Investigating Morgellons Syndrome
Morgellons, mass media and the medical community
Morgellons, despite being unrecognized by the medical science continues to generate an increasing number of mainstream media reports and is thus growing in the public consciousness. This development can be viewed both positively and negatively depending on the point of view.
For some it is a good thing as it means that Morgellons is gaining exposure and therefore there is a greater chance of the symptoms being recognised as a distinct ailment. On the other hand some argue that increasing mainstream coverage that is not matched by professional medical interest could lead to vulnerable people being exploited by the unscupulous.
An unscientific, but non-the-less instructive, test of the relationship between the amount of medical attention and the amount of media attention given to the phenomenon can be found in a comparison of online hits on the Google search engine and on the PubMed (peer reviewed medical publications) directory.
I used four other diseases for comparison; (i) Lyme disease because Morgellons has been closely associated with it and due to Lymes early history when it was hotly disputed. (ii) Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) due to some similarities in both symptoms and the reaction of the medical community (although now accepted as a bona fide illness, many are still skeptical as to the reality of CFS). (iii) SARS and (iv) Avian Influenza on the basis that although hardly disputed both entities are essentially new emerging at roughly the same time as Morgellons.
Google-vs-PubMed search engine hits |
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 28th 2008 | Google hits | PubMedhits | Google to PubMed Ratio | Year of initial Pubmed article | |
| Lyme | 12,500,000 | 8232 | 1518 | 1979 | |
| CFS | 4,400,000 | 3574 | 1231 | 1987 | |
| SARS | 19,000,000 | 4119 | 4612 | 2003 | |
| Avian flu | 2,600,000 | 3191 | 814 | 1950 | |
| Morgellons | 285,000 | 10 | 28500 | 2006 | |
With only 10 published papers (a number are actually letters rather than bona fide papers) Morgellons, despite having almost ten times less Google hits than Avian flu, the next lowest, has by far the largest ratio, with 35,632 Google hits for every PubMed. However the relative infancy of Morgellons must be taken into consideration it may well be that all of the above had similar ratios at similar stages in their cycle (if the same experiment could have been conducted), although it seems unlikely, aprticularly when one considers that SARS is only three years older than Morgellons.
It can be concluded that; (i) Morgellons is currently, for whatever reason, understudied by the medical community, (ii) that the disease and approaches sufferers take to it are being almost wholly determined by lay-person and mass media views and it is thus fertile ground for exploitation, unsubstantiated claims and scaremongering.