The Morgellons Mystery

Wonder of wonders, I actually learned something interesting while watching Ancient Aliens.

There is an illness called Morgellons Disease.  For a proper definition of this condition, I'll crib the words straight from the Morgellons Research Foundation's FAQ:

"Morgellons disease is a poorly understood condition which a growing number of physicians believe to be a chronic infectious disease. The disease can be both disabling and disfiguring. The symptoms include itching, biting and crawling sensations, 'filaments' or fibers which emerge from the skin, skin lesions which range from minor to disfiguring, joint pain, debilitating fatigue, changes in cognition, memory loss, mood disturbance and serious neurological manifestations. Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is currently investigating the disease, it is not yet fully recognized by the medical community. At this time, the cause of Morgellons disease is unknown and there is no known cure." 

At the risk of sounding less than articulate, day-am.   I have never seen anything like this.  The television program showed pictures of these lesions and sores from which the filaments grow (pictures are available on the linked site above as well), sickly, dental floss-like fibers varying in colors from blue to green.  That's right.  Blue and green.  As one dermatologist was referenced as saying, "the human body doesn't grow anything green."  Well, duh, that's the point that the medical researchers at The Morgellons Foundation are trying to make.  Nothing explains what's happening to these unfortunate people.  Makes you wonder sometimes why we look to mainstream science as a bellwether for truth.   But I digress...

Given the nature of the TV show, guests proposed, almost giddy in doing so, that this could be an alien bioweapon.  Not likely in my opinion but it's not illogical.  Why would aliens go through the traditional, messy motions of invasion as shown in any number of popular films?  It would be so much easier to simply release a virus on Earth for which we would have no hope of resisting.  That gives me all kinds of ideas for a novel, maybe even this year's NaNoWriMo project.  But again, I digress...

So is it a weapon of bioterrorism?  The Foundation is quick to dismiss any notion that it could be given the fact that there is at this point no credible evidence to support such a claim.  If not a terrorist act, then maybe one of our dandy little toys on the loose?  Either accidentally or deliberately?  It is an established fact that the United States and several nations have conducted extensive research into using biological agents as weapons.  One case is from the 90s, where a cancer research center in Houston determined that several Desert Storm vets were infected with a modified version of Mycoplasma incognitus, a microbe often used in bio-warfare experiments.  The molecular structure of the microbe in this particular case carried 40% of the HIV protein coat.  That means someone somewhere created the thing.  Unreal.  But as a bio-weapon, Morgellons, while causing a great deal of suffering, is not a quick and effective killer.  Or maybe that's the point.  After all, it has long been known that a wounded soldier is far more a liability to the whole than a dead soldier. And if you think that the "altruistic patriots" running the show would never loose such an experiment upon their own people, there are folks in Tuskeegee who would disagree.

I'm leaning towards this thing being from space.  Not an alien attack, mind you, but a hitherto unknown microbe brought to Earth on any number of pieces of rock or space junk that fall through the atmosphere daily.  We know that microscopic life can exist in space.  We know that some forms of it, such as salmonella, even thrive in a zero-g environment.  We have microscopic life right here on Earth that does not need oxygen and thrive in conditions or extreme temperatures or high acidic content.  To think that we couldn't one day face an enormous pandemic brought here from the stars is just plain naive and arrogant. 

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