is delusional parasitosis." Whatever Morgellons may be, by definition it certainly is not the rare condition called "delusional parasitosis" that is promoted by Dyanega's entomologist colleagues at the University of California, Davis.
Nevertheless, I have agreed with Interested2 that informal mediation has not been productive--in fact, the volunteer mediator began the process, and then vanished for 28 days--and recommended the article go to formal arbitration. I also agree the article should be locked pending arbitration--but not "as-is".
I have repeatedly stated the obvious: the current article is incoherent, but it is heavily weighted in favor of Dyanega's--and Interested2's--prejudices regarding Morgellons and the MRF. I therefore recommend the article be removed entirely pending arbitration. Mukrkrgsj 20:02, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Temporary removal of this severely biased article would certainly serve the public interest. Dyanega's continual defense and maintenance of its bias are the obvious reasons Morgellons has not been objectively defined and described in the present article.
Mukrkrgsj
01:25, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
I reiterate that the two quotes above from JAAD and Psychology today should be added to the research section to balance it out and the quote from Schwartz should be removed. I am seeking agreement from someone NEUTRAL on this. Pez1103 10:40, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Here are the new Introduction and “Delusional parasitosis” sections Dyanega doesn’t want the public to see. I think they are far more readable, coherent, and accurate than the present mess.
It’s obvious that I didn’t make any radical changes—and in fact, left in some historic content that probably should be removed. What troubled Dyanega is probably the reduced emphasis on his personal and professional prejudices.
In particular, I have begun to clarify that whatever Morgellons may be, it certainly isn’t the rare condition called “Delusional parasitosis”; and that it is not a “controversial” condition per se. The primary source of controversy appears to be some entomologists like Dyanega, who have a vested interest in identifying insect parasites for dermatologists.
Introduction
Morgellons or Morgellons disease is characterized by symptoms of "crawling, stinging and biting sensations", and "non-healing skin lesions" associated with "fiber-like or filamentous" structures. "[M]any sufferers also report symptoms of disabling fatigue, severe mental confusion, short term memory loss, joint pain, sharp decline in vision, and serious neurological disorders." [13] The cause is unknown, and no diagnostic criteria have been established.
Dissatisfied with doctors' diagnosis of her two-year-old son's rash, Mary Leitao, of McMurray, Pennsylvania, coined the name Morgellons, and formed the Morgellons Research Foundation (MRF) in 2002. She is currently its Executive Director. Leitao tentatively named it after a condition in Sir Thomas Browne's 1690 monograph A Letter to a Friend.
The MRF says Morgellons has been reported in every American state, and 15 other countries. Most of the U.S. cases are in California, Texas, and Florida [1]. The National Institutes of Health Office of Rare Diseases presently links their entry on Morgellons [2] to the MRF.
Researchers from the MRF consider Morgellons a distinct and novel disease, however it shares characteristics with a number of recognized medical conditions, including attention-deficit disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Nanette Orman, an adjunct clinical professor from Stanford University, believes it may be related to Lyme disease. [14]
The condition the MRF describes is controversial because some authorities, including dermatologists and entomologists, identify it with delusional parasitosis: a rare mental illness involving false beliefs about infestation by organic parasites. The Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology printed two letters, and a commentary on them, in its November 2006 issue. Their consensus was that dermatologists should humor patients who think they have "Morgellons disease", but treat them for delusional parasitosis. [3] [4] [5].
A Nature Medicine article reported [6], "Most dermatologists deny the disease exists, saying the people who claim to suffer from it have either common skin illnesses or psychological disorders such as delusional parasitosis, in which people become irrationally convinced that they harbor parasites." Morgellons has been successfully treated with the antipsychotic medication Pimozide [7], which has been used to treat delusional parasitosis
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has scheduled an investigation, but postponed it six times since June 2006.
Delusional parasitosis
The primary source of controversy is whether Morgellons is a rare mental disorder called Delusional parasitosis. To date, studies from the medical community indicate that Morgellons and delusional parasitosis are the same condition referred to by different names [3] [4] [5]. No formal clinical studies have yet demonstrated an etiology of Morgellons, though one study has demonstrated that patients can be cured using Pimozide, reinforcing the contention that the condition is synonymous with delusional parasitosis, which is treated with the same drug [7].
The website of the Bohart Museum of Entomology, of the University of California, Davis, says: [15]
The Bohart says "Delusional Parasitosis is a mistaken belief that one is being infested by parasites such as mites, lice, fleas, spiders, worms, bacteria, or other organisms"; and further describes it, saying: [16]
Some entomologists have joined dermatologists in calling Morgellons a mental condition, rather than a physical disease. Entomologist Nancy C. Hinkle, in her article Delusory Parasitosis [8], outlines thirteen indications attributed to delusional parasitosis, including these:
The belief that fibers are emerging from their skin is still present in these patients. This belief is generally regarded by doctors as either delusional, or a result of simply mistaking fibers from clothing (lint) as fibers emerging from the body. [9]
Patients who suffer from delusional parasitosis, and who also believe they have Morgellons, will often move from doctor to doctor in search of one who will offer them the diagnosis they are seeking. As a result, some doctors have adopted the use of the term "Morgellons disease" as "a rapport-enhancing term for delusions of parasitosis" [5]. In the letter cited, Dr. Jenny Murase wrote,
In February 2005, a report on a Fox affiliate in Duval County, Florida, prompted the Duval County Health Department (DCHD) to investigate. The DCHD report noted there was a significant spike in reported cases after the news report, and said "this is attributed to the airing of Fox News’ coverage of the illness and is not a true cluster of disease." [10]
The DCHD report concluded:
"… it was determined after extensive reviewing of these articles that Morgellons Disease is synonymous with delusional parasitosis (CDC, 1999). DCHD Epidemiology consulted a pediatric dermatologist within the health department for his professional opinion. It was concluded that this is a psychological condition that has been mentioned in literature for hundreds of years." [11]
One doctor, declining to be named for a news article, indicated that he treats patients simply by placing a cast over the affected area of skin, protecting it from the patient's scratching, which results in healing in a matter of weeks. [12] This lends weight to the theory that perceived skin abnormalities interpreted as the manifestation of Morgellons are a side-effect of habitual scratching.
Mukrkrgsj 22:24, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
The proposed text clearly does not deny that there is controversy; nor does it "pretend this is an established disease". You didn't specify what to see at pubmed; but a search for "Morgellons" goes to a page listing eight articles--seven of which have "Morgellons disease" in the title.
It is not the purpose of a Wikipedia article to condemn the subject of an article in the first sentence. This article is not supposed to be either for, or against its subject. This article is simply about Morgellons--whatever it is, or may ultimately be demonstrated to be.
The purpose of any article here is first, to briefly define and describe the subject. All that is readily available to the public about Morgellons is that it is a little-known medical condition, for which the Morgellons Research Foundation advocates. Having said that, the proposed Introduction gives equal space to those who think it controversial--despite the fact that Morgellons obviously doesn't fit their definition of "delusional parasitosis". Mukrkrgsj 00:49, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Morgellons or Morgellons disease is a controversial medical condition, often described as having symptoms of "crawling, stinging and biting sensations", and "non-healing skin lesions" associated with "fiber-like or filamentous" structures. "[M]any sufferers also report symptoms of disabling fatigue, severe mental confusion, short term memory loss, joint pain, sharp decline in vision, and serious neurological disorders." [18] The cause is unknown, and no diagnostic criteria have been established.
Morgellons is controversial because many medical, public health, and scientific authorities, including dermatologists and entomologists, identify many Morgellons patients as having delusional parasitosis: a mental illness involving false beliefs about infestation by organic parasites. The Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology printed two letters, and a commentary on them, in its November 2006 issue. Their consensus was that dermatologists should agree with patients who have self-diagnosed "Morgellons disease", but treat them for delusional parasitosis. [3] [4] [5].
Researchers from the MRF consider Morgellons a distinct and novel disease, however it shares characteristics with a number of recognized medical conditions, including attention-deficit disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Nanette Orman, an adjunct clinical professor from Stanford University, believes it may be related to Lyme disease. [19]
The primary source of controversy is whether some Morgellons patients suffer from a mental disorder called Delusional parasitosis. To date, studies from the medical community indicate that Morgellons and delusional parasitosis are, in large part, the same condition referred to by different names [3] [4] [5]. No formal clinical studies have yet demonstrated an etiology of Morgellons, though one study has demonstrated that patients can be cured using Pimozide, reinforcing the contention that the condition may be synonymous with delusional parasitosis, which is treated with the same drug [7].
Some entomologists have joined dermatologists in stating that in some cases, Morgellons is a psychological condition, rather than a physical disease. Entomologist Nancy C. Hinkle, in her article Delusory Parasitosis [8], outlines thirteen indications attributed to delusional parasitosis, including these:
I refer readers to my original content, and ask them not to be confused by Dyanega's obfuscation. I would add only that:
Mukrkrgsj 03:02, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
I have read the article and the talk page and have looked at the references and outside links.
The article itself is confusing. At times it appears to be describing a real disease, at others a psychiatric disorder. There is undue weight given to the claims of proponents of this being a disease as there is a lack of any 'evidence' that would be or has been accepted by the medical profession. The Tulsa Police Department Laboratory claim, unless backed up by a report from said department is suspect and should be removed unless verified, few reputable labs will do any studies without authorization and paperwork.
The media reports, in general, have little weight, in that the 'story' is compelling and contains the common theme of 'underdog against the establishment' that is good reading but is not science.
The external links have many problems. One or two are basically Wikimirrors, and to outdated versions of this article. The 'pro' links are all a rehash of the same information and should be pruned down to one or two, the addition of the others seems to be an attempt to promote the 'pro' POV by sheer numbers. Two of the 'pro' links (to the same German site), lead to a page selling a cream purported to be a treatment for this condition. This is clearly spam and they should be removed. I believe that any page with advertising is unacceptable per the external links policy, several of the EL's contain ads. The www.carnicom.com site is especially misleading in that it uses scientific jargon by someone with no claim to credentials to seemingly assign biological attributes and scientific method to the images. The operator of the site also claims that some sort of biological warfare is being carried out by NASA, his evidence being pictures of airplane contrails. No, I did not attempt to read much of this site, the fringe nature of which is obvious to even a casual perusal. If this section is not cleaned up I will remove the offending links in a day or two
The medical establisnment has been glaringly wrong before, Lyme disease and heliobacter pylori are good examples, but they are much more often right. -- killing sparrows (chirp!) 05:43, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
As you point out, most of the articles listed by pubmed--and cited as authorities here--"are in no way supportive of the existence of Morgellons as a disease, rather they seem to consider it in terms of an aspect of treating patients with delusional parasitosis." That is what's fundamentally wrong with this article--and Morgellons by definition is not "delusional parasitosis"!
Mukrkrgsj
03:29, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
I would like to add the following:
http://www.eblue.org/article/PIIS0190962207001958/fulltext Volume 56, Issue 4, Pages 705-706 (April 2007)
William T. Harvey, MD, MPH, chairman of the MRF, wrote a letter to the editor of the American Journal of Dermatology in which stated his finding regarding the dozens of Morgellons patients he has seen. "To anyone willing to look and listen, all patients with Morgellons carry elevated laboratory proinflammatory markers, elevated insulin levels, and verifiable serologic evidence of 3 bacterial pathogens. They also show easily found physical markers such as peripheral neuropathy, delayed capillary refill, abnormal Romberg's sign, decreased body temperature, and tachycardia. Most importantly they will improve, and most recover on antibiotics directed at the above pathogens."
Dr. Harvey receives no compensation from the MRF Pez1103 10:18, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Addendum
The letter states,
You state in your request to add this to the article that this is the result of examing "dozens" of patients, yet the MRF, of which Dr William T Harvey is Chairman of the Board, states on its website that there are thousands of people with this disease all over the world. In the above quote Dr Harvey states that all patients with Margollens exhibit these symptoms. Are his claims then based on thousands or dozens?
The letter states,
yet the nature of the pathogens and the names of the antibiotics are not listed.
He may be right. Everyone else may be wrong. I have a friend who suffered for years from ulcers and was told to stop eating spicy food and reduce stress, when the answer, unrecognized by the medical cummunity, was antibiotic therapy for heliobacter pylori, but Wikipedia is not the place to propose or promote unproven theories. This is why such material is not acceptable for use here.-- killing sparrows (chirp!) 00:16, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
It remains notable that Harvey wrote in rebuttal to three previous JAAD articles, which are References 2, 3, and 4 here. We need to look a little closer at those articles, on which so much of the bias here is based.
Mukrkrgsj
01:37, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
I have gone through the links in relation to the guidelines set out in WP:EL. I will remove the unacceptable links unless there are objections that reference these guidelines.
Acceptable link to organization concerned with Morgellons
Unacceptable link. This site contains little or no additional information and includes advertising for a product purported to treat Morgellons.
Unacceptable link. No additional information from first link. Contains attack pages on opponents of the recognition of Morgellons that include animated gifs of said opponents with flames coming out of their mouths, elongated noses (ala Pinocchio), heads shaking 'no', (apparently in denial of the existence of Mogellons), etc.
Unaceptable link. Soliciting for fee translation of medical documents and sale of products purported to treat Morgellons
Tenuous connection to OSU, possibly acceptable. I will contact OSU and see if this research is in fact sponsored and approved by the University.
Unacceptable link. This site contains a plethora of ads for various products and services unrelated to the subject. In addition it contains misleading and innacurate information about the subject..."researchers discovered a link to what was called Morgellons in the 1600's..." No such research has been conducted according to this article, it was the claim of the parent named in the article. No information here that is not available on the morgellons.org site.
Redundant link. Blurry photomicrographs of something with claims by layperson as to identification and biological activity. Other images are available on morgellons.org site
Unacceptable link. This is a forum/blog
Unacceptable link. This is a survey for sufferers to self-report symptoms.
Unacceptable link. A forum/blog to discuss the above site. It contains 3 posts.
Unacceptable link. An especially misleading site in that it uses scientific jargon by someone with no claim to credentials to seemingly assign biological attributes and scientific method to the images. The operator of the site also claims that some sort of biological warfare is being carried out by NASA, his evidence being pictures of airplane contrails. No, I did not attempt to read much of this site, the fringe nature of which is obvious to even a casual perusal.
Redundant link. Other images are available on morgellons.org site
Acceptable link, but barely. Basically one person's opinion debunking Morgellons. Little factual information and many forum posts.
Unacceptable link. This site contains little or no additional information and includes advertising for a product purported to treat Morgellons. Basically a sub or sister site to morgellons-research.org (above)
Unacceptable link. All information available on morgellons.org site. Misleading wording regarding research.
Unacceptable link. Again a rehash of info on morgellons.org. Also has mention in FAQ of possible bio-terror, bio-experimentation which it does not confirm or deny.
Again a rehash of morgellons.org info. No new info on the iste.
The first words on this page are an ad stating..."Accidental" breakthrough: Miracle-Pill halts Disease. Learn the truth in this Special Report! This says much about the credibility of this site which is yet another rehash of previous info and images, and links to articles about the dangers of nanotech. Has one valuable link to a Psychology Today article that could be used in itself as it presents the most balanced view I have seen so far.
I am posting this as a courtesy in light of the heated discussions on this talk page but I believe the questioned links could be deleted without comment. If you have any objections, please reference the appropriate WP:EL guidelines as they relate to the specific link. -- killing sparrows (chirp!) 18:53, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Six weeks ago, before I happened upon this article, I had never heard of Morgellons. After reviewing the article, its sources, and this discussion--and some active participation in the discussion--I have one major question:
What is it about Morgellons, and its support group the MRF, that inspires so much anger and hostility?
What is it about an almost unknown medical condition, that reportedly affects an unknown number of unidentified patients, including children and infants, that makes some editors demand that Wikipedia ruthlessly condemn them as fakers and loonies?
I've seldom seen so much bitter, mean-spirited, hostile prejudice, without even a hint of justification for it. Mukrkrgsj 03:55, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
A white knight? We just gave informal mediation the benefit of the doubt, and the mediator disappeared for four weeks. If your offer is sincere, I think you'll find that Dyanega won't let you do what you promise to do. And if you are not, you and Dyanega will have prevented any improvements by objective editors for another two weeks.
Thanks, but no confidence. This article needs to go to formal arbitration, NOW! Mukrkrgsj 05:44, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
Per my concerns listed above I have remove the links. I feel that any additions to this section need to be justified per the external links guidelines. I will also look at the 'In the news' section and evaluate them per the same guidelines, I think many are redundant. If there is reference to 'many media reports' in the main article, some of these could possibly be added as reference to that statement. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Killing sparrows ( talk • contribs) 06:16, 7 May 2007 (UTC).
I have no personal experience with Morgellons, but I saw the photos of affected skin on the Morgellons Research Foundation website. Could Morgellons be caused by microfiber blankets, etc? Microfibers are extremely thin artificial fibers that are being used to make blankets, clothing etc. It's a booming business, and pretty new. If you have fibers that are extremely thin, then naturally their ends will be extremely sharp.
For a while I was sleeping on a torn mattress, with the foam rubber showing through. I noticed that some of my own hairs worked their way deep into the foam of the mattress, just as a result of the repeated rubbing caused by my natural movements during sleep, or while resting on the mattress.
Similarly, could it be that people are getting microfibers under their skin, by repeated rubbing caused by their natural movements against blankets while sleeping or resting, or something similar with microfiber clothing?
Does anyone have experience with both Morgellons and microfiber blankets or other products? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 208.100.198.155 ( talk) 18:08, 16 May 2007 (UTC).
I am new to posting here and am a layman. I followed this post because of a bedbug infestation. The company from which I bought treatment for the bedbugs also sent me a pdf on "collembola" syndrome, which was linked to Morgellons syndrome. So I did some research. About springtails, and insect parasites. Interestingly, the only additional references I found to the problem were offered by other companies selling cures, complicated cures at high prices. I felt their literature was designed to inspire fear and prey on peoples vunerablities. No other references were found from CDC, google, dermatological sites. This fact, and the language of the pdf makes me believe that Morgellons/Collembola is a marketing ploy. I believe this could be a contributing factor to this discussion. Frankly, if you have fibers, granules extruding from your skin, chronic dermatitis, and you experience confusion and fatigue, you seek a doctor. It bugs you day and night. The doctor says, hey you're crazy. Perhaps you let it go at that, but I assume that a statistically significant portion of sufferers would carry it further, and seek second, third, fourth opinions. Someone, many people, would contribute samples which would be examined. I believe that researchers, upon finding a new disease,microbe,virus,pathogen, would become very excited! It would be on the news, Nobel Peace Prize, Pulliter Prize, Fox News goes crazy. But instead, nothing. I think it's the business of snake oil salespeople. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Linty ( talk • contribs) 02:58, 17 May 2007
How will the upcoming film version of the play "Bugs" impact this discussion and national attention to the topic (and this page)?
(cur) (last) 17:15, 1 June 2007 Interested2 (Talk | contribs) (22,401 bytes) (rv to "but especially with". The observable symptoms are similar to those of DP, and it does a disservice to those afflicted to suggest that its as likely as ADD.) (cur) (last) 06:26, 1 June 2007 24.6.34.203 (Talk) (22,385 bytes) (?Background - "but especially with", not supported by facts. Delusional parasitosis not consistent with fibers and granules are coming out of the skin, short-term memory loss, fatigue.) (cur) (last) 05:25, 1 June 2007 24.6.34.203 (Talk) (22,401 bytes) (?Delusional parasitosis) (cur) (last) 05:15, 1 June 2007 24.6.34.203 (Talk) (22,402 bytes) (?Delusional parasitosis)
On June 1 I edited two quotations because they were incomplete. I added a few sentences to include the full text which puts the quotations in better context.
I also changed "but especially with" to "and" for reasons I stated. Interested2 reversed the edit on June 2 stating, "The observable symptoms are similar to those of DP, and it does a disservice to those afflicted to suggest that its as likely as ADD."
I disagree. The sentence does not talk about symptoms. It states, "Morgellons shares characteristics with a number of recognized medical conditions,...". Nowhere in Wikipedia,or in any reference is the term "but especially with DP" based on data. Many Dermatologists associate Morgellons with delusional parasitosis (and some do not), but that is only one characteristic and should not override all others.
Symptoms are not substantiated or quantified for Morgellons vs. other diseases in literature nor in Wikipedia. Therefore the statement "The observable symptoms are similar to those of DP, and it does a disservice to those afflicted to suggest that its as likely as ADD.", is not accurate because the sentence can not proport to quantitatively correlate Morgellons symptoms or characteristics to other illnesses. (Hence my edit).
For example: Of the illnesses mentioned many have sensations of skin crawling and none, including classical DP, of fibers coming out of skin. Also, short term memory loss, communicability, and fatigue are not part of classical DP.
Almost any illness (cancer, heart disease, etc.) has a subset of depression, (In any given 1-year period, 9.5 percent of the population has depression), which can then be associated with almost any symptom. Standard argument used over and over by the Psychiatric community. 24.6.34.203 01:32, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
It has not been proved or disproved but is widely reported by patients and families. Should we ignore a growing body of evidence? 24.6.34.203 01:32, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Whoever these "people" are, the argument is flawed by a mounting body of evidence that something is different here in the number of publications (medical and news), videos, pictures, and demographics of Morgellons patients. IE: not little old ladies, but children, professional baseball players, doctors, and middle class families. Kind of like, at what point does global warming become proven? 24.6.34.203 06:50, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
No, there are pictures from the medical community that have been shown in reference 2.
Dyanega, I believe you are wrong about this. From the American Journal of Clinical Dermatology:
Internal Review by Editorial Staff The Journal Editor and/or therapeutic area editor will perform an initial appraisal of each manuscript. Manuscripts are judged on the interest and importance of the topic, use of scientific method, clarity of presentation, and relevance to the Journal's readers. Articles meeting the appropriate criteria and accompanied by the appropriate documentation are then passed to external peer review.
External Peer Review The aim of the peer review process is to ensure publication of unbiased, scientifically accurate and clinically relevant articles. All articles are peer reviewed by members of the Journal's international Editorial Board and/or other specialists of equal repute before a decision on publication is made. Peer reviewer identities are kept confidential, but author identities are known to the reviewers. Peer reviewers are asked to disclose potential conflicts of interests that may affect their ability to provide an unbiased review of an article.
Though "The Mystery of Morgellons Disease" is listed under Current Opinion, it is also listed as an Article. It is written with an abstact and structured like an article, not like a letter. I have written to the American Journal of Clinical Dermatology and asked them to clarify if the piece was peer reviewed or not.
By the way, references 4,& 5 are listed in the American Journal of Clinical Dermatology as notes and comments under the classification of letters. Reference 6 is classified as correspondence and reference 3 as commentary.
Using your criteria, the statement in Morgellons WP article, "Morgellons has been successfully treated with the antipsychotic medication Pimozide[6], which has been used to treat delusional parasitosis." may not qualify as scientific evidence because it may not have been peer reviewed.
Does anyone have reference 6? I would like to check some other facts on the article as it pertains to the Morgellons WP article. 24.6.34.203 06:50, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
There are many that have come from patients and news reports. As far as I know no one has proven them to be fake. 24.6.34.203 01:32, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Look at reference 2., and do not ignore the doctors and professionals that have come forward in publications and other media. Peer review is well and good, but WP does not require peer review. Yes I am familiar with chain of custody. It's not the chain of custody that you are talkin about, but it's a very short chain of custody when a professional or doctor sees and pulls a fiber out of a person's skin. The reports from the patients that many professionals have no interest in even looking at the fibers in their skin seems to be very arrogant. 24.6.34.203 06:50, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
The above is opinionated, biased, and wrong because you do not believe Morgellons to be a "REAL DISEASE". You apply one standard for Morgellons and another for your viewpoint of the "REAL DISEASE".
How can you know, "the doctors doing research into Morgellons are not getting grants from anywhere other than the MRF"? In fact, you don't because the CDC is setting up research into Morgellons and they are not getting money from MRF. Furthermore, even if true, SO WHAT. "Promotes the disease" is a loaded term. MRF and the patients they represent believe the cause of their disease is something other than you believe, and they are spending their money to "prove or disprove" it. That does NOT make them wrong, evil, or any different than other organizations spending money to research illness (except maybe our government that spends it liberally). The money spent by the MRF has to be documented in public records, and the research done will be documented, reviewed and published if a journal accepts it. Organizations grant money to research according to how valuable the LEADERS OF THE ORGANIZATION BELIEVE the research to be. No research has to be "correct" (whatever that means) to apply for and receive money from organizations, that is why it is called research.
The last sentence of your paragraph applies to ALL research except for your "doubt" which is pure speculation on your part. Ward 24.6.34.203 22:19, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
I am very concerned with the possibility people with Morgellons are being harmed by those that advocate they are delusional. When you label someone delusional, society tends to ignore them and their situation. That is not the way it is supposed to be, and many will deny it, but it is true. Ward 24.6.34.203 00:12, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Dyanega, I am not aware of any references for your assertion of fibers in the skin of classical DP that predates Morgellons year 2002, can you supply some?
Please do not try to bully me, you said, "fibers in or on one's body", close enough!
I did run a pub med search and found no references where it is typical that classic DP patients claim fibers emerged from the flesh. "The matchbox sign yes", but that is factually different than claims of fibers emerging from the skin. 24.6.34.203 06:50, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
To be more clear, my statement of what is factually different was meant to indicate: Most Morgellons patients say fibers emerge from their skin, and present the fibers. Most classical DP patients DO NOT say fibers emerge from their skin, and present skin scrapings that may or may not contain fibers or lint. Ward 24.6.34.203 22:35, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
I believe you said you have seen Morgellons patients. Did you look at or for the in vivo fibers they said were in their skin? 24.6.34.203 01:32, 2 June 2007 (UTC) 24.6.34.203 05:01, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Dyanega thanks for the information. 24.6.34.203 06:50, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
So Interested2, let's resolve this and move on. Thanks.
Dyanega, this exchange has been interesting but I doubt it has changed very much. I want to get back to the topic of the reversion "and" to "but especially with".
Here is what I think is a very strong argument for my "and" edit:
Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, is one of Wikipedia's three content policies. The neutral point of view The neutral point of view is a means of dealing with conflicting views. The policy requires that, where there are or have been conflicting views, these should be presented fairly. None of the views should be given undue weight or asserted as being the truth, and all significant published points of view are to be presented, not just the most popular one. It should also not be asserted that the most popular view or some sort of intermediate view among the different views is the correct one. Readers are left to form their own opinions. 24.6.34.203 06:50, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
DIRECT EXCERPT:
Undue weight
NPOV says that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a verifiable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each. Now an important qualification: Articles that compare views should not give minority views as much or as detailed a description as more popular views, and may not include tiny-minority views at all. For example, the article on the Earth only very briefly refers to the Flat Earth theory, a view of a distinct minority.
We should not attempt to represent a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deserved as much attention as a majority view, and views that are held by a tiny minority should not be represented except in articles devoted to those views. To give undue weight to a significant-minority view, or to include a tiny-minority view, might be misleading as to the shape of the dispute. Wikipedia aims to present competing views in proportion to their representation among experts on the subject, or among the concerned parties. This applies not only to article text, but to images, external links, categories, and all other material as well.
Background: My name is Ward K. I do not have Morgellons. I was a Mechanical Research Engineer at Xerox. I do have a chronic illness that for 20 years has been controversial. I would rejoice to take a psychotropic drug and have my illness go away. I have, it didn't. Many emerging diseases have been claimed by the Psychiatric community. The most famous recent one is AIDS. There were others, epilepsy, diabetes, tourette's syndrome, autism. What happens is a fight over turf and jurisdiction with science taking a back seat over politics, sometimes for decades. That is exactly what is happening on this topic and it should stop for the sake of science and suffering patients. Be objective, people's lives and futures are literally at stake here! 24.6.34.203 23:58, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
As I see it, the exchange between Dyanega and myself has shown he is more inclined to believe Morgellons is DP than I. More importantly, we may have been discussing some the heart of the dispute.
He has talked about similarities of Morgellons and DP and I about differences.
We (and others) have discussed/debated the various levels of proof required for medical and scientific research vs. levels of proof required for WP and public information.
It seems to me information on Morgellons (and the forms of information dissemination) is diverse and rapidly changing. IE. researching for my replies yesterday I found The CDC Delusional Parasitosis page has been removed and a response to an inquiry of the CDC as to why the information was removed (that probably should be in the article). I found on YouTube some fascinating videos reporting to be Morgellons' fibers. But as Dyanega pointed out, chain of custody and discussion of scientific method is lacking. However, NIH investigators may have some compelling things to look at if they get off their ass.
The proposal is: we incorporate in the article in a neutral way reasons for the dispute similar to the topics above. That way viewers of the Morgellons WP article are shown more insight why the article is controversial. Ward 24.6.34.203 19:39, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
X-Originating-IP: [XXX.XXX.XXX.XX] Subject: Peer review of Morgellons disease article for Am J Clin Dermatol Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2007 21:14:40 -0500 X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: Thread-Topic: Peer review of Morgellons disease article for Am J Clin Dermatol Thread-Index: AcepcsTwPlHI+Fj0ThasL2F/2iSlVA== From: "Olney, Roger" <> To: <> Cc: "<>,<> X-OriginalArrivalTime: 08 Jun 2007 02:14:40.0509 (UTC) FILETIME=[C55052D0:01C7A972]
Dear Mr XXXXX
Thank you for your e-mail.
As stated in the journal under 'Aim and Scope', 'All manuscripts are subject to peer review by international experts', and I can confirm that this was the case with this article.
I hope that is helpful to you. On that point, it wasn't clear from your e-mail why you would be interested in this information and I wonder if you would mind letting us know the reason for your request on this point.
Yours sincerely
Roger Olney Editor American Journal of Clinical Dermatology
Ward 24.6.34.203 04:05, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
Under Morgellons theories and research
What is, "reporting on Ms. Leitao's plight" doing in here? it does not make sense to me.
"The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, reporting on Ms. Leitao's plight, noted that Dr. Randy Wymore, Oklahoma State University assistant professor of pharmacology and physiology, and former MRF director, recruited two Oklahoma State faculty physicians who tweezed fibers from beneath the skin of some Morgellons patients."
Ward 24.6.34.203 06:17, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
TSIA. - Interested2 14:52, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
Any expert who claims they are able to write or speak on this disease must first meet with and analyze the skin, mucous and other "products" of a patient with this disease before they should be allowed to comment. This can be done scientifically. I am willing to be that person (cisfl2004@netzero.com). Otherwise they have no idea at all what they are talking about and should not be allowed to edit no matter what advanced degrees they have. They have NO REAL knowledge of this syndrome. It is new and they have never seen anything like it. The only expert is one has has had this for many years and has a clean bill of mental health from a mental health professional.
Marc, consider removing link to Morgellons Research Organization because of a number of items.
1. they sell products there 2. there will be objections to too many links talking about disease vs DP. 3. The external links section should be small according to WP, and I believe The New Morgellons Order at http://www.cherokeechas.com/index.htm is a more scientific and neutral link than Morgellons Research Organization.
Dyanega, I can't find on the page "The Mayo Clinic page specifically states "According to the Morgellons Research Foundation...")".
I found these three attributes to the MRF on the page:
The Morgellons Research Foundation lists, the Morgellons Research Foundation doesn't, The Morgellons Research Foundation reports.
Also, the page is signed By Mayo Clinic Staff Mar 2, 2007, and is copyrighted by the Mayo Foundation
The phrase. "Based on information supplied by the Morgellons Research Foundation, the Mayo Clinic created a webpage titled:" infers the MRF and the Mayo Clinic staff collaborated. This seems to be speculation and may or may not be true. Attribution is not the same as collaboration.
Even if there were collaboration on the page. We are only using the sentence, "Morgellons disease shares characteristics with various recognized conditions, including attention-deficit disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, Lyme disease, obsessive-compulsive disorder and a mental illness involving false beliefs about infestation by parasites (delusional parasitosis)." That statement may have been written by the Mayo Clinic Staff so the phrase you put would not be relevant. We should confirm these points.
Ward 24.6.34.203 17:53, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
Mayo response to my inquiry on MRF input to "Morgellons disease: Managing a mysterious skin condition Article"
From: "Contact Us - Mayo Information" <mayoinfo@mayoclinic.com> To: xxxxx@xxxxx Subject: RE: MayoClinic.com (Thread:496023)
Dear Ward:
Thank you for your patience. In general, it is our editorial policy to cite organizations within articles when information is attributable to a specific organization.
Non-attributable statements of fact generally have been synthesized from a variety of sources. All statements are reviewed by our experts for medical accuracy. Before producing this health topic, the product development team collected and reacted to ideas over a period of multiple months using a number of sources.
Sincerely, Dana Mayo Clinic Online Services
Ward
24.6.34.203
22:48, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
For use of:
"Morgellons disease: Managing a mysterious skin condition," which states "Morgellons disease shares characteristics with various recognized conditions, including attention-deficit disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, Lyme disease, obsessive-compulsive disorder and a mental illness involving false beliefs about infestation by parasites (delusional parasitosis)."
and
"Reports of Morgellons disease have been made in every state in the United States and 15 countries around the world. Most reported cases are clustered in Calfironia, Texas and Florida."
On page http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/morgellons-disease/SN00043
Ward 24.6.34.203 09:27, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
The verbatim quote (quoted even) is from Mayo. Savely et al published details first.
Present WP version: The MRF states that reports of Morgellons disease have been made in every state in the United States and 15 countries around the world. Most reported cases are clustered in California, Texas and Florida.[2].
Mayo text: "Reports of Morgellons disease have been made in every state in the United States and 15 countries around the world. Most reported cases are clustered in California, Texas and Florida."
Savely et al text: "The US states of California, Texas, and Florida appear to have the highest number of reports of Morgellons disease, with primary clusters noted in Los Angeles and San Francisco, California, and in Houston, Dallas and Austin Texas. California accounts for 26% of the cases in the US. All 50 US states and 15 nations, including Canada, the UK, Australia, and the Netherlands, have reported cases of Morgellons disease."
Think about best approach. Maybe quote the original Savely text, I believe the Mayo version better.
Reinserted link to Mayo text that is also a direct quote.
Ward 24.6.34.203 21:43, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
Herd,
Concerning the link removal to talk page.
The wording in that paragraph is predicated on the e-mail received from Mayo about its webpage. The e-mail is displayed in talk section #33. Removing the link removes the background behind the wording. I think it needs to be there because of that. The previous wording was not correct in it's context. Please reply. Thanks.
Ward 24.6.34.203 02:08, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Actually, " articles should rely on reliable published secondary sources. This means that we present verifiable accounts of views and arguments of reliable scholars, and not interpretations of primary source material by Wikipedians." [23]
Wikipedia gives editors examples of boilerplate letters to solicit information and permissions from sources. I don't believe there is a way to e-mail and receive those directly to WP, so editors must present information received to WP somehow. The e-mail I published on talk page gives all information necessary for verification.
"Material from self-published sources and sources of questionable reliability may be used in articles about themselves, so long as: there is no reasonable doubt as to who wrote it." [24]
Ward 24.6.34.203 20:53, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't believe it is valid to replace a citation from a peer reviewed published journal article with a preliminary and not peer reviewed symptom list from a website, even if more recent. What does UTC stand for?
Ward20 01:30, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
Well I would say a preliminary list that is a work in progress and not peer reviewed may not be a more accurate version, and certainly should not carry as much weight as one from a peer reviewed journal
Ward20 09:19, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
I removed the paragraph of George Schwartz, he's been disbarred for peddling narcotics and he self-published his book. He's a fringe figure on the Morgellons story, and his inclusion (and his speculation about parasites and global warming) adds nothing to the article. Herd of Swine 22:26, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
does any one claim to have used Olanzapine, or Pimozide to sucessfully treat Morgellons.
Ward20 01:22, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
Of the
psychotropics, I still find that pimozide, in a dose of anywhere from 0.5 mg to 2 mg once daily, works more quickly and more reliably than others of the atypical antipsychotics, perhaps because of its known action on opioid pathways,6,10 although risperidone
and aripiprazole are also reportedly effective.18,19
The letter "The challenge of Morgellons disease"
has many problems.
1. Not peer reviewed
2. Letter first talks about diagnosis of DP and various forms, then proceeds to say Morgellons must be the same disease and describes symptoms of typical DP but without any note of any particular differences of Morgellons, or that any of her patients said or believe they have Morgellons.
Then says, "My own approach has been to explain to "the patient"....and then treatment above.
3. Letter does not discuss any proof her treatment has successfully treated Morgellons, or give any patient numbers (not even one case) of successful treatment of Morgellons.
4. For efficacy of the drugs she uses, she cites papers below that have nothing to do with Morgellons.
6. Wallengren J, Dahlback K. Familial brachoradial pruritus. Br J Dermatol 2005;153:1016-8. 10. Munro A. Delusional disorder. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1999. pp. 78-93. 18. Lee CS, Koo JYM. The use of psychotropic medications in dermatology. In: Koo JYM, Lee CS, editors. Psychocutaneous medicine. New York: Marcel Dekker, Inc; 2002. pp. 427-51. 19. Koblenzer CS. Psychotropic drugs in dermatology. In: James WD, Cockerell CJ, Dzubow LM, Paller AS, Yancey KB, editors. Advances in dermatology (vol 15). St Louis: Mosby, Inc; 2000. pp. 183-201.
Ward20 03:52, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
What you say has a germ of truth, as any illness has a psychological component.
But, that is not the thrust of my argument. Koblenzer basically says if she is treating DP patients then by definition they MUST ALSO be Morgellons patients. She makes no distinction between them as a group and offers no discussion of numbers of patients successfully (or unsuccessfully) treated in either case. Her letter is worthless as far as discussing successful psychotropic drug treatment of Morgellons.
You are very smart, you know there is a difference in what you said and she says.
Besides that, it is a letter, it is not peer reviewed, and as Dyanega argues, should not be given much as scientific credibility.
Ward20 05:10, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
There are many reasons to doubt Koblenzer has ever treated any Morgellons patients with Pimozide in either letter. In her Oct 2006 letter Pimozide at Least as Safe and Perhaps More Effective Than Olanzapine for Treatment of Morgellons Disease she speculates Pimozide may be more effective than Olanzapine for Morgellons. But never states in that Oct letter she has treated any Morgellons patients with Olanzapine or Pimozide at all. In the references she talks about Olanzapine treatment by Meehan for patients who are definitely not Morgellons patients. You must read the Meehan letter in order to realize that.
Then one month later she publishes another letter about The Challenge of Morgellons disease and talks about Pimozide treatment of "the patient" but not identifying her patients specifically as Morgellons patients. So the question begs to be asked why did she not also state in her Oct 2006 letter she treated Morgellons patients with Pimozide? Surely she didn't get "the patient"s and treat only for approximately one month. An obvious answer is she is playing fast and loose with the facts. The whole thing reeks of unscholarly writing on her part.
Ward20 09:12, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
The point is presently the article does not state facts variable by sources.
Ward20 06:50, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, my statement was worded badly. It should have said: The point is presently the WP article makes assertions of facts with references that are not varifiable within the references. Koblenzer's article(s) very simply do not say Morgellons has been successfully treated or cured (she never specifically states she treated any patient with Morgellons, her letters are full of inference and innuendo) with the antipsychotic medication Olanzapine or Pimozide. Any information that is wrong in the WP article does not belong there. The text I deleted said, "one study published in the American Academy of Dermatology has demonstrated that patients can be cured using Pimozide." What was wrong (letter is not study, wrong Journal, letter did not demonstrate that patients can be cured using Pimozide). The reference can stay if the information attributable to the reference is verifiable (and by verifiable I mean the reference supports what is presented in WP), otherwise not.
I do not know which study you are refering to, could you please elaborate?, "Koblenzer's opinion about it is JUST as verifiable, if not more so, than Randy Wymore's, Mary Leitao's and any of the other people cited in the article, because it is backed up by a clinical study."
Ward20 20:42, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
Belongs in Nature Medicine news article which is it's source.
Randy Wymore, former director of the Morgellons Research Foundation, claims that Morgellons patients have masses of dark fibers visible at 60x magnification under the unbroken skin, while unaffected individuals do not. "That took away any possibility that this was not a real thing," Wymore says.
But anyone can have a medical opinion. What weight it carries in what forum is a different debate.
Let's not get into that debate, Wymore's statement is more an opinion of what he physically observed then it is a medical opinion. Herein is a central crux of Morgellons. Are there real fibers under and coming out of the skin of patients? His is one (1) published opinion of a scientific observation of that phenomena. It is a data point and nothing more. The differing opinions expressed in letters and studies are also data points. If the data points are presented in a non biased manner, hopefully a truer picture of Morgellons will be revealed.
As to the discussion of what is or is not appropriate in the the paragraph: I would like to point out the phrase quoted in the WP paragraph, "Most dermatologists deny the disease exists, saying the people who claim to suffer from it have either common skin illnesses or psychological disorders such as delusional parasitosis, in which people become irrationally convinced that they harbor parasites.", was a statement by the author, Nature correspondent Emma Marris, who is a reporter. In addition, no doctor quoted in the Nature Medicine news article said Morgellons patients have common skin illnesses or psychological disorders. And, she included Wymore's statement as a counterpoint to the doctors that talked about "patients with symptoms similar to Morgellons" and "those with parasitic delusions".
Therefore, Wymore's statement rightfully belongs after the Nature Medicine news article "Most dermatologists....."
Ward20 05:50, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
The recent edits by Ward20 removed statements indicating to readers when the authors of cited works belong to the MRF. When a quote comes from an unreliable source, then this should be made clear to the readers. From WP:RS: "Reliable sources are credible published materials with a reliable publication process; their authors are generally regarded as trustworthy, or are authoritative in relation to the subject at hand." The authors in question are therefore, by definition, not reliable sources, and so it is essential that readers be alerted whenever these unreliable sources are being quoted. Otherwise, WP policy would support the exclusion of any such references in the first place, and I'm sure that this would be considered similarly unacceptable to the present editor. If we assume, for the sake of argument, that the MRF is to be treated as a reliable source, then how exactly is it factually incorrect to indicate when the authors of an article belong to the organization? If it is not factually incorrect, there is no reason to delete the information. They are not - demonstrably not - being "singled out"; throughout the article, most of the authors of various cited works are named, and their affiliations stated. Given the pattern of edits thus far, I find it hard to assume that Ward20's removal of statements regarding MRF affiliation represents a good faith edit, and I maintain that it is in violation of WP policy.
I will offer further support for my stance here, again quoting from WP policy on "Sourcing and attribution" from WP:FRINGE:
"While proper attribution of a perspective to a source satisfies the minimal requirements of Wikipedia's neutral point of view, there is an additional editorial responsibility for including only those quotes and perspectives which further the aim of creating a verifiable and neutral Wikipedia article. Quotes that are controversial or potentially misleading need to be properly contextualized to avoid unintentional endorsement." And similarly: "Including ... a controversial quote needs to be carefully contextualized as a particular point-of-view."
If quotes from MRF researchers and board members are not attributed to them, when they are EXTREMELY controversial, as in the present case, then they are not being properly contextualized, and are instead being endorsed. It must be made clear that these are, in fact, statements made from a particular point-of-view. Dyanega 01:58, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
Someone changed the lead section from the old summary, to a chunk of text from the Mayo page. I reverted this. See Wikipedia:Lead_section for reasons why. It could still do with some work (as could the entire article, which is getting very messy). Herd of Swine 00:59, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
I fear this article is devolving into a mess of cherry-picked quotes that are aimed at simply bolstering the positions of the various authors. Wikipedia articles are a synthesis of sources in an encyclopedic style, intended to give the best current understanding of a subject from a neutral point of view. For Morgellons, this should a description of what Morgellons is (a condition defined by a list of symptoms), background (the history of the Morgellons Research Foundation), current state of research (CDC planning to do something & OSU having Randy Wymore) and a description of the controversy (dermatologists say it is nothing new, just re-labeling of existing conditions, patients and a few doctors disagree). This should all be do-able without quotes, and simply referencing things. It can only be done, however, if we stick to a neutral point of view.
The idea is not to fight, trying to present one side or another. This is not the place to debate if Morgellons has a distinct cause or not. Here we should simply describe the agreed-upon facts, which includes describing the controversy. This requires some clean-up of the article, removing needless quotes, and paraphrasing them if they contain relevant information.
Regarding the lead section, I think the CDC page describes Morgellons very well, but that's not the entire scope of the article, and while a short paraphrasing of the CDC page would be appropiate, the history, research and controversy need to be included. Herd of Swine 22:13, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
There are quotes throughout the article. The quotes from the CDC and the Mayo clinic should be added back to the intro.
The "morgellons" article is no longer about a multisystemic disease with marked dermal manifestations. It has become a place for badly vetted, quack psychiatric ideas to metastasize. The entire article needs a complete rewrite, starting with all the current information that is known about the disease. The psychiatric quackery discussion should occur in a page called "Morgellons Controversy" just like the opposing ILADS vs. IDSA viewpoints are featured in a "Lyme Controversy" page.
Please note that the CDC's effort to study Morgellons occurs within the CDC's "National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne, and Enteric Diseases" NOT the "center for delusional parasitosis and quack psychiatry"
http://www.cdc.gov/unexplaineddermopathy/
The above site was created 6/12/2007. Perhaps the people that keep defacing the wiki with a bunch of psychiatric quackery need to take a look at the current state of affairs in the Morgellons world. Here is an excerpt from the aforementioned CDC page:
............
Unexplained Dermopathy (aka "Morgellons")
Introduction
Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) received an increased number of inquiries regarding an unexplained skin condition that some refer to as “Morgellons.” Persons who suffer from this unexplained skin condition report a range of cutaneous (skin) symptoms, including crawling, biting, and stinging sensations; granules, threads, or black speck-like materials on or beneath the skin; and/or skin lesions (e.g., rashes or sores). In addition to skin manifestations, some sufferers also report fatigue, mental confusion, short term memory loss, joint pain, and changes in vision.
The etiology of this condition is unknown, and the medical community has insufficient information to determine whether persons who identify themselves as having this condition have a common cause for their symptoms or share common risk factors.
To assist in learning more about this condition, CDC plans to conduct an epidemiologic investigation and has convened a multidisciplinary working group to provide guidance on the design of the investigation. The goals of the investigation are to better characterize the clinical and epidemiologic features of this condition and to generate hypotheses about factors that may cause or contribute to sufferers’ symptoms.
............
It is my understanding that the CDC task force is now headed by a veterinarian. When's the last time you took your pet to a veterinarian concerned about parasites and came back with a diagnosis "your dog is delusional"?? Actually, if the psychiatric quacks had their way, they'd want the vet to accuse the pet owner of "munchhausens by proxy"
People bandying around psychiatric terms should actually know something about psychiatry. What would the entomologist that keeps defiling this wiki know about psychiatry?
NielsMayer 17:03, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
The "Morgellons" page is complete garbage and needs a rewrite. The current contents of "Morgellons" best fits under the rubric of "Delusional Parasitosis and quack psychiatry." The page is a completely one-sided piling on of half-baked psychiatric nonsense in an attempt to distract people from a real disease... this is reminiscent of the decades of accusations against Gulf War Veterans suffering from "Gulf War Syndrome" as malingerers and headcases, which prevented or delayed treatment in hundreds of thousands of people from getting proper treatment for a mycoplasma infection.
Is wikipedia really the place to promote misinformation that leads to non-treatment or treatment delays in people suffering from a real disease?
Howcome the bogus psychiatric viewpoints are presented as medical facts, rather than the opinions of doctors and psychiatrists who receive big-pharma kickbacks for needlessly addicting patients to expensive, non-generic psychotropics like Zyprexa and Risperdal. Meanwhile, opposing viewpoints from within the psychiatric community are censored on ths wiki: e.g., http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/42/11/24-b
Please note that the CDC's effort to study Morgellons occurs within the CDC's "National Center for Zoonotic, Vector-Borne, and Enteric Diseases" NOT the "center for delusional parasitosis and quack psychiatry"
http://www.cdc.gov/unexplaineddermopathy/
The above site was created 6/12/2007. Perhaps the people that keep defacing the wiki with a bunch of psychiatric quackery need to take a look at the current state of affairs in the Morgellons world. Here is an excerpt from the aforementioned CDC page:
Unexplained Dermopathy (aka "Morgellons")
Introduction
Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) received an increased number of inquiries regarding an unexplained skin condition that some refer to as “Morgellons.” Persons who suffer from this unexplained skin condition report a range of cutaneous (skin) symptoms, including crawling, biting, and stinging sensations; granules, threads, or black speck-like materials on or beneath the skin; and/or skin lesions (e.g., rashes or sores). In addition to skin manifestations, some sufferers also report fatigue, mental confusion, short term memory loss, joint pain, and changes in vision.
The etiology of this condition is unknown, and the medical community has insufficient information to determine whether persons who identify themselves as having this condition have a common cause for their symptoms or share common risk factors.
To assist in learning more about this condition, CDC plans to conduct an epidemiologic investigation and has convened a multidisciplinary working group to provide guidance on the design of the investigation. The goals of the investigation are to better characterize the clinical and epidemiologic features of this condition and to generate hypotheses about factors that may cause or contribute to sufferers’ symptoms.
It is my understanding that the CDC task force is now headed by a veterinarian. When's the last time you took your pet to a veterinarian concerned about parasites and came back with a diagnosis "your dog is delusional"?? Actually, if the psychiatric quacks had their way, they'd want the vet to accuse the pet owner of "munchhausens by proxy"
People bandying around psychiatric terms should actually know something about psychiatry. What would the entomologist that keeps defiling this wiki know about psychiatry?"
NielsMayer 17:35, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
The symptoms and diagnosis section was recently replaced by ward20 ( talk · contribs) with the entire text from http://morgellons.org/case.htm, morgellons.org clear states "No part of this website may be reproduced without expressed written permission from the Morgellons Research Foundation." [25]. It seems copying an entire page is a breach of copyright, and not what Wikipedia is about. I reverted that section. I don't think that the entire list of symptoms needs to be there anyway. Really all that is needed are the key symptoms, (itching, lesions, fibers in the skin and malaise) Herd of Swine 16:12, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
This should be subordinate to theories and research because it is one of the theories. I wanted to get discussion because it is a large change.
Actually there are only two mainstream theories at this point, I think I may work on that point in lead and background.
Ward20 18:10, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
I think the point about there not being any published records of analysis of Morgellons fibers is quite verifiable - in exactly the same way that one can verify that no one has published a chemical profile of the blood of Bigfoot, or published an analysis of the bones of the Loch Ness Monster; there are such a limited number of references to the topic, that one can easily examine all of them, and see what is and is not present in the source material. The only claim ever made regarding testing of Morgellons fibers was that the Tulsa Police supposedly compared them to fibers in their database, but no actual results were published - and Savely herself has stated "There is preliminary information that the fibers are made of cellulose, but this information has neither been formally studied, nor confirmed." I would cosider that an adequate citation to the lack of chemical analysis, wouldn't you? In fact, I'll go ahead and add the quote now. Dyanega 07:32, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
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