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C. Ives wrote:

When people refer to music from the Rococo period as "Classical" I make sure I correct them.

Wait, no I don't, because that would make me a douchebag.

Winnar

Bren wrote:

Dude, one word:

Morgellon's disease.

I guess that's two words. Here's two more:

Lyme disease.

And you already mentioned West Nile.

For your sake, and for the sake of your animals, you might want to consider not going out there into the wild unless you're wearing a haz-mat suit.

I grew up in Wellfleet, Cape Cod. Some areas are very woodsy and rural where there were lots of ticks. My best friend's German Shepherd used to run free. I remember his father pulling off these hugely bloated with blood ticks, sometimes more than one. I mean HUGE. They would literally explode with blood.

I remember my mom checking me and pulling off ticks which were of course tiny. I think I found a tick in my home twice two years ago. That was kind of weird. They were tiny, you could instantly tell they were ticks as they would immediately contract when you went to pick them up and were impossible to squish, got to burn them.

Aaron_R wrote:

I remember that L.L. Bean and Eddie Bauer make clothing that repels insects but I'm not sure to what effectiveness and how many washes it lasts for the price you'd pay. So I looked to see what their stuff was coated with and found that Repel makes the stuff for people to treat clothing, tents, sleeping bags etc themselves. It's called Repel Permanone and it's made to repel mosquitoes & ticks and I believe it is also DEET free. http://www.tackelbox.com/viewitem.cfm?i=854

Yes but I believe that product is illegal in California and permethrin, the active ingredient, is known to be particularly nasty to many types of wildlife - including birds and frogs.

http://www.forestry-suppliers.com/produ … sp?mi=5997

states it can't be sold in CA.

Fracai wrote:

Bren wrote:

Regarding Morgellon's:

The more research you do on the subject, the more you'll notice every little itchy, crawly sensation anywhere on your body. Creepy, creepy stuff!

That's odd, the more research I've done has lead me to believe that it's a poorly defined "syndrome" with no set definition of symptoms and is more likely to be a delusion.  In fact, your mention of an "itchy, crawly sensation" is one of the "symptoms" that dermatologists refer to as delusional parasitosis.  In other words, it's not real.  The more you think about it, the more you'll think you have it.  That isn't a real disease, unless it overtakes your life, in which case it's a psychological problem.

P.S.  I hate ticks too.

That something is difficult for humans to define does not mean it doesn't exist. It only means that the majority of humans will deny its existence.

"Delusional parasitosis" is the battle cry of lazy, ignorant, and incompetent physicians everywhere.

C. Ives wrote:

When people refer to music from the Rococo period as "Classical" I make sure I correct them.

Snideness Fail.

(If you go by the dates on Wikipedia, there was a 25 year overlap, but rococo was used to describe a primarily french post Louis XIV architectural/artistic style. Classical in this case refers to a musical style used between the mid 18th and early 19th century. They are basically unrelated; no musician would refer to a "rococo" musical period; most would be hard pressed to define the term, unless they had taken art history.)

resedit wrote:

I suspect the word "bug" may actually predate the scientific classification system that has narrowed the definition in a scientific sense.

Well, unless the scientists defined it before 1642, you're completely right. That is the date of the first OED citation for "bug" to mean "A name given to various insects, esp of the beetle kind, also to grubs, larvae, etc."

So it is quite likely that "bug" has had the popular usage long before some scientists narrowed it. So no, people who speak of "bugs" to mean creepy invertebrates are not incorrect, they are just not using the scientific jargon definition.

Ah, here we are. The first use of the classification "true bugs" is from 1861.

Last edited by Tallgeese (2009-05-28 11:17 pm)

There's a similar issue going on with the genus Pseudacris - a genus in the family Hylidae

Many frogs in the US were initially dumped into the genus Hyla which is the Treefrog genus, because they had phenotype characteristics that met the genus description for Hyla. They were called Treefrogs. Others were put into a new genus Pseudacris - and called Chorus frogs.

Some scientists discovers this thing called DNA. Then other scientists discover how to examine DNA from an evolutionary relationship perspective. They then find out all the American frogs of the genus Hyla actually belong in the genus Pseudacris - and then they try to change the common name on us, telling us our Pacific Treefrogs should be called Pacific Chorus Frogs.

Technically their may be some validity to that, but a common name is a common name, and the public doesn't give a crap - they just want something to call it, why change what they have been calling it for years?

So - most (myself included) continue to call the Pacific Treefrogs.

Now - there is some evidence that what we call Pacific Treefrogs is actually 3 distinct species. I personally think the paper is bunk, but if accepted, then two new species probably should be referred to as chorus frogs - IE my local species would become Sierran Chorus Frog.

But changing a common name because in your mind Treefrogs must be of the genus Hyla is confusing the purpose of having both a common and taxonomic name. The latter is for science, the former is because most of us don't know how to pronounce or spell Latin and isn't intended to be precise.

resedit wrote:

There's a similar issue going on with the genus Pseudacris.

Just because he was in 2 Fast 2 Furious and that Max Payne movie, that don't make him a genius.

How sad. A friend of mine very rightly described SVU as The Child Rape Show.

What bothers me most about Law & Orders, both SVU and otherwise, is that its throngs of viewers are so enamored with the admittedly skilled acting that they don't seem to notice how tired, formulaic, and totally implausible the stories are.

Every damned episode seems to involve cops questioning a magazine vendor, mechanic, or meat-packer who helpfully spends thirty seconds providing them with whatever clues the plot calls for and then conveniently says, "Well, if you'll 'scuse me, I gotta get back to work."

I'm sorry, but if detectives show up at your place of business asking questions about a homicide or a sex crime, you are not going to presume to just casually dismiss them after thirty seconds so you can get back to your menial labors and they can get back to crime-fighting.

Ditto for the anguished, full confessions that the perpetrators are always browbeaten into giving during the final act. Unless you're dealing with a really stupid, guilt-stricken criminal who doesn't understand how the legal systems works, you just don't find murderers and rapists responding to a cop's expert sleuthing or a DA's brilliant logic by unburdening themselves with a full confession on the witness stand.

It just doesn't happen.

What were we talking about again?

Last edited by Bren (2009-05-29 3:13 pm)

The main symptoms of "Morgellon's" are skin irritation, rash, and fibers.  Or scratching, raw skin from extensive scratching, and clothing fibers sticking to the raw skin.

That happens to me all the time.
It's usually botanical in nature, from plants I've been contact with that I have a slight allergy to.
A little Cortisone cream and 24 hours later it is all better.

I'm basically with Bren on this one; I'm just a little surprised CFS hasn't been mentioned in a similar vein (and anyone who makes that case will be in a real furball with me), speaking of 'vague, ill-defined' etc. etc. But, altho it took 2-3 decades, the CDC, NIH (and WHO before them) take it seriously now. Plenty has been turned up in various disciplines- genetics, endocrinology, neurology and so on; and CDC pegs the US patient population at over a million. Its history is a good case study in just the sort of medical attitude issue Bren reffed.

But many doctors have already formed their own opinions about Morgellons. Jeffrey Meffert, a dermatologist and associate clinical professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, is a vocal Morgellons skeptic, often debunking the disease in presentations to colleagues. He says he sees at least one patient a month claiming to have Morgellons, but he diagnoses most of them with prurigo nodularis, a condition sometimes fueled by anxiety and characterized by chronic itching and scratching, which creates hardened nodules on the skin. More rarely, he says, patients have the mistaken belief that they are infested with parasites. "People with delusional parasitosis are very functional and rational except when it comes to this one issue," he says. "Many dermatologists would rather these patients never show up, because they don't feel they have the time to spend. No one knows how to deal with them."
..

..One prescribed Zoloft for depression, while others prescribed the anti-anxiety drug Xanax. (She refused to take the drugs.) One dermatologist (not Meffert) diagnosed her with delusional parasitosis. "He told me, 'You seem a little obsessed. Maybe you should go speak to somebody'," she says.
..

Randy Wymore, an assistant professor of pharmacology and physiology who directs the Center for the Investigation of Morgellons Disease at Oklahoma State University's Center for Health Sciences in Tulsa, has performed extensive testing on Morgellons patient fibers and is "100 percent convinced Morgellons is a real disease." When he first heard of Morgellons, Wymore thought it would be simple to disprove its existence by examining the fibers. In 2005 he began asking patients, doctors and nurses to mail him samples. In the first week he got 10 packages from five states and was amazed by how similar the bundles of red, blue, back and translucent fibers looked. (He has since received more than a thousand fiber samples.) Over the next nine months he systematically compared them to all sorts of textile fibers, hair and dust from clothing, carpets, medical supplies and fishing and hunting supplies, but he could find nothing similar. He showed the samples to OSU colleagues, who also were baffled.

Intrigued and at loss for answers, he eventually took the samples to the Tulsa Police Department Forensics Lab, where fiber experts Mark Boese and Ron Pogue ran a series of tests on two red and two blue fibers. "In three minutes they decided it was like nothing they had seen before," Wymore says. Comparing the Morgellons fibers to a database of more than 900 known compounds used in textiles, they found no match. Next they heated a blue fiber to more than 700 degrees, which darkened but did not destroy it. They determined the fibers were not fiberglass and did not match anything in their database of 90,000 organic compounds. OSU researchers have found tangled fibers underneath even healthy, unbroken skin in Morgellons patients, which Wymore says rules out the kind of wound contamination Meffert describes.

Wymore acknowledges that some people who claim to have Morgellons may be delusional, but he says all but one of the nearly 30 patients he and his colleagues at OSU have examined do, in fact, have the disease. Like Odom and so many others, he welcomes the CDC study. "My hope is thousands of physicians will go, 'I still don't believe this Morgellons crap, but the CDC is looking into it. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt'."

My bold.  http://www.newsweek.com/id/108819

And even a 'true' delusional parasitosis patient would not qualify as psychotic, just neurotic. But if you're growing fibers in you that withstand 700 degree temps you're likely neither.

Last edited by Bat (2009-05-30 7:13 am)

Bren wrote:

Morgellon's symptoms are only vague if you're not suffering from them.

So, "I know I'm sick, because I'm sick."  How can something possibly be categorized as a disease if only the people who suffer from it are able to define what it is?  That is the definition of an unreliable and biased sample.

Bren wrote:

I say you have way too much faith in doctors and scientists, two groups of people who are notoriously full of themselves and easily swayed by whatever is the dominant belief system among their colleagues.

My perception differs.  Doctors and scientists are a group of highly educated professionals and experts who place accuracy and empiricism above all else and are swayed when the evidence merits a change.  Fighting ingrained beliefs is an issue, but one that is mostly covered by the scientific method and peer review.

Bren wrote:

Look at the history of science and medicine over the last two-thousand years, and you will find tons of examples of mainstream scientists and doctors rigidly clinging to absurd, comical notions which were later proved false, and angrily denying truths which we take for granted today.

Later proved false by the very scientists you say we can't trust.  There are bound to be bad apples, but the system is designed to weed these out by exposing their deeds.  Peer review, for example, is designed to add weight to a published article by showing that it has been approved by others, but also allows others to tear it apart and point out its failings.

Bren wrote:

Lastly, the medical community is finally beginning to take Morgellon's seriously. Witness the ongoing study that Kaiser Permanente is currently conducting on behalf of the CDC.

Don't trust the medical community when they disagree with you, but if they ever start to investigate your claims, they're you're best friend.  Right.

Bren wrote:

It's too little, too late, in my opinion, but such studies do cost millions of dollars, and the money wouldn't be there if the CDC thought the disease wasn't real.

The study is currently in the testing and analysis phase (see here), I'll be interested to see the results.  But, the money is there largely because members of Congress put pressure on the CDC to investigate.  Regardless of the source though, an investigation alone does not mean it is a real phenomenon.  The CDC is investigating to gain more information.  Currently there isn't enough to determine that this is a novel condition.  If the CDC investigation finds credible evidence I'll likely be convinced.  But the existing reports are far from that.

As for the reports of non-organic, extreme heat resistance, etc., as they say: [[citation needed]].  A report from the media that a forensics lab burned a fiber and that it darkened, but survived is barely one step above anecdotal evidence.  Where has this been published?  Have the samples been studied by other labs?  Were the samples collected, tracked, and handled in a document process that rules out contamination?

Bat wrote:

And even a 'true' delusional parasitosis patient would not qualify as psychotic, just neurotic.  But if you're growing fibers in you that withstand 700 degree temps you're likely neither.

True, but we need evidence that those fibers were actually grown inside the subject and that they actually withstand such temperatures.  A NewsWeek article and any number of anecdotes or self reported symptoms provides neither.

Bren wrote:

Then again, there may be no infectious agent; some have theorized that Morgellon's is the human body's reaction to an unprecedented level of environmental contamination, and the fibers may in fact represent heavy metals and other contaminants which the body is trying to contain and get rid of.

If they're heavy metals and contaminants, wouldn't they be recognized by those tests which declared them unmatched within the database of 90,000 compounds?  If the database doesn't contain heavy metals, etc., isn't that a big, gaping hole in the research method of OSU?
Speaking of the CIMD at OSU, their page isn't all that persuading either.  The majority of their FAQ is answered with "undetermined", "unknown", "inconclusive", etc.  The data just isn't there yet.

Bren wrote:

Since most of them are non-scientists, they naturally come up with some pretty out-there explanations. We should still listen to them, however, as I've noticed that people often have an amazing ability to intuitively know what's going on with themselves or a loved one, and their information will often contradict what the doctors are telling them.

The research is actually pretty conclusive that people have an amazing ability to delude themselves and even focus on their initial instincts long after they've been proven false.  Confirmation bias will lead us to believe that we're more intuitive than we really are by remembering the times we're right and ignoring the times we're wrong.  Their information may often contradict what the doctors state because the doctors aren't likely to promote an overly optimistic view when the outlook is not good.  It's hard to see a loved one in pain and natural to reject the painful information and outcome.  Science and medicine is about fighting these instincts and verifying a result with multiple tests and sources in order to find the objective truth.

Like I said, the evidence just isn't there.  What is there is marginally interesting, but so far points to known conditions.  If the CDC and other studies turn out to be well performed and produce credible results, that's new information and changes the story.
If the CDC study, or some other, comes out and declares that it's nothing new and is best defined as delusional parasitosis or some other non-physical condition, what will your reaction be?  "Guess I was wrong?" or "The CDC is biased and never would have found a positive result."