When Morgellon’s Disease first arose in the news media it was seen as a form of delusional parasitosis. The illness manifests as tiny fibers that grow out from the skin in an incredibly painful and unexplained fashion. Morgellon’s.org, a site that charts the progression of the illness and offers a sounding board for sufferers states that an estimated 4,500 households have registered in an attempt to combat their illness with knowledge. But unfortunately, despite receiving vindication in 2006 by the CDC, Morgellon’s is still for the most part a mystery. But there are theories based in research out there.
One of these theories is that the illness is derived from a fungus related to the Mycorrhizal strain. This fungus is the same, incidentally, that is commonly used in genetic testing research for genetically modified foods. Is it any coincidence that this illness started appearing in 2002 about the same time when genetically modified food began making headlines? Are we seeing the effects of a new type of disease brought on by genetic tampering? The theory gets even more interesting when you see how Mycorrhiza affects plants it infects.
The fungus manifests as a mysterious strain which attaches itself to plants and carries on a symbiosis with them. The fungus is usually beneficial to the plants it attaches to, although it has been notably pathogenic in some cases leading to harmful lesions on the plant and tiny fibers which protrude from them. It is perhaps no coincidence that this is the exact way Morgellon’s disease manifests in patients.
But how would the disease actually target human cells when it is ordinarily found in plants? Perhaps the genetic recombination of plant and animal species such as the genetic cross hybridization of plants and fish have somehow led the fungus to mutate so that it affects not only plants, but humans as well. The technical aspects of the disease are by no means well understood at the moment, so there is still much research being done into if the disease can do what is being proposed and how it would set about doing it. If Morgellon’s were indeed a mutated pathogen derived from a fungus to infect humans it would be an extraordinarily novel illness. But there is currently no common thread between individuals. And it is not currently thought to be infectious passing from one patient to another, although some have proposed putting samples in laboratory conditions with mice to see if anything new develops. The illness is almost always shown to have the same symptoms with extremely painful and unexplained lesions resulting in protruding threads which can eventually become long enough that they fall off or can be collected.
Due to its unexplained nature, there have been some who have proposed that Morgellon’s might be a virus of alien origin or be related to the spraying of contrails behind planes. There is no shortage of theories as to what it may be, but even in the midst of all of the theories there are few answers. Currently the illness being a fungus is the closest thing to a positive identification that exists on Morgellon’s with any scientific backing. Unfortunately, even this is called into question. For now there are no answers, though it is gaining publicity and being gradually accepted by a wider array of doctors.