Investigating Morgellons Syndrome
From Symptoms to Disease
How do a set of symptoms become identified as a new and distinct disease?
Despite the prominence of the ontological approach whether a particular set of symptoms are accepted as a new disease depends, in many ways, on the prevailing fashions of the time. Rosenberg (1992) has noted that, to some extent, diseases are always socially constructed and have identities outside of biological processes; TB, or indeed AIDS, for example, cannot be viewed independently of their history and social meanings.
Robert Aronowitz in Making Sense of Illness: Science, Society, and Disease
- Lay and medical attitudes and beliefs; despite many atypical features, an outbreak at Los Angeles County Hospital (LAC) in 1934 was considered to be polio due to the beliefs (rather than observable symptoms) held by the investigating medical officers as the conclusions about the LAC epidemic were at odds with what was then known about polio epidemiology.
- Disease advocacy; in the case of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), strong and determined advocacy has had a decisive role in its construction as a diagnosable entity.
- Media coverage; treatment in the media shapes the way in which diseases are understood and propagated.
- Ecological relationships; the relationship between an accepted disease and a new disease can be vital to it also becoming recognized as in the case of CFS and Epstein - Barr virus (EBV).
- Specific therapeutic and diagnostic practices; coupled with set beliefs, entrenched practices can mask the true nature of an outbreak and shape the course of an epidemic.
- Economic factors; financial concerns effect on tourism, funding, benefit payments and the labour pool will inevitably play a significant role.
Case studies
CFS and Lyme disease are two recently identified conditions with which Morgellons shares many commonalities. For example; Morgellons sufferers are afflicted by many of the same psychological symptoms that afflict sufferers of CFS, also most Morgellons have tested positive for Lyme disease, which is a tick borne infection of the skin. It is instructive therefore to look at the emergence and acceptance of these two entities as new diseases.