Imagine that you have the sensation of bugs crawling, stinging, and biting underneath your skin. In addition, open sores that do not heal develop on your skin. Worse yet, you can see colored filaments that can be extracted from the open sores, on the surface of the skin or just underneath the skin.

This sounds like something out of science fiction, but it isn’t; welcome to the nightmare of Morgellon’s Disease. This skin disorder is relatively new; the name was coined in 2002 by biologist Mary Leitao whose son developed a lesion on his lip from which colorful fibers were extracted by his mother. The fibers can be black, red, white, blue, green, and pink; the microscopic images of these fibers are amazing to see.

Morgellon’s patients also suffer from debilitating fatigue, cognitive impairment, and pain in the joints, muscles, and connective tissue.

Because the symptoms of this disorder/condition/disease are so sensational, it seems as though the medical community is not taking it seriously. Unfortunately many doctors simply view patients with the condition as having delusional parasitosis and dismiss this altogether.

The Morgellon’s Research Foundation, founded by Mary Leitao, feels that this is a new infectious disease which will be verified when future research is completed.

I find it interesting that the fibers are not man made and don’t come from a plant. It appears the body does manufacture them. Of interest, too, is the fact that so many Morgellon’s sufferers have written to their congressmen out of sheer frustration and the fact there is no where to turn for any definitive treatment, that finally the CDC has developed a task force to study Morgellon’s (Ok, we don’t believe it is a disease, but just in case we’re wrong, let’s develop a task force to study it).

Here are some links to sites about Morgellon’s Disease. Make sure you look at the images. This is truly a fascinating phenomenon.

Morgellon’s Disease - Google Video

Morgellon’s Disease - Psychology Today