Investigating Morgellons Syndrome
Investigating the Fibres at OSU
The first attempt to scientifically test the fibres seems to have been by Randy Wymore, a P.H.D. researcher in neuroscience at Oklahoma State University (OSU), who first got involved in 2005. Wymore stumbled across the MRF site by chance and became quite fascinated by the Morgellons story and thought it would be relatively easy to prove what the fibres were. He requested fibres for testing and was soon receiving the infamous ziplocks from all over the United States.
Wymore's initial observations were not what he had expected: despite the fact they came from different parts of the country they all looked remarkably similar, more surprisingly he could not match them with any other material, natural or synthetic, he used as a comparison.
Wymore then sent them on to the Tulsa Police Department forensics lab to be subjected to much more strenuous testing.
Again the results were unexpected the lab used gas spectroscopy to identify the fibres chemical structure and then compared the results to the 800 known types of fibre on their database, but there was no match. Next they used gas chromatography, which involves exposing substances to extreme heat in a vacuum and recording the temperature at which they begin to boil. Different compounds have different boiling points which offer clues to what they are made of, but despite raising the machine to its highest temperature 1,400 degrees the fibres refused to boil, merely blackening, and thus were not able to be matched to any of the 90,000 organic compounds on the database.
The fibres were a mystery. Wymore's said of the testing results;
The conclusion we were left with is that they are unknown fibres, not simply contaminants from clothing sticking to scabs.
That Wymore sent the fibres to the Tulsa PD forensics lab is interesting.
Other scientists and dermatologists that have received fibres have described them as nothing more than common, everyday fibres. But Rhonda Casey, chief of pediatrics at OSU is critical of the way in which lab technicians arrive at their conclusions by simply looking at the fibre under a microscope. Casey was asked by Wymore to look at some Morgellons patients that came to his lab in 2006 and after doing so she began to take the condition seriously. According to Wymore and Casey they found fibres under unbroken skin, which makes it harder to claim that they are regular textile fibres from the everyday environment.
Casey argues that dermatologists need to examine using a dermascope and to do biopsies of both sufferers lesions and healthy skin. She says that some of the fibres she has seen in patients appear under unbroken skin and so could not possibly have been put there by the patients themselves, as some medical experts have claimed.
Noah Craft, a dermatologist at Harbour-UCLA Medical Center in California, has seen a number of Morgellons patients and unlike other doctors he says he always examines patients. Citing scabies as an affliction in which real bugs do burrow under the skin, and other complaints that can cause similar sensations he advises,
You have to do due diligence to rule out other causes.
However his opinion is that Morgellons is not a real condition. He has performed biopsies and skin examinations and has never found any fibres or anything unusual in any of his patients.
It should be noted that Wymore is not a physician and that Casey is a pediatrician, whilst Craft is a dermatologist; a specialist in the field of skin in which all the physical symptoms of Morgellons are concentrated, and he thinks its not real.
Does this mean that non-specialists are making conclusions that they are not qualified to make, or does it take fresh eyes, someone who is not familiar with the orthodoxy of skin conditions, to be able to see something that the traditionalists cannot, something that perhaps should not be there?