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Okay, Chelsea, we have a plethora of topical news articles to talk about. Take your pick.

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I have three. I will summarize them into very short headlines. No, not headlines yet. Those

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are my favorites. I have an alien topic. I have a cryptid topic and I have a depressing

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topic. I pick the good old solid alien. Harvard scientists wants to launch an investigation

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into meteor at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, which he believes is actually alien technology.

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This was posted on the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail? Yeah, middling resource, but I thought

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it was a fun topic. Posted April 23rd by Gina Martinez. A controversial Harvard scientist

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says he wants to launch an investigation into a meteor that he believes is actually alien

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technology lying at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Last week, the US Space Command confirmed

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the meteor that hit Earth in January of 2014 did come from another solar system and is therefore

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the first known interstellar object. US Space Command officials have said that the meteor

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measuring just 1.5 feet across was indeed an interstellar object. Their confirmation confirms

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the famous interstellar object known as Oumuamua, which you'll remember because that thing doesn't

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come up anywhere else, but with that one comment thing, I okay, hopefully, figures crossed.

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Harvard in 2017 is actually the second interstellar object to visit our solar system. But Harvard

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physicist Avi Loeb claimed on Wednesday that the object is instead a piece of alien technology.

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Quote, our discovery of an interstellar meteor heralds a new research frontier Loeb wrote

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in The Debrief. Quote, the fundamental question is whether any interstellar meteor might indicate

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a composition that is unambiguously artificial in origin. Better still, perhaps some technological

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components would survive the impact. He suggested scooping up the object from the bottom of the

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Pacific Ocean with a magnet in order to examine the artificial object and added that retrieving

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the object could be an opportunity to fulfill a lifelong dream of getting his hands on alien

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technology. My dream is to press some buttons on a functional piece of equipment that was

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manufactured outside of Earth. Loeb wrote, Loeb has made a name for himself for openly

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believing that aliens have made contact with Earth. In 2021, the physicist released a book

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entitled, Extraterrestrial colon, the first sign of intelligent life beyond Earth that

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argued that Oumuamua is not a comet or asteroid, but a light sail, a method of spacecraft

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propulsion. Oumuamua was discovered in October of 2017 by a telescope in Hawaii millions of

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miles away. At the time of the discovery, Loeb received backlash from scientists after

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claiming the object was actually a discarded piece of technology from aliens. Quote, We

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know that it's artificially made. It had no cometary tail. We know that we made it. So

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that provides evidence that we can tell the difference between a rock and an object that

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is pushed by sunlight. The trouble is the only way to know for certain Oumuamua's origin

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is by taking an image of it, but the object is already too far away. What he's saying

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is basically we know what a light sail would look like because we've made a light sail

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before. Dr. Moser confirmed that the velocity estimate reported to NASA is sufficiently

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accurate to indicate an interstellar trajectory was back in 2019. Harvard University researchers

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posted a study of the preprint server, ARC's if I don't know what that means, acknowledging

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that the meteors existence and saying it had come from outside our solar system. The study,

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which still hasn't been peer reviewed, so a little out there still reported the meteor

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as originating from interstellar space with 99.999% confidence. According to the authors,

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the study has been awaiting peer review for years so the claim could be confirmed, but

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it's faced roadblocks from the US government, which was withholding key information from

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a publicly available NASA database. Information about the meteor is scarce, although its details,

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including its coordinates above Manus Island, are logged in NASA's Center for Near Earth

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Object Studies. And that's the article. Okay, I held onto my comments for once until the

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end. Oh good. First of all, I was wondering about a comment named Omoamua. It sounded

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like it was from Hawaii, but the telescope was in Hawaii and that's my comment. Yes,

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and they used Maori language to name it. I believe it's Omoamua in Maori is the traveler.

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Oh, that's cool. Yeah. There's more to it than I thought, but I was like, that's a weird

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name. But then you said the telescope's in Hawaii and I was like, yeah, it does sound

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like it's from Hawaii. Second, at first you made it sound like the only reason he thought

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that it had alien technology is because it was the second thing that was interstellar.

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Yeah, I think that's literally it. Really? But to be fair, it seemed towards the end

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that it took a little bit of a turn because there was reasoning and I don't have like

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a audiographic memory, but it had something to do with the way it was flying and we've

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seen things fly in a certain way and this was flying differently. And that's Omoamua.

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So Omoamua did not have a tail. That was it. When a comet is flying, its tail will always

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be facing away from the sun. So whether it's flying towards the center away from the sun,

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it's always going to be facing away from it. It's not going to be behind it. That's why

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the Harvard professor believes it was alien technology because it kind of fair enough

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at the same time, maybe because it's interstellar is just like weird. But either way, I think

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inter second interstellar object ever, even if it's not alien, like why not get it so

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we can see where it came from and what's going on. Maybe it does have some weird stuff on

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it that we've never seen before. Oh yeah, I guarantee you it's going to have some unique

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characteristics to it. So it's likely since it was only 1.5 feet across completely destroyed

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and coming into our atmosphere or at least on contact with the ocean. Well then what's

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he talking about? If it's 1.5 feet across like it was going 100,000 miles. Oh that's

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not very big. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm sure you've played with beach balls that were bigger than

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this thing. Yeah. 1.5 meters is not big. No 1.5 feet. That's less. That's way less.

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Since it was confirmed that it or at least in this paper that is non peer reviewed. So

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it's really hard to say it's confirmed 9.9999. Yes. So if that paper has a 60% chance of

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being right that it is 100% right that it's from interstellar space. Yeah. Math. Just

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kidding. But there are already like many astronomers have who hypothesized that basically anything

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coming from extra solar systems outside of ours would be incredibly rare so much so that

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we would never see one in our like advanced civilization. That was my next point. Like

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what are the odds of this thing even hitting us? Incredibly rare. It's not supposed to

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happen. So that's that's part of why this guy's reasoning. I was just going to say.

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Oh he's making a point here because the odds of it even hitting us are like even less than

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a needle in a haystack. Yeah. I don't know if we've talked about it on this podcast before

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but basically if we were going to look for extraterrestrial life we would project out

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where these planets will be basically send probes very small probes that would be able

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to send us a bunch. So he thinks this is a probe. That's my guess. Again I've just read

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the news article not not okay. I get it. I get what he's saying. I can get behind that.

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That's a good one. Yeah. Oh more more. Outside of that there are some fun things at the bottom

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of different bodies of water like and the Baltic Sea there's a weird shaped rock that looks

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like the Millennium Falcon that has a lot of weird rumors about it from people trying

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to like investigate it. I've heard about it. And in fact we could probably do weird rocks

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at the bottom of water an entire episode. Added. And with that added we can probably

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get on with this episode. Okay let's do it.

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Hello and welcome to Journey to the Fringe because the path to the fringe is riddled

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with insanity corpses and questionable consonants so you should probably take a guide. We are

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your guides if you will have us. Our names Taylor and Chelsea. And today we tackle a

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very strange topic that I'm just going to pull right out front and say this. It is weird

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and I don't know how it ends necessarily. It ends in a very weird way. Good. But today

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we are talking about phantom illnesses. Oh. Particularly one called Morjellans disease.

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You may recognize it if you are a deep lore listener of coast to coast AM as something

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George Norrie was on about before he went to all senile and before long winded. Yes

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before. Well at least in the process of. Which is the whole time. Okay. This is going to

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be a wild ride. It's a strange illness. It has a lot of different sides to it. Well it

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has two big sides and I don't know which one's correct even after like hours and hours and

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hours of research. I find conflicting affirmation from credible sources. So I'm going to start

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out by reading articles about early individuals in the Morjellans history who have contracted

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this illness or at least believe they've contracted the illness. We're going to read through

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those and then we're going to talk about descriptions of the illness and then we're

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going to break down the different sides of the story and see where we're at today. Okay.

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I'm excited. I had no idea this is what we're doing. This might seem a little confusing

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early on because I haven't described to you what this disease is at all. But rest assured

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it will make sense as we go along. I have faith. The story of Morjellans disease really

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starts at least from a research point of view in 2001. I found a article from the Pittsburgh

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Post Gazette posted in 2006 that outlines this nicely the original cases of this disease.

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The article is titled mom fights for answers on what's wrong with her son. It is summer

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2001. Drew or Andrew is two years old, almost three. He points to an irritated patch of

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skin under his lips. Bugs, he says. How strange the mother thinks she's already taken Drew

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to several Pittsburgh dermatologists and pediatricians, but nothing they've prescribed for eczema

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for atypical scabies has stopped his itching. Mary Littow rubs him with the prescribed scabies

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cream, making gentle circles with her hands. Mary Littow is the mother in this situation.

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In the years that follow, the mother will think often about this moment, cursing it,

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reexamining it, and pinpointing it as the start of everything as Miss Littow rubs something

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fiber like a burge from the boy's skin. She'll later say as a biologist, she's mesmerized

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as a mother she's horrified. Miss Littow collected a sample of the strands from Drew's

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skin. They glide right off. She places them onto a slide, examining them under an $8

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radio shack microscope. She's looked thousands of times in a microscope. Fancier ones first

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as a biology student at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and later for five years

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as a medical researcher at two Boston hospitals. She's seen nothing like this before. She

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shakes her head and thinks, these things cannot be coming out of my son's body. The

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symptoms that Miss Littow now attributes to some 4,500 people nationwide are by word

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of most dermatologists and psychiatrists a part of a delusional parasitosis, a psychiatric

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disorder. Victims complain of similar symptoms, crawling sensations, and skin infestations.

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Those with delusional parasitosis insist such problems truly exist and cycle from physician

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to physician, seeking validation, never finding it. But then Mary Littow sees something sprout

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from her boy's skin and she sets out to find answers. Fibers, she calls them at first.

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She hopes to find their merely sweater strands or simple fungi. But after months of studying,

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she finds something else, something variably black and red and blue that fluoresces under

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the proper light. Her first description under magnification, the fibers appear ribbon-like

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and co-inacitic, meaning without cell walls. Dozens of times, Miss Littow tries to prove

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herself wrong. People don't sprout fibers, logic tells her. She swabs Drew's irritations,

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clean, ensuring them to be fiber-free and covers them with a sterile non-fibrous wrap.

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The fibers still return. Miss Littow uses a biology lab to continue her studies. She

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concludes that the medical system owes her some answers. Her husband Edward, an internist

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with South Allegheny Internal Medicine in Bethel Park, tells her as much. Relay on medicine,

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he says. He too feels Drew has something unknown and what good research doctor can resist a

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chance to crack away at an answer. Miss Littow creates a website, Margellen's

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Research Foundation, devoted to what she believes is a new disease, which she names Margellen's

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after an obscure 17th century French reference to black hairs. It is now March 29, 2004.

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She formally establishes the Margellen's Research Foundation, a non-profit group headcorded

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in her home. She's the executive director, meaning she must endure two recurring messages,

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both burdensome in their own ways. Those disputing the disease and telling her she's crazy, and

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those convinced that they're suffering from it and tell her she's their last hope. Daily,

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she spends four to five hours talking on the phone. She corresponds with a woman in Texas

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who once poured lighter fluid on her skin lesions, hoping to set fire to the insects

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inside her. She befriends a man in Virginia who gained 100 pounds and spent four years

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on his sofa, isolated from friends and family. And when a 20-something dies of a painkiller

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overdose, ending his fight with Margellen's symptoms, Miss Littow calls the man's mother

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and tells her, we are fighting a system that's so messed up. Those registered as Margellen's

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sufferers, swarm medical offices reciting stories about the fires, the fatigue, the

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joint swelling, the nights in which itching prevents sleep, the fatigue that drops them

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onto the couch for 30 hours straight, the hopelessness that prompts thoughts of suicide, the implausibility

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of such frenzied symptoms gets a common, simpler diagnosis. They suffer terribly, but it's

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psychiatric, said Dr. Eliston, a dermatologist in the Geisinger Medical System in Danville,

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Montaur County. The fact that there's something online to cling to, it's a difficult obstacle

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for us. The moment you mention psychiatrists, these patients get extremely angry, said psychiatrist

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Alastor Monroe, author of Delusional Disorder. They say there's nothing wrong with their

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brains. They have all kinds of explanations. Drew continues to see doctors. Miss Littow,

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by his side, the fibers still sprout. The pair meets with UPMC dermatologist Douglas

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Cress, who diagnoses eczema. His prescribed medication fails to help. Miss Littow speaks

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with pediatrician Dr. Michael Frack. He knows the medical skepticism about Margellen's,

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but he also knows history. He thinks Paulie Murray, who two decades before had tried to

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convince the medical world that she was sick, not simply hypochondrical. Her persistence

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pioneered Lyme disease. Maybe mainstream medicine has been dismissive of this too, Dr. Frack

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said. They haven't given this a fair shake. He acknowledged that most physicians lack

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the research power to find the causality of new diseases. He refers Miss Littow to Dr.

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Fred Heldrich, a Johns Hopkins pediatrician known for solving mystery cases. Drew's

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doctor refuses to prescribe powerful antibiotics without research that proves the need for

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them. On the advice of Dr. Frack, Drew and Miss Littow drive to Baltimore to visit the

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Hopkins expert, Dr. Heldrich. He forms his own conclusions about proper treatment of

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Margellen's. I found no evidence of anything suspicious in Andrew. Dr. Heldrich wrote to

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Dr. Frack after the visit, then he added Miss Littow would benefit from a psychiatric evaluation

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and support. Whether Andrew has more Jellin's disease or not, I hope she will cease to use

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her son in further exploring this problem. Why though? Because he thinks this is made

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up. I know, but as a mom, you're not just going to like leave it and not know what's

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going on. Have you heard of Munchausen syndrome before? Yes. We're essentially like a mother

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is exploiting an illness that isn't there in their child. Yeah. Either they or somebody

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close to them has made up illnesses in them to get attention. It's a simple explanation

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of that. Okay. So that's what really thinking that it is. Yeah. Or psychosomatic. Just there's

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something wrong mentally that is making it come out. I could see it just because they

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complain of like bugs biting them. Yeah. The thing with me is the fibers though. And I

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don't see like. We will get to that. If you can wait a couple minutes, we will get to that.

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Okay. Dr. Randy Weymour finds her just in time. The Oklahoma State University assistant

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professor of pharmacology and physiology stumbles onto Miss Littow's website while surfing

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online. He's a glutton for unknowns. We don't claim to have all the answers he said, but

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let's try to help one another on the journey. In the summer of 2005, Miss Littow moves her

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family to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, a new start at the same time. Dr. Weymour and

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his family drive from Tulsa, Oklahoma to California for a vacation on the way Dr. Weymour collects

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dozens of fiber samples from clothing on Goodwill racks from hotel drapes from room corners

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up swept for 20 years. Though he maintains an open mind. He hypothesizes that more gel

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and fibers come from an outside source. Something easily explained hundreds of more gel and

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fibers arrive at his lab sent from desperate patients sent from nurses and doctors as Dr.

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Weymour begins a comparison. His skepticism erodes the fibers resemble one another and

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yet they do not resemble hair or waste materials or cellulose or any known textile substances.

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The fibers about the size of small eyebrow hairs are not living organisms. Dr. Weymour

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decides he teams with a Tulsa Police Department Crime Lab to sort through fiber samples and

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though the lab owns a database of more than 800 fibers, these fibers match nothing. Dr.

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Weymour currently awaits spectroscopy results offering information about the physical and

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chemical components of the fibers. See the people who don't want to discuss this, they

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just say we don't grow red and blue fibers. To a certain extent, it's a little bit of

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that earth is flat mentality Dr. Weymour said, but how many people are open to self change?

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More gelons is almost as difficult to wrap your mind around as trying to convince someone

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to change religious views. Think about it, how often does that work? It is June 2006.

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Drew now sleeps with his eyes half open, a neurological abnormality that worries Ms.

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Letow. Drew can't play baseball this season because he sweats profusely in sunshine and

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sweat triggers his skin irritations. So instead, Ms. Letow pitches hit to him in the yard.

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Ms. Letow gathers only a handful of donations for her foundation and has yet to receive

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a grant. An anonymous blogger maintains an anti-more gelons website rife with personal

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attacks. Some living with more gelons become so discontented they channel frustrations

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towards the one person they can associate with the disease. People say, Mary you need

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to take a break from this, but it's not like I can forget about this now. I have a lot

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of friends with this and they are all incredibly sick. Their neurological problems are getting

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worse. I've got to see this through. This is a mission. I don't know. I think it's

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fear based behavior. It does appear to be a bit neurotic unless you realize what is driving

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the force. The love of my children and the fear of an unknown disease. You know maybe

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if enough baseball players get more gelons or enough politicians, children I know, I

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sound like a crazy woman. But what does it take? What does it take?

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The CDC terms more gelons a syndrome fictitious until proven real. Interesting that they call

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it fictitious, but I don't know enough yet. That's all I'm going to say. In July of 2006,

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a 13 member CDC committee meets for the second time. The group includes infectious disease

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experts, parasitic disease experts, environmental health workers, and indeed mental health specialists.

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Ms. Letow waits at home one mile from the beach knowing a CDC issued answer could take

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months. She and Drew watch SpongeBob. At the end of the day, Ms. Letow said the truth will

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stand alone. So that's the story of really the first person publicly came out of seven

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more gelons. And SpongeBob was important there. What they're watching that day seems like

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an important part. I actually had to edit this down a lot.

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It's SpongeBob's date. There's probably four more pages in this article, which I edited

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out just because there is so much angling the story or positioning the story in it.

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Yeah, okay. It definitely paints the CDC and the medical

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community as off base. Well, that's what I'm thinking right now. If there's multiple people

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with this, I had a range there. I was like, okay, psychological could be bugs biting the

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skin seems like it might be. And then if multiple people are having it, I would think it warrants

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a little looking into and that's basically my train of thought right now.

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That doctor Wymore that is referenced earlier on who was studying the samples, I could not

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for the life of me find his research paper on that. Oh, weird. So he's talking about

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how these things don't resemble any fabrics out there or anything that he'd seen before

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can't find that paper. Okay, weird, but okay. Yeah, references

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it. No, they don't reference his paper. They reference him saying it. I can't find any

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actual weird. Okay. There about it. Okay. Which of course, I don't have access to all

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the research websites. So maybe maybe it's out there on one of the scholarly distributors

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that I don't have access to. But I just couldn't find it. Okay. And I think he comes up again

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in my next article. This one's from The Guardian by a journalist by the name of Will Store

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published on May 7 2011. And this is titled more gelins a hidden epidemic or mass hysteria.

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It all started in August 2007 on a family holiday in New England. Paul had been watching

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Harry Potter in the Order of the Phoenix with his wife and two sons. Again, connection here,

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children's TV shows. I was just going to make that connection. And he had started to itch

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his legs, his arms, his torso, it was everywhere. It must be fleas in the seat. He decided that

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the 55 year old it executive from Birmingham had been itching ever since. And the mystery

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of what is wrong with him has only deepened when Paul rubbed his fingertips over the pimples

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that dotted the skin he felt spines. Weird alien things like splinters. Then in 2008, his wife

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was soothing his back with surgical spirit when the cotton swab she was using gathered a curious

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blue black haze from his skin. Paul went out and bought a 40 pound microscope and examined the cotton.

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40 pound. What were these curling colored fibers? He googled the words fibers itch sting skin.

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And there was his answer. It must be all the symptoms fit. He had a new disease called more

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gelins. The fibers were the product of mysterious creatures that burrow and breed in the body.

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As he read on, he had no idea that more gelins would turn out to be the worst kind of answers

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imaginable. The campaign group Charles E. Holman Foundation states that there are sufferers in

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every continent except Antarctica of mergelis. Thousands have written to Congress demanding

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action in response. More than 40 senators, including Hillary Clinton, John McCain and

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pre-president Barack Obama pressured the Center for Disease Control and Prevention to investigate

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in 2006. It formed a special task for setting aside $1 million to study the condition.

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Sufferers include folk singer Joni Mitchell, who has complained of this weird incurable disease

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that seems like it's from outer space. Fibers in a variety of colors protrude out of my skin.

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They cannot be forensically identified as animal, vegetable, or mineral. More gelins is a slow,

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unpredictable killer, a terrorist disease, which I think is more of a show of the times than anything.

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It will blow up one of your organs, leaving you in bed for a year. That's an entire quote from

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Joni Mitchell outside of that part where I say the terrorists say.

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Joni Mitchell, hey. Interesting. And then I just want to point out the fact too that you said that

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it's reported on all continents because literally right before you said that, I was like, I wonder

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if it's tied to a certain area because you also mentioned bugs planting it in the skin,

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which if it was bugs, you would think it would be confined to a certain area.

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Possibly, but we will come back to that at some point. Maybe.

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Maybe. If not, this is all we had to say about it. Exactly. And you will like it.

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I already do. Oh, good. So it's new, frightening, and profoundly odd. But if you were to seek the

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view of the medical establishment, you'd find the strangest fact about this disease.

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Morjelans doesn't exist. Paul has seen an array of experts, GPs, allergy doctors, infectious

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disease clinicians, and dermatologists. Most end up agreeing with the skin specialist to whom he

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first took samples of his fibrous-gain cotton. His sores are self-inflicted and he suffers

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from delusions of parasitosis, a psychiatric condition in which people falsely believe themselves

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being fested. This particular form of delusional parasitosis is thought to be unique and that's

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spread through the internet. Whereas in the past, episodes of mass hysteria were limited to small

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communities, perhaps the most famous being the witch panic of Salem in 1690s. Can I clarify

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something? Is it the internet giving the fibers to us? No, it would be the fact that people can talk

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on forums. But wouldn't they see the sores as well as the evidence that it was there?

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Yes, but the real question is, and I don't think it really comes up later, if you're itching and

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you're feeling itchy, you're going to get sores. You just are. If you're scratching enough, yes.

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Exactly. Well, the first thing that I thought of is people using drugs that feel like they have

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bugs crawling on their skin, like, particularly. There are other parasitosis that are just bugs

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crawling under your skin. Okay, yeah, with like mental illness. Mental illness and even it is

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a side effect of some prescription drugs. Yes, probably ones along the lines of the ones with

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drug use that are like... Not just drug use, things that will impact your neurological path.

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Yeah, okay, yeah, because I know with riddle in and stuff that are, what's the word for it now?

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Amphetamines. Yes, amphetamines. Typically, we'll do that because they're neurological.

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And yeah, this draws a lot of similarities with that. It's just that the symptoms have

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reached a point where you're scarring and you're finding fibers under your skin.

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Okay, which could be neurological. I get it. Could be neurological as well. In a three-year-old,

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like you wouldn't think so, but I guess they can be mentally ill as well. Well, that's the part

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that's interesting. And again, it's the mother that's been championing it. Not that a three-year-old

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could. Yes. It wouldn't be able to, but okay. Exactly. Okay, I think we've, I've had enough

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right now. Okay, Paula is not convinced by this diagnosis though. He carries an alcohol

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handle everywhere he goes, has four showers a day and steam cleans his clothes. The stress leaves

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him exhausted, short tempered. He has difficulty concentrating or applying himself at work. His

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lowest points have been pretty much feeling like ending it. Possibly it's associated with the times

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the medical profession has dismissed me. I can't see myself living forever with this. In spring 2005,

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Randy Weymour, which again, we talked about him before, associate professor of pharmacology at

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Oklahoma State University stumbled across an article about more jelly. Reading about the fibers

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sufferers believed were the byproducts of weird parasite, but which were dismissed by dermatologists

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as humdrum environmental detritus. Last year he approached, so that'd be 2010, he approached

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several commercial laboratories to run further tests. But the moment they discovered the job was

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related to more gelids, firm after firm backed out. Finally, Weymour found a lab prepared to take

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the work. It is these results that will be revealed during a two day conference, which took place

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later on. I had to edit out the conference, just keep this like streamlined episode. Next, this

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journalist talked to Randy Weymour. We have not yet exactly replicated the exact results of the

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forensics people and Tulsa. He admits, so far the laboratory has found Weymour's various

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margillons fibers to be nylon, cotton, a blonde human hair, a fungal fiber, a rodent hair, and

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down, most likely from geese or ducks. That's disappointing, I say. It is for the most part,

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disappointing, but there was a bunch of cellulose that didn't make sense on one,

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and another was unknown. There's a pause. Well, they said it was a big fungal fiber,

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but they weren't completely convinced. So that's where I get so confused about this guy's research,

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and the fact I have not found his actual report. Yeah, it's weird, but it's now another article

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that's mentioned him. But it's gone into more detail because he's actually sent this off to

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other locations that say it's very easy to say what these are. Yeah, another couple of things

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I want to say here. This seems like a small percent of things compared to like other diseases.

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And in that small percent, I would imagine there are times where certain fibers can be on wounds

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that you would mistake for something in the small percentage of error, right? There's always error.

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Well, yeah, there's always error. And there's always whenever you're sending things off to a

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different lab, like if you're getting more than one lab, the transfers always could have some issues.

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Yeah. And like my hair is everywhere. I could have true, but you're not in a lab. No, I'm not in a

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lab. And my hair is like strongly identifiable. It's a long, dark hair. Like I could have eczema

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one day, which I do have and wipe it and have like someone's hair on it and be like, that's weird.

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I've never seen that before, right? In a small margin of error. Well, exactly. Or it could come

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up somewhere in a lab. My hair could drop there. Someone else's hair could drop there that I don't

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recognize. And I think this is that. And actually hearing that like discussion about like sending

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it off different labs reminded me a lot about that university. Sorry, I don't know if she was a

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university professor, but that scientist who was trying to get Bigfoot hair strands examined. Yes.

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Do you remember those stories where she had to pretend that it wasn't Bigfoot?

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Isn't she the one that was David Pilatus was really pushing? Yeah. Yeah. Which we could probably do

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an episode on that. It was an interesting story. I'm going to put it out of here. The other thing

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I want to say at this point is I wouldn't put it past on the exact opposite end of this spectrum.

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I wouldn't put it past Big Pharma to not want to recognize a disease for some reason, whatever

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reason it may be, they may have a million reasons. A new disease means you can treat it. And just

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so they go exactly on the other end of that means you can treat it means you can sell more medication.

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These would not be labs that are pharmaceutically attached. These would just be research labs.

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In which case more reason to shoot it down, I guess. Maybe. Well, not necessarily. I think it

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always does follow that stance that large claims require large evidence. It's not quite, I didn't

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say it elegantly like the actual statement is, but it's something along those lines. We're

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journey to the French. We're not elegant here. But yeah, I just you put Big Pharma into the equation

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of saying whether or not it's a real disease and there's a lot of corruption behind Big Pharma.

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So you never know on that end. I don't think that's necessarily anything to bring up just because

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either way it goes, Big Pharma makes money. Yeah. If it's a psychosomatic issue, they're going to

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sell you psychosomatic drugs. If it's not something that it is. If it's not, then they're going to

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make money selling a new drug. True. Unless there's something else behind it. Unless there's a

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hot water basket to cure it. Yeah. That hasn't come up as an answer. Well, you wouldn't think for

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Fipers community. I got one more paragraph to finish off my articles and then we can talk about

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the rest. Back in London, I find a 2008 paper on more gelons in the journal Dermatologic Therapy

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that describes patients picking at their skin continuously in order to extract an organism.

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Obsessive cleaning rituals, showering often and individuals going to many physicians such as

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infectious disease specialists and dermatologists. All behaviors consistent with DOP, which is the

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psychosomatics. After finding fibers on my own hand, I'm fairly satisfied. Mergelons is some

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21st century genre of OCD spread through the internet and the fibers are as Weimar's labs

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reports, particles of everyday miscellaneous stuff, cotton, human hair, rat hair and so on.

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And that last part has to do with his time at a convention on more gelons, which I skipped over,

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but I think it's important to just bring that last little bit about his opinion on it. I find this

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crazy in the fact that it either is some very fundamentally different disease that literally

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has your body producing fibers or it is a mass hysteria of the internet age, which we see many

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times online, which I find in its own right, a sub research area to look at like Q and the

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Flat Earth Society exploding in the last decade. Yeah. And I can't say, well, I'm guilty of it.

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I'm not sure how many people listening are guilty of it. If you're feeling anything,

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you go Google what it is. And it's something even remotely matches up.

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Well, and it's not just Google what that is. It's going to be and this one came up so much with

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COVID. Do your own research, which is really somebody saying, I'm not comfortable explaining

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this to you. So go to this crazy website using the keywords that I Google. Yeah. It's just how

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the world works these days is that it's very easy to get led into an area where you can find like

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minded individuals that agree with you and people don't like to be disputed. So if you can find a

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group of like minded individuals, you will stay there and you can find anything on the internet

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now. Exactly. As long as you're searching the correct keywords. So that's a good point. So those

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are the early cases that I wanted to highlight and the newspaper articles on them. Okay, I'm torn

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so far now. And usually I start with this, but I thought it was important to bring it to this

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point in the article. Are you ready for it? Yeah. Okay. The Wikipedia article. Okay, good. I'm ready.

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First off, I just wanted to bring up the first thing that I felt was important to talk about

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in the Wikipedia article is the CDC investigation that's referenced in both of those articles.

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Okay, there is a CDC investigation. Yeah. That again, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton kind of

389
00:34:53,520 --> 00:34:58,800
pushed to get them to do. Okay. And John McCain. The Margellans Research Foundation coordinated

390
00:34:58,800 --> 00:35:03,440
a mailing campaign via their website in which thousands of people sent form letters to a

391
00:35:03,440 --> 00:35:09,200
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Task Force, which first met in June 2006. By August

392
00:35:09,200 --> 00:35:14,800
of 2006, the task force consisting of 12 people, including two pathologists, a toxicologist,

393
00:35:14,800 --> 00:35:20,240
an ethicist, a mental health expert, and a specialist in infectious, parasitic, environmental,

394
00:35:20,240 --> 00:35:27,920
and chronic diseases. In June 2007, the CDC started a website related to Margellans. CDC studies of an

395
00:35:27,920 --> 00:35:33,840
unexplained dermapathy. And by November of 2007, the CDC opened an investigation into the condition.

396
00:35:33,840 --> 00:35:39,680
Kaiser Permanente, a healthcare consortium in Northern California, was chosen to assist with

397
00:35:39,680 --> 00:35:44,640
the investigation, which involved skin biopsies from affected people in characterizations of

398
00:35:44,640 --> 00:35:49,200
foreign materials such as fibers or threads obtained from people to determine their potential

399
00:35:49,200 --> 00:35:54,800
source. Okay, here we go. The US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and the American Academy

400
00:35:54,800 --> 00:36:00,160
of Dermatology assisted with pathology. Hold on. US Armed Forces? Yeah, the US Armed Forces

401
00:36:00,160 --> 00:36:05,760
Institute of Pathology. So just like, I don't know what that is, but they're science arm.

402
00:36:05,760 --> 00:36:12,640
The Arby's science arm. Okay. In June 2012, the CDC released the results of their study. The CDC

403
00:36:12,640 --> 00:36:20,640
concluded that 59% of subjects showed cognitive deficits and 63% had evidence of clinically

404
00:36:20,640 --> 00:36:26,320
significant symptoms. They stated that 50% of the individuals had drugs in their system and 78

405
00:36:26,320 --> 00:36:32,720
reported exposure to solvents, potential skin irritants. The study detected no parasites

406
00:36:32,720 --> 00:36:38,720
or mycobacteria in the samples collected from any individuals. Most materials collected from

407
00:36:38,720 --> 00:36:44,640
participant skin were composed of cellulose likely of cotton origin. And in 2012, the

408
00:36:44,640 --> 00:36:49,920
Morjelen Research Foundation closed down and directed future inquiries to the Oklahoma State

409
00:36:49,920 --> 00:36:56,560
University. And still to this day on the Wikipedia page at the very top of the article where it

410
00:36:56,560 --> 00:37:02,400
gives you a synopsis. Morjelen is the informal name for a self-diagnosed, scientifically

411
00:37:02,400 --> 00:37:07,920
unsubstantiated skin condition in which individuals have sores that they believe contain fibrous

412
00:37:07,920 --> 00:37:14,880
materials. Morjelen is not well understood, but the general medical consensus is that it is a form

413
00:37:14,880 --> 00:37:21,680
of delusional parasitosis. The sores are typically the results of compulsive scratching and the fibers

414
00:37:21,680 --> 00:37:27,600
when analyzed are consistently found to have originated from cotton and other textiles.

415
00:37:27,600 --> 00:37:30,880
So that's what Wikipedia has to say about it. They've made up their mind.

416
00:37:30,880 --> 00:37:38,320
Wikipedia is always consistently like made up its mind about things. Yeah. It's a tough one because

417
00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:44,480
of course if you have something like this, you're going to be compelled to have a million showers

418
00:37:44,480 --> 00:37:49,680
and be compulsive about like changing your clothes and stuff like this. And having clean skin, yeah.

419
00:37:49,680 --> 00:37:57,360
But at the other side of it, you're like you could be like severely mentally ill and just be like OCD

420
00:37:57,360 --> 00:38:04,400
and thinking this. And then as disgusting as it is, if you have a sore and you're wearing a shirt

421
00:38:04,400 --> 00:38:09,600
and it dries, it will take some of the fibers. I'm so torn on this. Especially if you're

422
00:38:09,600 --> 00:38:16,240
compulsively scratching. Yeah. If it's an open sore, it's bleeding or anything, you've broken the skin.

423
00:38:16,240 --> 00:38:22,400
I have eczema. I'm used to this as disgusting as this may sound and it dries and you're wearing a

424
00:38:22,400 --> 00:38:28,560
shirt. It takes some of the fiber of your shirt with it. But they're also describing feeling

425
00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:34,320
like hard fibers sticking out of their skin. Which and it's really hard to say whether or not that's

426
00:38:34,320 --> 00:38:40,480
just the fact that they're online with that or if it is its own disease in itself. Well it can be.

427
00:38:40,480 --> 00:38:46,000
And like I was saying earlier, like you can Google anything like doctor Google and find anything to

428
00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:50,480
fit what you're feeling pretty much. And then you feel like you've diagnosed yourself. I'm really

429
00:38:50,480 --> 00:38:56,080
torn on this one. Next up though is WebMD because it has a page on this as well. Okay, let's do that.

430
00:38:56,080 --> 00:39:00,240
And I thought let's just go with that. If you're going online and checking for a condition, this

431
00:39:00,240 --> 00:39:03,600
is where you go. So I thought it'd be good to at least check them. The question of whether more

432
00:39:03,600 --> 00:39:08,960
gelons is a disease or a delusion has prompted debate and new research in recent years. The

433
00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:14,320
CDC that states that the condition is not caused by an infection or anything in the environment.

434
00:39:14,320 --> 00:39:20,560
The CDC study also included a lab analysis of skin fibers in more gel and patients. The analysis

435
00:39:20,560 --> 00:39:26,240
showed that these fibers were mostly cotton such as typically found in clothing or bandages. CDC

436
00:39:26,240 --> 00:39:31,040
research also revealed that the skin source seemed to be the results of long term picking and scratching

437
00:39:31,040 --> 00:39:37,120
the skin. The CDC report goes on to say we are not able to conclude based on this study whether this

438
00:39:37,120 --> 00:39:43,520
unexplained dermopathy represents a new condition as has been proposed by those who use the term

439
00:39:43,520 --> 00:39:49,360
more gelons or a wider recognition of an existing condition such as delusional parasitosis. The

440
00:39:49,360 --> 00:39:54,880
results of the CDC study have been archived and are no longer updated. The CDC does not plan to do

441
00:39:54,880 --> 00:39:59,680
any further research on the matter. Besides the CDC, other research teams have contributed to the

442
00:39:59,680 --> 00:40:04,960
debate on more gelons. Previous case studies and research have suggested that more gelons may be

443
00:40:04,960 --> 00:40:10,960
linked to Lyme disease. Some patients with symptoms of more gelons had tested positive for the bacteria

444
00:40:10,960 --> 00:40:15,760
that causes Lyme disease. But according to more gelons, researchers at Oklahoma State University,

445
00:40:15,760 --> 00:40:20,960
there is no evidence to prove this theory. Likewise, there is no evidence of Lyme infection

446
00:40:20,960 --> 00:40:26,640
any of the people in the CDC study. A 2010 study found a potential link between more gelons symptoms

447
00:40:26,640 --> 00:40:32,640
and an underactive thyroid, hypothyroidism. More research needs to be done on this finding,

448
00:40:32,640 --> 00:40:38,720
and more gelons also appear similar to a condition seen in cattle called bovine digital dermatitis,

449
00:40:38,720 --> 00:40:44,000
which is due to an infection according to a 2011 study, but no conclusion can be reached

450
00:40:44,000 --> 00:40:49,680
from these small studies. So a little more open than the Wikipedia article for sure. It definitely

451
00:40:49,680 --> 00:40:54,880
talks about other possible reasons for it, but says there's nothing to back it up.

452
00:40:54,880 --> 00:41:01,200
I mean, there's nothing because it seems like it's so dismissive. Of course, there's nothing,

453
00:41:01,200 --> 00:41:06,240
except for this one guy that we can't find his paper for. Yeah. And just so we are all on the

454
00:41:06,240 --> 00:41:10,960
same page, I thought it would be better to go through medical groups. I shouldn't say medical.

455
00:41:10,960 --> 00:41:15,360
People who have accumulated all of the research papers on this, because I tried reading the

456
00:41:15,360 --> 00:41:19,920
research papers, they are all over the map. They are crazy. And you need to know a lot of medicine

457
00:41:19,920 --> 00:41:23,440
to actually be able to read those. I read some abstracts, I started reading those papers, and

458
00:41:23,440 --> 00:41:26,640
I thought, you know what, let's actually go to the people who know what they're talking about

459
00:41:26,640 --> 00:41:30,080
and see what they've accumulated, which is why WebMD can be a good place to look,

460
00:41:30,080 --> 00:41:35,120
why Wikipedia can be a good place to look, and why my last one I want to look at, the Mayo Clinic,

461
00:41:35,120 --> 00:41:38,320
that was made famous by the place that diagnosed Mr. Burns with everything.

462
00:41:38,320 --> 00:41:43,840
Mr. Burns, I'm afraid you are the sickest man in the United States. You have everything. You mean

463
00:41:43,840 --> 00:41:49,360
I have pneumonia? Yes. Juvenile diabetes? Yes. Hysterical pregnancy? A little bit, yes.

464
00:41:49,360 --> 00:41:52,640
What they have to say about more gel and disease. Just so we're on the same page,

465
00:41:52,640 --> 00:41:56,960
Mr. Burns did not have more gel and disease because that episode actually happens for more

466
00:41:56,960 --> 00:42:01,680
gel and disease actually even brought up in the public eye. Oh, that's a fun fact. If you go on

467
00:42:01,680 --> 00:42:06,400
Mayo Clinic, they have a full article on it. More Gel and Disease is an uncommon, poorly understood

468
00:42:06,400 --> 00:42:11,600
condition characterized by small fibers or other particles emerging from skin sores. People with

469
00:42:11,600 --> 00:42:16,720
this condition often report feeling as if something were crawling on or stinging their skin. Some

470
00:42:16,720 --> 00:42:21,760
doctors recognize the condition as a delusional manifestation and treat it with cognitive behavioral

471
00:42:21,760 --> 00:42:26,480
therapy. Antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs and counseling. Others think the symptoms are related

472
00:42:26,480 --> 00:42:31,760
to an infectious process in skin cells. Further study is needed. People who have more gel and

473
00:42:31,760 --> 00:42:37,360
disease report the following signs and symptoms. Skin rashes or sores that can cause intense itching.

474
00:42:37,360 --> 00:42:43,520
Crawling sensations on and under the skin often compared to insects moving, stinging or biting.

475
00:42:43,520 --> 00:42:50,080
Fibers, threads or black stringy materials in and on the skin. Fatigue, difficulty concentrating,

476
00:42:50,080 --> 00:42:55,120
short-term memory loss, depressed mood. The intense itching and open sores associated with

477
00:42:55,120 --> 00:42:59,920
more gel and disease can severely interfere with a person's quality of life. What do researchers

478
00:42:59,920 --> 00:43:04,560
know about more gel and disease? The research on more gel and disease by multiple groups over

479
00:43:04,560 --> 00:43:10,560
decades has yielded conflicting results. Multiple studies report possible links between more gel

480
00:43:10,560 --> 00:43:16,960
and disease with borealis spiritschetti, which I am probably butchering, but we're going to keep

481
00:43:16,960 --> 00:43:22,880
going. These results contradict an earlier study by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention,

482
00:43:22,880 --> 00:43:28,320
CDC, which concluded that the condition isn't caused by an infection or parasite. The CDC study

483
00:43:28,320 --> 00:43:35,680
of 115 people with more gel and disease, which the CDC refers to as an unexplained dermatopathy.

484
00:43:35,680 --> 00:43:39,680
Geez, there's so many medical words I'm butchering right now, but we're just going to

485
00:43:39,680 --> 00:43:44,080
keep plowing through and butchering these words. Let's do it. Showed that most of the fibers in

486
00:43:44,080 --> 00:43:50,240
the skin wounds were cotton. The CDC report noted that the condition is most often seen in middle

487
00:43:50,240 --> 00:43:54,960
age white women, which actually that's the first time it's come up at this point, but it is interesting.

488
00:43:54,960 --> 00:44:00,000
That is the group with the most free time that is most susceptible to this kind of thing.

489
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:04,880
Well, and you look back to your first case and it was a middle-aged white woman with her son.

490
00:44:04,880 --> 00:44:08,320
Possibly projecting it onto her son. I mean, whether or not she's right or not,

491
00:44:08,320 --> 00:44:12,080
she's projecting it onto her son because it's not her son saying,

492
00:44:12,080 --> 00:44:17,200
I have fibers coming out of my skin. It's her. Okay, interesting. And its symptoms are very similar

493
00:44:17,200 --> 00:44:22,160
to those of mental illness involving false beliefs about manifestation by parasites.

494
00:44:22,160 --> 00:44:26,960
Small research studies have tried to determine the cause and effective treatments for more

495
00:44:26,960 --> 00:44:32,000
gel and disease, but there is still no proven guidance on diagnoses and trip. Further research

496
00:44:32,000 --> 00:44:37,200
is needed. Common attitudes of health professionals towards more gel and disease include thinking

497
00:44:37,200 --> 00:44:41,680
that more gel and disease is a specific condition that needs to be confirmed by research, thinking

498
00:44:41,680 --> 00:44:45,840
that signs and symptoms of more gel and disease are caused by another condition often a mental

499
00:44:45,840 --> 00:44:51,280
illness and not acknowledging more gel and disease or a reserving judgment until more is known about

500
00:44:51,280 --> 00:44:56,160
it. Some people who suspect they have more gel and disease claim they've been ignored or dismissed

501
00:44:56,160 --> 00:45:01,040
as fakers. In contrast, some doctors say that people who report signs and symptoms of more

502
00:45:01,040 --> 00:45:06,000
gel and disease typically resist other explanations for their condition. That's what they have for

503
00:45:06,000 --> 00:45:11,200
the most part. They do have a little bit here about coping with more gel and disease. Okay,

504
00:45:11,200 --> 00:45:15,360
so if you're listening to this and you seem to be experiencing it, here's what they say. The signs

505
00:45:15,360 --> 00:45:19,360
and symptoms linked to more gel and disease can be distressing. Even though health professionals

506
00:45:19,360 --> 00:45:23,600
may disagree about the nature of the condition, you deserve compassionate treatment to manage

507
00:45:23,600 --> 00:45:29,600
your signs and symptoms. A, establish a relationship with a caring health care team. Find a doctor who

508
00:45:29,600 --> 00:45:34,480
acknowledges your concerns, does a thorough examination, talks through treatment options with

509
00:45:34,480 --> 00:45:39,920
you and works with a multidisciplinary team. B, be patient. Your doctor will likely look for

510
00:45:39,920 --> 00:45:45,120
known conditions that point to evidence-based treatments before considering a diagnosis of

511
00:45:45,120 --> 00:45:49,840
more gel and disease. C, keep an open mind. Consider various causes for your signs and

512
00:45:49,840 --> 00:45:55,200
symptoms and discuss your doctor's recommendations for treatment, which may include long-term mental

513
00:45:55,200 --> 00:46:00,560
health therapy. D, seek treatment for other conditions. Get treatment for anxiety, depression,

514
00:46:00,560 --> 00:46:05,600
or any other condition that affects your thinking, moods, or behavior. So that's what I found the

515
00:46:05,600 --> 00:46:11,040
most sympathetic to it actually being a disease. That's really nice of them. And you'll notice a

516
00:46:11,040 --> 00:46:17,360
little bit in the last two, both WebMD and the Mayo Clinic, vaguely mentioned Lyme disease.

517
00:46:17,360 --> 00:46:23,920
And I found a paper published on May 10th of 2021 that I just want to quote a little bit of.

518
00:46:23,920 --> 00:46:29,600
A study published in the prestigious journal, Clinical Cosmetic and Investigational Dermatology

519
00:46:29,600 --> 00:46:33,760
illustrates the link between Lyme disease and the mysterious skin condition called

520
00:46:33,760 --> 00:46:40,160
Morjellin's disease. Okay. The news was hailed by Charles E. Holman, Morjellin's disease foundation

521
00:46:40,160 --> 00:46:45,440
of Austin, Texas. The investigation was funded by the Cult to Serve Foundation of Provo, Utah.

522
00:46:45,440 --> 00:46:50,960
Morjellin's disease is associated with tick-borne infections, including Lyme disease. Patients with

523
00:46:50,960 --> 00:46:55,760
the condition are frequently afflicted with disfiguring skin lesions containing strange,

524
00:46:55,760 --> 00:47:00,880
microscopic, multicolored thread-like filaments. The disease is often accompanied by symptoms

525
00:47:00,880 --> 00:47:05,840
characteristic of Lyme disease, including fatigue, joint and muscle pain and neurological problems.

526
00:47:05,840 --> 00:47:10,240
This paper strengthens the argument that Morjellin's disease is infectious in origin,

527
00:47:10,240 --> 00:47:16,640
says Cindy Casey Holman, director of the C-E-H-M-D-F. It is heartbreaking that the repeatable,

528
00:47:16,640 --> 00:47:21,840
solid scientific evidence is not widely accepted by the medical community and the patients are

529
00:47:21,840 --> 00:47:27,520
stigmatized. They suffer. If you want to learn more about it, it's fairly easy to find, look for,

530
00:47:27,520 --> 00:47:32,960
headblad, tick-borne, Morjellin's disease. That is where I entered everything because it just got

531
00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:38,080
so ridiculous trying to figure out which is right and which is wrong and all this. Frankly,

532
00:47:38,080 --> 00:47:41,840
I couldn't find anything about that paper because I couldn't find the paper. That was just a particle.

533
00:47:41,840 --> 00:47:48,080
Interesting. Okay. I do have a few comments. The whole time I was waiting to find out a reason

534
00:47:48,080 --> 00:47:53,360
for what was causing this. Obviously, we're not going to get that. No. It varies. People have

535
00:47:53,360 --> 00:47:59,680
all different conclusions on the map from it is psychosomatic to tick-borne to other parasites,

536
00:47:59,680 --> 00:48:05,200
to a virus, to a bacteria, to aliens. People out there believe it is an alien.

537
00:48:05,200 --> 00:48:10,320
You could put literally anything right now because literally you go on the internet and you probably

538
00:48:10,320 --> 00:48:16,240
Google your symptoms and everything under the sun comes up because it's not a diagonal. I literally

539
00:48:16,240 --> 00:48:21,440
Googled sore plus fiber. Then add aliens, question mark, and it'll say aliens.

540
00:48:21,440 --> 00:48:28,560
Morjellin's disease came up. Like I said earlier, as gross as it is, if you have an open wound,

541
00:48:28,560 --> 00:48:35,600
eczema, one, which is eczema, you scratch it or if it gets bad enough during whatever season,

542
00:48:35,600 --> 00:48:40,320
it's an open wound and you wear a shirt on top of it. The cotton from your shirt is going to stick

543
00:48:40,320 --> 00:48:45,440
to it and it dries. I think importantly with eczema, it doesn't go away either, really.

544
00:48:45,440 --> 00:48:52,960
But then you bring up the fact that they gave probably cortisol and it didn't go away. Then it

545
00:48:52,960 --> 00:48:59,760
just seems to be dismissed very fast other than the one guy that wrote a paper. He seems to be

546
00:48:59,760 --> 00:49:05,840
into it, but no one else seems to be into it at all. If your body, for whatever reason, I was so

547
00:49:05,840 --> 00:49:12,800
interested in that. Why would your body be producing fibers? What would cause that? Unless it's silkworms.

548
00:49:12,800 --> 00:49:17,920
Well, and that's the whole thing. Nothing else produces fibers in your body. Unless,

549
00:49:17,920 --> 00:49:21,680
I don't know, you get bit by a radioactive spider, your body may produce fibers.

550
00:49:21,680 --> 00:49:28,080
Exactly. Or maybe silkworms produce fiber. You can make silk out of it.

551
00:49:28,080 --> 00:49:30,560
I guess if you're bitten by a radioactive silkworm, you can do that.

552
00:49:30,560 --> 00:49:35,520
But there's nothing else that you're going to be bit by that's going to produce fibers. What would

553
00:49:35,520 --> 00:49:40,720
make you as a human produce fibers that you can make a quilt under?

554
00:49:40,720 --> 00:49:46,800
Being bitten by a radioactive flax seed. Yeah. But then at that point, you could profit off this.

555
00:49:46,800 --> 00:49:50,880
You can make human-made, more-dellans-disease quilts.

556
00:49:50,880 --> 00:49:53,200
I don't know if they're going to be that big of quilts.

557
00:49:53,200 --> 00:49:54,000
Dishcloth.

558
00:49:56,960 --> 00:49:59,360
Maybe a dull dishcloth or something like that.

559
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:06,000
That's what I was really waiting for. What would be the reason that would cause a human body to

560
00:50:06,000 --> 00:50:13,200
produce fibers out of a sore? That's so bizarre. And if you were, it probably would feel like

561
00:50:13,760 --> 00:50:18,720
bugs under your skin. The fibers would be trying to poke out. And the one guy said,

562
00:50:18,720 --> 00:50:24,320
it felt like fibers. But at the same time, I don't have a beard, but I would assume

563
00:50:24,320 --> 00:50:30,160
that's what it would feel like. I would say, especially if it's a male that's in his 50s

564
00:50:30,160 --> 00:50:34,880
that's reporting this, he would know what the feeling of having an ingrown hair is compared to

565
00:50:34,880 --> 00:50:40,160
a having a fiber under your skin. Yeah. That's the only thing I could relate it to. Because

566
00:50:40,720 --> 00:50:45,360
beards are, I don't like them being close to me. They're hard and like,

567
00:50:45,360 --> 00:50:50,000
herdy if they touch your skin. That's what I'm relating it to at this point. But yeah,

568
00:50:50,000 --> 00:50:54,640
you would know. A three-year-old probably wouldn't be growing a beard unless he is. And that's why

569
00:50:54,640 --> 00:50:59,840
it's so alarming. It wouldn't just wave away. But now you kind of get why. It's like, I don't know

570
00:50:59,840 --> 00:51:04,480
how this ends. This is just where we're at with this. It is. It's very confusing. And it seems to

571
00:51:04,480 --> 00:51:11,520
be dismissed very fast, which is also confusing. It's both dismissed very fast in some articles,

572
00:51:11,520 --> 00:51:16,880
especially on Wikipedia, which I found crazy. At the same time too, there is research going into

573
00:51:16,880 --> 00:51:21,440
it on whether or not there's a link with ticks. Ticks in themselves, like Lyme disease is a very

574
00:51:21,440 --> 00:51:27,680
mysterious illness that has its own weird backstory. Yeah. And there's other illnesses that are very

575
00:51:27,680 --> 00:51:34,640
mysterious as to diagnosis and what they are and everything like that. So it's not like out of the

576
00:51:34,640 --> 00:51:41,840
realm of possibility, but it seems very dismissed. So this is a very mysterious thing. I'm intrigued

577
00:51:41,840 --> 00:51:48,320
by it. And if anything ever comes out about it that solidifies what it is, we will keep you up

578
00:51:48,320 --> 00:51:53,200
to date here on Journey to the Fringe. But for now, this is just where we're at. Okay. We journeyed to

579
00:51:53,200 --> 00:51:59,680
the Path Fringe and that's what we do came to a weird open-ended trail. And now we turn back.

580
00:51:59,680 --> 00:52:05,440
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

581
00:52:05,440 --> 00:52:12,480
waterfall or a nice view. But here it's just my my hikes usually have an answer at the end. But

582
00:52:12,480 --> 00:52:19,760
I'm glad you brought this to our attention. I feel unfulfilled by it. But happy that now I know

583
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what more jealous diseases and like probably 70% of our episodes, they do not end you with a happy

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feeling. That's why you listen to it. But hey, we can we can use the happy words at the end. Hey,

585
00:52:30,480 --> 00:52:37,040
be happy. And there we go. We're cured. Glad that's over. Anyhow, I have been Taylor here with Chelsea

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00:52:37,040 --> 00:52:41,360
here on Journey to the Fringe. Thank you all for listening and we will see you next week.

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00:52:41,360 --> 00:52:51,360
Thank you for listening to Journey to the Fringe. If you have liked what you have listened to,

588
00:52:51,360 --> 00:52:58,240
please like, share, subscribe, or follow depending on what venue you are listening to us through.

589
00:52:58,240 --> 00:53:04,400
Also, please if possible leave a five star review as that really helps us in the algorithms.

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00:53:04,400 --> 00:53:10,080
Should you wish to interact with us, please check us out on your social media of choice. I bet you

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00:53:10,080 --> 00:53:15,520
we are there. And if you really want to communicate with us and give us ideas for new episodes or

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tell us that we're wrong and terrible either way, please send us an email at journeytothefringe.com.

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For now, I'll see you in the next episode.