Okay, Chelsea, we have a plethora of topical news articles to talk about. Take your pick.
I have three. I will summarize them into very short headlines. No, not headlines yet. Those
are my favorites. I have an alien topic. I have a cryptid topic and I have a depressing
topic. I pick the good old solid alien. Harvard scientists wants to launch an investigation
into meteor at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, which he believes is actually alien technology.
This was posted on the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail? Yeah, middling resource, but I thought
it was a fun topic. Posted April 23rd by Gina Martinez. A controversial Harvard scientist
says he wants to launch an investigation into a meteor that he believes is actually alien
technology lying at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Last week, the US Space Command confirmed
the meteor that hit Earth in January of 2014 did come from another solar system and is therefore
the first known interstellar object. US Space Command officials have said that the meteor
measuring just 1.5 feet across was indeed an interstellar object. Their confirmation confirms
the famous interstellar object known as Oumuamua, which you'll remember because that thing doesn't
come up anywhere else, but with that one comment thing, I okay, hopefully, figures crossed.
Harvard in 2017 is actually the second interstellar object to visit our solar system. But Harvard
physicist Avi Loeb claimed on Wednesday that the object is instead a piece of alien technology.
Quote, our discovery of an interstellar meteor heralds a new research frontier Loeb wrote
in The Debrief. Quote, the fundamental question is whether any interstellar meteor might indicate
a composition that is unambiguously artificial in origin. Better still, perhaps some technological
components would survive the impact. He suggested scooping up the object from the bottom of the
Pacific Ocean with a magnet in order to examine the artificial object and added that retrieving
the object could be an opportunity to fulfill a lifelong dream of getting his hands on alien
technology. My dream is to press some buttons on a functional piece of equipment that was
manufactured outside of Earth. Loeb wrote, Loeb has made a name for himself for openly
believing that aliens have made contact with Earth. In 2021, the physicist released a book
entitled, Extraterrestrial colon, the first sign of intelligent life beyond Earth that
argued that Oumuamua is not a comet or asteroid, but a light sail, a method of spacecraft
propulsion. Oumuamua was discovered in October of 2017 by a telescope in Hawaii millions of
miles away. At the time of the discovery, Loeb received backlash from scientists after
claiming the object was actually a discarded piece of technology from aliens. Quote, We
know that it's artificially made. It had no cometary tail. We know that we made it. So
that provides evidence that we can tell the difference between a rock and an object that
is pushed by sunlight. The trouble is the only way to know for certain Oumuamua's origin
is by taking an image of it, but the object is already too far away. What he's saying
is basically we know what a light sail would look like because we've made a light sail
before. Dr. Moser confirmed that the velocity estimate reported to NASA is sufficiently
accurate to indicate an interstellar trajectory was back in 2019. Harvard University researchers
posted a study of the preprint server, ARC's if I don't know what that means, acknowledging
that the meteors existence and saying it had come from outside our solar system. The study,
which still hasn't been peer reviewed, so a little out there still reported the meteor
as originating from interstellar space with 99.999% confidence. According to the authors,
the study has been awaiting peer review for years so the claim could be confirmed, but
it's faced roadblocks from the US government, which was withholding key information from
a publicly available NASA database. Information about the meteor is scarce, although its details,
including its coordinates above Manus Island, are logged in NASA's Center for Near Earth
Object Studies. And that's the article. Okay, I held onto my comments for once until the
end. Oh good. First of all, I was wondering about a comment named Omoamua. It sounded
like it was from Hawaii, but the telescope was in Hawaii and that's my comment. Yes,
and they used Maori language to name it. I believe it's Omoamua in Maori is the traveler.
Oh, that's cool. Yeah. There's more to it than I thought, but I was like, that's a weird
name. But then you said the telescope's in Hawaii and I was like, yeah, it does sound
like it's from Hawaii. Second, at first you made it sound like the only reason he thought
that it had alien technology is because it was the second thing that was interstellar.
Yeah, I think that's literally it. Really? But to be fair, it seemed towards the end
that it took a little bit of a turn because there was reasoning and I don't have like
a audiographic memory, but it had something to do with the way it was flying and we've
seen things fly in a certain way and this was flying differently. And that's Omoamua.
So Omoamua did not have a tail. That was it. When a comet is flying, its tail will always
be facing away from the sun. So whether it's flying towards the center away from the sun,
it's always going to be facing away from it. It's not going to be behind it. That's why
the Harvard professor believes it was alien technology because it kind of fair enough
at the same time, maybe because it's interstellar is just like weird. But either way, I think
inter second interstellar object ever, even if it's not alien, like why not get it so
we can see where it came from and what's going on. Maybe it does have some weird stuff on
it that we've never seen before. Oh yeah, I guarantee you it's going to have some unique
characteristics to it. So it's likely since it was only 1.5 feet across completely destroyed
and coming into our atmosphere or at least on contact with the ocean. Well then what's
he talking about? If it's 1.5 feet across like it was going 100,000 miles. Oh that's
not very big. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm sure you've played with beach balls that were bigger than
this thing. Yeah. 1.5 meters is not big. No 1.5 feet. That's less. That's way less.
Since it was confirmed that it or at least in this paper that is non peer reviewed. So
it's really hard to say it's confirmed 9.9999. Yes. So if that paper has a 60% chance of
being right that it is 100% right that it's from interstellar space. Yeah. Math. Just
kidding. But there are already like many astronomers have who hypothesized that basically anything
coming from extra solar systems outside of ours would be incredibly rare so much so that
we would never see one in our like advanced civilization. That was my next point. Like
what are the odds of this thing even hitting us? Incredibly rare. It's not supposed to
happen. So that's that's part of why this guy's reasoning. I was just going to say.
Oh he's making a point here because the odds of it even hitting us are like even less than
a needle in a haystack. Yeah. I don't know if we've talked about it on this podcast before
but basically if we were going to look for extraterrestrial life we would project out
where these planets will be basically send probes very small probes that would be able
to send us a bunch. So he thinks this is a probe. That's my guess. Again I've just read
the news article not not okay. I get it. I get what he's saying. I can get behind that.
That's a good one. Yeah. Oh more more. Outside of that there are some fun things at the bottom
of different bodies of water like and the Baltic Sea there's a weird shaped rock that looks
like the Millennium Falcon that has a lot of weird rumors about it from people trying
to like investigate it. I've heard about it. And in fact we could probably do weird rocks
at the bottom of water an entire episode. Added. And with that added we can probably
get on with this episode. Okay let's do it.
Hello and welcome to Journey to the Fringe because the path to the fringe is riddled
with insanity corpses and questionable consonants so you should probably take a guide. We are
your guides if you will have us. Our names Taylor and Chelsea. And today we tackle a
very strange topic that I'm just going to pull right out front and say this. It is weird
and I don't know how it ends necessarily. It ends in a very weird way. Good. But today
we are talking about phantom illnesses. Oh. Particularly one called Morjellans disease.
You may recognize it if you are a deep lore listener of coast to coast AM as something
George Norrie was on about before he went to all senile and before long winded. Yes
before. Well at least in the process of. Which is the whole time. Okay. This is going to
be a wild ride. It's a strange illness. It has a lot of different sides to it. Well it
has two big sides and I don't know which one's correct even after like hours and hours and
hours of research. I find conflicting affirmation from credible sources. So I'm going to start
out by reading articles about early individuals in the Morjellans history who have contracted
this illness or at least believe they've contracted the illness. We're going to read through
those and then we're going to talk about descriptions of the illness and then we're
going to break down the different sides of the story and see where we're at today. Okay.
I'm excited. I had no idea this is what we're doing. This might seem a little confusing
early on because I haven't described to you what this disease is at all. But rest assured
it will make sense as we go along. I have faith. The story of Morjellans disease really
starts at least from a research point of view in 2001. I found a article from the Pittsburgh
Post Gazette posted in 2006 that outlines this nicely the original cases of this disease.
The article is titled mom fights for answers on what's wrong with her son. It is summer
2001. Drew or Andrew is two years old, almost three. He points to an irritated patch of
skin under his lips. Bugs, he says. How strange the mother thinks she's already taken Drew
to several Pittsburgh dermatologists and pediatricians, but nothing they've prescribed for eczema
for atypical scabies has stopped his itching. Mary Littow rubs him with the prescribed scabies
cream, making gentle circles with her hands. Mary Littow is the mother in this situation.
In the years that follow, the mother will think often about this moment, cursing it,
reexamining it, and pinpointing it as the start of everything as Miss Littow rubs something
fiber like a burge from the boy's skin. She'll later say as a biologist, she's mesmerized
as a mother she's horrified. Miss Littow collected a sample of the strands from Drew's
skin. They glide right off. She places them onto a slide, examining them under an $8
radio shack microscope. She's looked thousands of times in a microscope. Fancier ones first
as a biology student at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and later for five years
as a medical researcher at two Boston hospitals. She's seen nothing like this before. She
shakes her head and thinks, these things cannot be coming out of my son's body. The
symptoms that Miss Littow now attributes to some 4,500 people nationwide are by word
of most dermatologists and psychiatrists a part of a delusional parasitosis, a psychiatric
disorder. Victims complain of similar symptoms, crawling sensations, and skin infestations.
Those with delusional parasitosis insist such problems truly exist and cycle from physician
to physician, seeking validation, never finding it. But then Mary Littow sees something sprout
from her boy's skin and she sets out to find answers. Fibers, she calls them at first.
She hopes to find their merely sweater strands or simple fungi. But after months of studying,
she finds something else, something variably black and red and blue that fluoresces under
the proper light. Her first description under magnification, the fibers appear ribbon-like
and co-inacitic, meaning without cell walls. Dozens of times, Miss Littow tries to prove
herself wrong. People don't sprout fibers, logic tells her. She swabs Drew's irritations,
clean, ensuring them to be fiber-free and covers them with a sterile non-fibrous wrap.
The fibers still return. Miss Littow uses a biology lab to continue her studies. She
concludes that the medical system owes her some answers. Her husband Edward, an internist
with South Allegheny Internal Medicine in Bethel Park, tells her as much. Relay on medicine,
he says. He too feels Drew has something unknown and what good research doctor can resist a
chance to crack away at an answer. Miss Littow creates a website, Margellen's
Research Foundation, devoted to what she believes is a new disease, which she names Margellen's
after an obscure 17th century French reference to black hairs. It is now March 29, 2004.
She formally establishes the Margellen's Research Foundation, a non-profit group headcorded
in her home. She's the executive director, meaning she must endure two recurring messages,
both burdensome in their own ways. Those disputing the disease and telling her she's crazy, and
those convinced that they're suffering from it and tell her she's their last hope. Daily,
she spends four to five hours talking on the phone. She corresponds with a woman in Texas
who once poured lighter fluid on her skin lesions, hoping to set fire to the insects
inside her. She befriends a man in Virginia who gained 100 pounds and spent four years
on his sofa, isolated from friends and family. And when a 20-something dies of a painkiller
overdose, ending his fight with Margellen's symptoms, Miss Littow calls the man's mother
and tells her, we are fighting a system that's so messed up. Those registered as Margellen's
sufferers, swarm medical offices reciting stories about the fires, the fatigue, the
joint swelling, the nights in which itching prevents sleep, the fatigue that drops them
onto the couch for 30 hours straight, the hopelessness that prompts thoughts of suicide, the implausibility
of such frenzied symptoms gets a common, simpler diagnosis. They suffer terribly, but it's
psychiatric, said Dr. Eliston, a dermatologist in the Geisinger Medical System in Danville,
Montaur County. The fact that there's something online to cling to, it's a difficult obstacle
for us. The moment you mention psychiatrists, these patients get extremely angry, said psychiatrist
Alastor Monroe, author of Delusional Disorder. They say there's nothing wrong with their
brains. They have all kinds of explanations. Drew continues to see doctors. Miss Littow,
by his side, the fibers still sprout. The pair meets with UPMC dermatologist Douglas
Cress, who diagnoses eczema. His prescribed medication fails to help. Miss Littow speaks
with pediatrician Dr. Michael Frack. He knows the medical skepticism about Margellen's,
but he also knows history. He thinks Paulie Murray, who two decades before had tried to
convince the medical world that she was sick, not simply hypochondrical. Her persistence
pioneered Lyme disease. Maybe mainstream medicine has been dismissive of this too, Dr. Frack
said. They haven't given this a fair shake. He acknowledged that most physicians lack
the research power to find the causality of new diseases. He refers Miss Littow to Dr.
Fred Heldrich, a Johns Hopkins pediatrician known for solving mystery cases. Drew's
doctor refuses to prescribe powerful antibiotics without research that proves the need for
them. On the advice of Dr. Frack, Drew and Miss Littow drive to Baltimore to visit the
Hopkins expert, Dr. Heldrich. He forms his own conclusions about proper treatment of
Margellen's. I found no evidence of anything suspicious in Andrew. Dr. Heldrich wrote to
Dr. Frack after the visit, then he added Miss Littow would benefit from a psychiatric evaluation
and support. Whether Andrew has more Jellin's disease or not, I hope she will cease to use
her son in further exploring this problem. Why though? Because he thinks this is made
up. I know, but as a mom, you're not just going to like leave it and not know what's
going on. Have you heard of Munchausen syndrome before? Yes. We're essentially like a mother
is exploiting an illness that isn't there in their child. Yeah. Either they or somebody
close to them has made up illnesses in them to get attention. It's a simple explanation
of that. Okay. So that's what really thinking that it is. Yeah. Or psychosomatic. Just there's
something wrong mentally that is making it come out. I could see it just because they
complain of like bugs biting them. Yeah. The thing with me is the fibers though. And I
don't see like. We will get to that. If you can wait a couple minutes, we will get to that.
Okay. Dr. Randy Weymour finds her just in time. The Oklahoma State University assistant
professor of pharmacology and physiology stumbles onto Miss Littow's website while surfing
online. He's a glutton for unknowns. We don't claim to have all the answers he said, but
let's try to help one another on the journey. In the summer of 2005, Miss Littow moves her
family to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, a new start at the same time. Dr. Weymour and
his family drive from Tulsa, Oklahoma to California for a vacation on the way Dr. Weymour collects
dozens of fiber samples from clothing on Goodwill racks from hotel drapes from room corners
up swept for 20 years. Though he maintains an open mind. He hypothesizes that more gel
and fibers come from an outside source. Something easily explained hundreds of more gel and
fibers arrive at his lab sent from desperate patients sent from nurses and doctors as Dr.
Weymour begins a comparison. His skepticism erodes the fibers resemble one another and
yet they do not resemble hair or waste materials or cellulose or any known textile substances.
The fibers about the size of small eyebrow hairs are not living organisms. Dr. Weymour
decides he teams with a Tulsa Police Department Crime Lab to sort through fiber samples and
though the lab owns a database of more than 800 fibers, these fibers match nothing. Dr.
Weymour currently awaits spectroscopy results offering information about the physical and
chemical components of the fibers. See the people who don't want to discuss this, they
just say we don't grow red and blue fibers. To a certain extent, it's a little bit of
that earth is flat mentality Dr. Weymour said, but how many people are open to self change?
More gelons is almost as difficult to wrap your mind around as trying to convince someone
to change religious views. Think about it, how often does that work? It is June 2006.
Drew now sleeps with his eyes half open, a neurological abnormality that worries Ms.
Letow. Drew can't play baseball this season because he sweats profusely in sunshine and
sweat triggers his skin irritations. So instead, Ms. Letow pitches hit to him in the yard.
Ms. Letow gathers only a handful of donations for her foundation and has yet to receive
a grant. An anonymous blogger maintains an anti-more gelons website rife with personal
attacks. Some living with more gelons become so discontented they channel frustrations
towards the one person they can associate with the disease. People say, Mary you need
to take a break from this, but it's not like I can forget about this now. I have a lot
of friends with this and they are all incredibly sick. Their neurological problems are getting
worse. I've got to see this through. This is a mission. I don't know. I think it's
fear based behavior. It does appear to be a bit neurotic unless you realize what is driving
the force. The love of my children and the fear of an unknown disease. You know maybe
if enough baseball players get more gelons or enough politicians, children I know, I
sound like a crazy woman. But what does it take? What does it take?
The CDC terms more gelons a syndrome fictitious until proven real. Interesting that they call
it fictitious, but I don't know enough yet. That's all I'm going to say. In July of 2006,
a 13 member CDC committee meets for the second time. The group includes infectious disease
experts, parasitic disease experts, environmental health workers, and indeed mental health specialists.
Ms. Letow waits at home one mile from the beach knowing a CDC issued answer could take
months. She and Drew watch SpongeBob. At the end of the day, Ms. Letow said the truth will
stand alone. So that's the story of really the first person publicly came out of seven
more gelons. And SpongeBob was important there. What they're watching that day seems like
an important part. I actually had to edit this down a lot.
It's SpongeBob's date. There's probably four more pages in this article, which I edited
out just because there is so much angling the story or positioning the story in it.
Yeah, okay. It definitely paints the CDC and the medical
community as off base. Well, that's what I'm thinking right now. If there's multiple people
with this, I had a range there. I was like, okay, psychological could be bugs biting the
skin seems like it might be. And then if multiple people are having it, I would think it warrants
a little looking into and that's basically my train of thought right now.
That doctor Wymore that is referenced earlier on who was studying the samples, I could not
for the life of me find his research paper on that. Oh, weird. So he's talking about
how these things don't resemble any fabrics out there or anything that he'd seen before
can't find that paper. Okay, weird, but okay. Yeah, references
it. No, they don't reference his paper. They reference him saying it. I can't find any
actual weird. Okay. There about it. Okay. Which of course, I don't have access to all
the research websites. So maybe maybe it's out there on one of the scholarly distributors
that I don't have access to. But I just couldn't find it. Okay. And I think he comes up again
in my next article. This one's from The Guardian by a journalist by the name of Will Store
published on May 7 2011. And this is titled more gelins a hidden epidemic or mass hysteria.
It all started in August 2007 on a family holiday in New England. Paul had been watching
Harry Potter in the Order of the Phoenix with his wife and two sons. Again, connection here,
children's TV shows. I was just going to make that connection. And he had started to itch
his legs, his arms, his torso, it was everywhere. It must be fleas in the seat. He decided that
the 55 year old it executive from Birmingham had been itching ever since. And the mystery
of what is wrong with him has only deepened when Paul rubbed his fingertips over the pimples
that dotted the skin he felt spines. Weird alien things like splinters. Then in 2008, his wife
was soothing his back with surgical spirit when the cotton swab she was using gathered a curious
blue black haze from his skin. Paul went out and bought a 40 pound microscope and examined the cotton.
40 pound. What were these curling colored fibers? He googled the words fibers itch sting skin.
And there was his answer. It must be all the symptoms fit. He had a new disease called more
gelins. The fibers were the product of mysterious creatures that burrow and breed in the body.
As he read on, he had no idea that more gelins would turn out to be the worst kind of answers
imaginable. The campaign group Charles E. Holman Foundation states that there are sufferers in
every continent except Antarctica of mergelis. Thousands have written to Congress demanding
action in response. More than 40 senators, including Hillary Clinton, John McCain and
pre-president Barack Obama pressured the Center for Disease Control and Prevention to investigate
in 2006. It formed a special task for setting aside $1 million to study the condition.
Sufferers include folk singer Joni Mitchell, who has complained of this weird incurable disease
that seems like it's from outer space. Fibers in a variety of colors protrude out of my skin.
They cannot be forensically identified as animal, vegetable, or mineral. More gelins is a slow,
unpredictable killer, a terrorist disease, which I think is more of a show of the times than anything.
It will blow up one of your organs, leaving you in bed for a year. That's an entire quote from
Joni Mitchell outside of that part where I say the terrorists say.
Joni Mitchell, hey. Interesting. And then I just want to point out the fact too that you said that
it's reported on all continents because literally right before you said that, I was like, I wonder
if it's tied to a certain area because you also mentioned bugs planting it in the skin,
which if it was bugs, you would think it would be confined to a certain area.
Possibly, but we will come back to that at some point. Maybe.
Maybe. If not, this is all we had to say about it. Exactly. And you will like it.
I already do. Oh, good. So it's new, frightening, and profoundly odd. But if you were to seek the
view of the medical establishment, you'd find the strangest fact about this disease.
Morjelans doesn't exist. Paul has seen an array of experts, GPs, allergy doctors, infectious
disease clinicians, and dermatologists. Most end up agreeing with the skin specialist to whom he
first took samples of his fibrous-gain cotton. His sores are self-inflicted and he suffers
from delusions of parasitosis, a psychiatric condition in which people falsely believe themselves
being fested. This particular form of delusional parasitosis is thought to be unique and that's
spread through the internet. Whereas in the past, episodes of mass hysteria were limited to small
communities, perhaps the most famous being the witch panic of Salem in 1690s. Can I clarify
something? Is it the internet giving the fibers to us? No, it would be the fact that people can talk
on forums. But wouldn't they see the sores as well as the evidence that it was there?
Yes, but the real question is, and I don't think it really comes up later, if you're itching and
you're feeling itchy, you're going to get sores. You just are. If you're scratching enough, yes.
Exactly. Well, the first thing that I thought of is people using drugs that feel like they have
bugs crawling on their skin, like, particularly. There are other parasitosis that are just bugs
crawling under your skin. Okay, yeah, with like mental illness. Mental illness and even it is
a side effect of some prescription drugs. Yes, probably ones along the lines of the ones with
drug use that are like... Not just drug use, things that will impact your neurological path.
Yeah, okay, yeah, because I know with riddle in and stuff that are, what's the word for it now?
Amphetamines. Yes, amphetamines. Typically, we'll do that because they're neurological.
And yeah, this draws a lot of similarities with that. It's just that the symptoms have
reached a point where you're scarring and you're finding fibers under your skin.
Okay, which could be neurological. I get it. Could be neurological as well. In a three-year-old,
like you wouldn't think so, but I guess they can be mentally ill as well. Well, that's the part
that's interesting. And again, it's the mother that's been championing it. Not that a three-year-old
could. Yes. It wouldn't be able to, but okay. Exactly. Okay, I think we've, I've had enough
right now. Okay, Paula is not convinced by this diagnosis though. He carries an alcohol
handle everywhere he goes, has four showers a day and steam cleans his clothes. The stress leaves
him exhausted, short tempered. He has difficulty concentrating or applying himself at work. His
lowest points have been pretty much feeling like ending it. Possibly it's associated with the times
the medical profession has dismissed me. I can't see myself living forever with this. In spring 2005,
Randy Weymour, which again, we talked about him before, associate professor of pharmacology at
Oklahoma State University stumbled across an article about more jelly. Reading about the fibers
sufferers believed were the byproducts of weird parasite, but which were dismissed by dermatologists
as humdrum environmental detritus. Last year he approached, so that'd be 2010, he approached
several commercial laboratories to run further tests. But the moment they discovered the job was
related to more gelids, firm after firm backed out. Finally, Weymour found a lab prepared to take
the work. It is these results that will be revealed during a two day conference, which took place
later on. I had to edit out the conference, just keep this like streamlined episode. Next, this
journalist talked to Randy Weymour. We have not yet exactly replicated the exact results of the
forensics people and Tulsa. He admits, so far the laboratory has found Weymour's various
margillons fibers to be nylon, cotton, a blonde human hair, a fungal fiber, a rodent hair, and
down, most likely from geese or ducks. That's disappointing, I say. It is for the most part,
disappointing, but there was a bunch of cellulose that didn't make sense on one,
and another was unknown. There's a pause. Well, they said it was a big fungal fiber,
but they weren't completely convinced. So that's where I get so confused about this guy's research,
and the fact I have not found his actual report. Yeah, it's weird, but it's now another article
that's mentioned him. But it's gone into more detail because he's actually sent this off to
other locations that say it's very easy to say what these are. Yeah, another couple of things
I want to say here. This seems like a small percent of things compared to like other diseases.
And in that small percent, I would imagine there are times where certain fibers can be on wounds
that you would mistake for something in the small percentage of error, right? There's always error.
Well, yeah, there's always error. And there's always whenever you're sending things off to a
different lab, like if you're getting more than one lab, the transfers always could have some issues.
Yeah. And like my hair is everywhere. I could have true, but you're not in a lab. No, I'm not in a
lab. And my hair is like strongly identifiable. It's a long, dark hair. Like I could have eczema
one day, which I do have and wipe it and have like someone's hair on it and be like, that's weird.
I've never seen that before, right? In a small margin of error. Well, exactly. Or it could come
up somewhere in a lab. My hair could drop there. Someone else's hair could drop there that I don't
recognize. And I think this is that. And actually hearing that like discussion about like sending
it off different labs reminded me a lot about that university. Sorry, I don't know if she was a
university professor, but that scientist who was trying to get Bigfoot hair strands examined. Yes.
Do you remember those stories where she had to pretend that it wasn't Bigfoot?
Isn't she the one that was David Pilatus was really pushing? Yeah. Yeah. Which we could probably do
an episode on that. It was an interesting story. I'm going to put it out of here. The other thing
I want to say at this point is I wouldn't put it past on the exact opposite end of this spectrum.
I wouldn't put it past Big Pharma to not want to recognize a disease for some reason, whatever
reason it may be, they may have a million reasons. A new disease means you can treat it. And just
so they go exactly on the other end of that means you can treat it means you can sell more medication.
These would not be labs that are pharmaceutically attached. These would just be research labs.
In which case more reason to shoot it down, I guess. Maybe. Well, not necessarily. I think it
always does follow that stance that large claims require large evidence. It's not quite, I didn't
say it elegantly like the actual statement is, but it's something along those lines. We're
journey to the French. We're not elegant here. But yeah, I just you put Big Pharma into the equation
of saying whether or not it's a real disease and there's a lot of corruption behind Big Pharma.
So you never know on that end. I don't think that's necessarily anything to bring up just because
either way it goes, Big Pharma makes money. Yeah. If it's a psychosomatic issue, they're going to
sell you psychosomatic drugs. If it's not something that it is. If it's not, then they're going to
make money selling a new drug. True. Unless there's something else behind it. Unless there's a
hot water basket to cure it. Yeah. That hasn't come up as an answer. Well, you wouldn't think for
Fipers community. I got one more paragraph to finish off my articles and then we can talk about
the rest. Back in London, I find a 2008 paper on more gelons in the journal Dermatologic Therapy
that describes patients picking at their skin continuously in order to extract an organism.
Obsessive cleaning rituals, showering often and individuals going to many physicians such as
infectious disease specialists and dermatologists. All behaviors consistent with DOP, which is the
psychosomatics. After finding fibers on my own hand, I'm fairly satisfied. Mergelons is some
21st century genre of OCD spread through the internet and the fibers are as Weimar's labs
reports, particles of everyday miscellaneous stuff, cotton, human hair, rat hair and so on.
And that last part has to do with his time at a convention on more gelons, which I skipped over,
but I think it's important to just bring that last little bit about his opinion on it. I find this
crazy in the fact that it either is some very fundamentally different disease that literally
has your body producing fibers or it is a mass hysteria of the internet age, which we see many
times online, which I find in its own right, a sub research area to look at like Q and the
Flat Earth Society exploding in the last decade. Yeah. And I can't say, well, I'm guilty of it.
I'm not sure how many people listening are guilty of it. If you're feeling anything,
you go Google what it is. And it's something even remotely matches up.
Well, and it's not just Google what that is. It's going to be and this one came up so much with
COVID. Do your own research, which is really somebody saying, I'm not comfortable explaining
this to you. So go to this crazy website using the keywords that I Google. Yeah. It's just how
the world works these days is that it's very easy to get led into an area where you can find like
minded individuals that agree with you and people don't like to be disputed. So if you can find a
group of like minded individuals, you will stay there and you can find anything on the internet
now. Exactly. As long as you're searching the correct keywords. So that's a good point. So those
are the early cases that I wanted to highlight and the newspaper articles on them. Okay, I'm torn
so far now. And usually I start with this, but I thought it was important to bring it to this
point in the article. Are you ready for it? Yeah. Okay. The Wikipedia article. Okay, good. I'm ready.
First off, I just wanted to bring up the first thing that I felt was important to talk about
in the Wikipedia article is the CDC investigation that's referenced in both of those articles.
Okay, there is a CDC investigation. Yeah. That again, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton kind of
pushed to get them to do. Okay. And John McCain. The Margellans Research Foundation coordinated
a mailing campaign via their website in which thousands of people sent form letters to a
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Task Force, which first met in June 2006. By August
of 2006, the task force consisting of 12 people, including two pathologists, a toxicologist,
an ethicist, a mental health expert, and a specialist in infectious, parasitic, environmental,
and chronic diseases. In June 2007, the CDC started a website related to Margellans. CDC studies of an
unexplained dermapathy. And by November of 2007, the CDC opened an investigation into the condition.
Kaiser Permanente, a healthcare consortium in Northern California, was chosen to assist with
the investigation, which involved skin biopsies from affected people in characterizations of
foreign materials such as fibers or threads obtained from people to determine their potential
source. Okay, here we go. The US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and the American Academy
of Dermatology assisted with pathology. Hold on. US Armed Forces? Yeah, the US Armed Forces
Institute of Pathology. So just like, I don't know what that is, but they're science arm.
The Arby's science arm. Okay. In June 2012, the CDC released the results of their study. The CDC
concluded that 59% of subjects showed cognitive deficits and 63% had evidence of clinically
significant symptoms. They stated that 50% of the individuals had drugs in their system and 78
reported exposure to solvents, potential skin irritants. The study detected no parasites
or mycobacteria in the samples collected from any individuals. Most materials collected from
participant skin were composed of cellulose likely of cotton origin. And in 2012, the
Morjelen Research Foundation closed down and directed future inquiries to the Oklahoma State
University. And still to this day on the Wikipedia page at the very top of the article where it
gives you a synopsis. Morjelen is the informal name for a self-diagnosed, scientifically
unsubstantiated skin condition in which individuals have sores that they believe contain fibrous
materials. Morjelen is not well understood, but the general medical consensus is that it is a form
of delusional parasitosis. The sores are typically the results of compulsive scratching and the fibers
when analyzed are consistently found to have originated from cotton and other textiles.
So that's what Wikipedia has to say about it. They've made up their mind.
Wikipedia is always consistently like made up its mind about things. Yeah. It's a tough one because
of course if you have something like this, you're going to be compelled to have a million showers
and be compulsive about like changing your clothes and stuff like this. And having clean skin, yeah.
But at the other side of it, you're like you could be like severely mentally ill and just be like OCD
and thinking this. And then as disgusting as it is, if you have a sore and you're wearing a shirt
and it dries, it will take some of the fibers. I'm so torn on this. Especially if you're
compulsively scratching. Yeah. If it's an open sore, it's bleeding or anything, you've broken the skin.
I have eczema. I'm used to this as disgusting as this may sound and it dries and you're wearing a
shirt. It takes some of the fiber of your shirt with it. But they're also describing feeling
like hard fibers sticking out of their skin. Which and it's really hard to say whether or not that's
just the fact that they're online with that or if it is its own disease in itself. Well it can be.
And like I was saying earlier, like you can Google anything like doctor Google and find anything to
fit what you're feeling pretty much. And then you feel like you've diagnosed yourself. I'm really
torn on this one. Next up though is WebMD because it has a page on this as well. Okay, let's do that.
And I thought let's just go with that. If you're going online and checking for a condition, this
is where you go. So I thought it'd be good to at least check them. The question of whether more
gelons is a disease or a delusion has prompted debate and new research in recent years. The
CDC that states that the condition is not caused by an infection or anything in the environment.
The CDC study also included a lab analysis of skin fibers in more gel and patients. The analysis
showed that these fibers were mostly cotton such as typically found in clothing or bandages. CDC
research also revealed that the skin source seemed to be the results of long term picking and scratching
the skin. The CDC report goes on to say we are not able to conclude based on this study whether this
unexplained dermopathy represents a new condition as has been proposed by those who use the term
more gelons or a wider recognition of an existing condition such as delusional parasitosis. The
results of the CDC study have been archived and are no longer updated. The CDC does not plan to do
any further research on the matter. Besides the CDC, other research teams have contributed to the
debate on more gelons. Previous case studies and research have suggested that more gelons may be
linked to Lyme disease. Some patients with symptoms of more gelons had tested positive for the bacteria
that causes Lyme disease. But according to more gelons, researchers at Oklahoma State University,
there is no evidence to prove this theory. Likewise, there is no evidence of Lyme infection
any of the people in the CDC study. A 2010 study found a potential link between more gelons symptoms
and an underactive thyroid, hypothyroidism. More research needs to be done on this finding,
and more gelons also appear similar to a condition seen in cattle called bovine digital dermatitis,
which is due to an infection according to a 2011 study, but no conclusion can be reached
from these small studies. So a little more open than the Wikipedia article for sure. It definitely
talks about other possible reasons for it, but says there's nothing to back it up.
I mean, there's nothing because it seems like it's so dismissive. Of course, there's nothing,
except for this one guy that we can't find his paper for. Yeah. And just so we are all on the
same page, I thought it would be better to go through medical groups. I shouldn't say medical.
People who have accumulated all of the research papers on this, because I tried reading the
research papers, they are all over the map. They are crazy. And you need to know a lot of medicine
to actually be able to read those. I read some abstracts, I started reading those papers, and
I thought, you know what, let's actually go to the people who know what they're talking about
and see what they've accumulated, which is why WebMD can be a good place to look,
why Wikipedia can be a good place to look, and why my last one I want to look at, the Mayo Clinic,
that was made famous by the place that diagnosed Mr. Burns with everything.
Mr. Burns, I'm afraid you are the sickest man in the United States. You have everything. You mean
I have pneumonia? Yes. Juvenile diabetes? Yes. Hysterical pregnancy? A little bit, yes.
What they have to say about more gel and disease. Just so we're on the same page,
Mr. Burns did not have more gel and disease because that episode actually happens for more
gel and disease actually even brought up in the public eye. Oh, that's a fun fact. If you go on
Mayo Clinic, they have a full article on it. More Gel and Disease is an uncommon, poorly understood
condition characterized by small fibers or other particles emerging from skin sores. People with
this condition often report feeling as if something were crawling on or stinging their skin. Some
doctors recognize the condition as a delusional manifestation and treat it with cognitive behavioral
therapy. Antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs and counseling. Others think the symptoms are related
to an infectious process in skin cells. Further study is needed. People who have more gel and
disease report the following signs and symptoms. Skin rashes or sores that can cause intense itching.
Crawling sensations on and under the skin often compared to insects moving, stinging or biting.
Fibers, threads or black stringy materials in and on the skin. Fatigue, difficulty concentrating,
short-term memory loss, depressed mood. The intense itching and open sores associated with
more gel and disease can severely interfere with a person's quality of life. What do researchers
know about more gel and disease? The research on more gel and disease by multiple groups over
decades has yielded conflicting results. Multiple studies report possible links between more gel
and disease with borealis spiritschetti, which I am probably butchering, but we're going to keep
going. These results contradict an earlier study by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention,
CDC, which concluded that the condition isn't caused by an infection or parasite. The CDC study
of 115 people with more gel and disease, which the CDC refers to as an unexplained dermatopathy.
Geez, there's so many medical words I'm butchering right now, but we're just going to
keep plowing through and butchering these words. Let's do it. Showed that most of the fibers in
the skin wounds were cotton. The CDC report noted that the condition is most often seen in middle
age white women, which actually that's the first time it's come up at this point, but it is interesting.
That is the group with the most free time that is most susceptible to this kind of thing.
Well, and you look back to your first case and it was a middle-aged white woman with her son.
Possibly projecting it onto her son. I mean, whether or not she's right or not,
she's projecting it onto her son because it's not her son saying,
I have fibers coming out of my skin. It's her. Okay, interesting. And its symptoms are very similar
to those of mental illness involving false beliefs about manifestation by parasites.
Small research studies have tried to determine the cause and effective treatments for more
gel and disease, but there is still no proven guidance on diagnoses and trip. Further research
is needed. Common attitudes of health professionals towards more gel and disease include thinking
that more gel and disease is a specific condition that needs to be confirmed by research, thinking
that signs and symptoms of more gel and disease are caused by another condition often a mental
illness and not acknowledging more gel and disease or a reserving judgment until more is known about
it. Some people who suspect they have more gel and disease claim they've been ignored or dismissed
as fakers. In contrast, some doctors say that people who report signs and symptoms of more
gel and disease typically resist other explanations for their condition. That's what they have for
the most part. They do have a little bit here about coping with more gel and disease. Okay,
so if you're listening to this and you seem to be experiencing it, here's what they say. The signs
and symptoms linked to more gel and disease can be distressing. Even though health professionals
may disagree about the nature of the condition, you deserve compassionate treatment to manage
your signs and symptoms. A, establish a relationship with a caring health care team. Find a doctor who
acknowledges your concerns, does a thorough examination, talks through treatment options with
you and works with a multidisciplinary team. B, be patient. Your doctor will likely look for
known conditions that point to evidence-based treatments before considering a diagnosis of
more gel and disease. C, keep an open mind. Consider various causes for your signs and
symptoms and discuss your doctor's recommendations for treatment, which may include long-term mental
health therapy. D, seek treatment for other conditions. Get treatment for anxiety, depression,
or any other condition that affects your thinking, moods, or behavior. So that's what I found the
most sympathetic to it actually being a disease. That's really nice of them. And you'll notice a
little bit in the last two, both WebMD and the Mayo Clinic, vaguely mentioned Lyme disease.
And I found a paper published on May 10th of 2021 that I just want to quote a little bit of.
A study published in the prestigious journal, Clinical Cosmetic and Investigational Dermatology
illustrates the link between Lyme disease and the mysterious skin condition called
Morjellin's disease. Okay. The news was hailed by Charles E. Holman, Morjellin's disease foundation
of Austin, Texas. The investigation was funded by the Cult to Serve Foundation of Provo, Utah.
Morjellin's disease is associated with tick-borne infections, including Lyme disease. Patients with
the condition are frequently afflicted with disfiguring skin lesions containing strange,
microscopic, multicolored thread-like filaments. The disease is often accompanied by symptoms
characteristic of Lyme disease, including fatigue, joint and muscle pain and neurological problems.
This paper strengthens the argument that Morjellin's disease is infectious in origin,
says Cindy Casey Holman, director of the C-E-H-M-D-F. It is heartbreaking that the repeatable,
solid scientific evidence is not widely accepted by the medical community and the patients are
stigmatized. They suffer. If you want to learn more about it, it's fairly easy to find, look for,
headblad, tick-borne, Morjellin's disease. That is where I entered everything because it just got
so ridiculous trying to figure out which is right and which is wrong and all this. Frankly,
I couldn't find anything about that paper because I couldn't find the paper. That was just a particle.
Interesting. Okay. I do have a few comments. The whole time I was waiting to find out a reason
for what was causing this. Obviously, we're not going to get that. No. It varies. People have
all different conclusions on the map from it is psychosomatic to tick-borne to other parasites,
to a virus, to a bacteria, to aliens. People out there believe it is an alien.
You could put literally anything right now because literally you go on the internet and you probably
Google your symptoms and everything under the sun comes up because it's not a diagonal. I literally
Googled sore plus fiber. Then add aliens, question mark, and it'll say aliens.
Morjellin's disease came up. Like I said earlier, as gross as it is, if you have an open wound,
eczema, one, which is eczema, you scratch it or if it gets bad enough during whatever season,
it's an open wound and you wear a shirt on top of it. The cotton from your shirt is going to stick
to it and it dries. I think importantly with eczema, it doesn't go away either, really.
But then you bring up the fact that they gave probably cortisol and it didn't go away. Then it
just seems to be dismissed very fast other than the one guy that wrote a paper. He seems to be
into it, but no one else seems to be into it at all. If your body, for whatever reason, I was so
interested in that. Why would your body be producing fibers? What would cause that? Unless it's silkworms.
Well, and that's the whole thing. Nothing else produces fibers in your body. Unless,
I don't know, you get bit by a radioactive spider, your body may produce fibers.
Exactly. Or maybe silkworms produce fiber. You can make silk out of it.
I guess if you're bitten by a radioactive silkworm, you can do that.
But there's nothing else that you're going to be bit by that's going to produce fibers. What would
make you as a human produce fibers that you can make a quilt under?
Being bitten by a radioactive flax seed. Yeah. But then at that point, you could profit off this.
You can make human-made, more-dellans-disease quilts.
I don't know if they're going to be that big of quilts.
Dishcloth.
Maybe a dull dishcloth or something like that.
That's what I was really waiting for. What would be the reason that would cause a human body to
produce fibers out of a sore? That's so bizarre. And if you were, it probably would feel like
bugs under your skin. The fibers would be trying to poke out. And the one guy said,
it felt like fibers. But at the same time, I don't have a beard, but I would assume
that's what it would feel like. I would say, especially if it's a male that's in his 50s
that's reporting this, he would know what the feeling of having an ingrown hair is compared to
a having a fiber under your skin. Yeah. That's the only thing I could relate it to. Because
beards are, I don't like them being close to me. They're hard and like,
herdy if they touch your skin. That's what I'm relating it to at this point. But yeah,
you would know. A three-year-old probably wouldn't be growing a beard unless he is. And that's why
it's so alarming. It wouldn't just wave away. But now you kind of get why. It's like, I don't know
how this ends. This is just where we're at with this. It is. It's very confusing. And it seems to
be dismissed very fast, which is also confusing. It's both dismissed very fast in some articles,
especially on Wikipedia, which I found crazy. At the same time too, there is research going into
it on whether or not there's a link with ticks. Ticks in themselves, like Lyme disease is a very
mysterious illness that has its own weird backstory. Yeah. And there's other illnesses that are very
mysterious as to diagnosis and what they are and everything like that. So it's not like out of the
realm of possibility, but it seems very dismissed. So this is a very mysterious thing. I'm intrigued
by it. And if anything ever comes out about it that solidifies what it is, we will keep you up
to date here on Journey to the Fringe. But for now, this is just where we're at. Okay. We journeyed to
the Path Fringe and that's what we do came to a weird open-ended trail. And now we turn back.
I don't like it, but I can live with it. And I'm glad that I usually want my hikes to end in like a
waterfall or a nice view. But here it's just my my hikes usually have an answer at the end. But
I'm glad you brought this to our attention. I feel unfulfilled by it. But happy that now I know
what more jealous diseases and like probably 70% of our episodes, they do not end you with a happy
feeling. That's why you listen to it. But hey, we can we can use the happy words at the end. Hey,
be happy. And there we go. We're cured. Glad that's over. Anyhow, I have been Taylor here with Chelsea
here on Journey to the Fringe. Thank you all for listening and we will see you next week.
Thank you for listening to Journey to the Fringe. If you have liked what you have listened to,
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