With the demise of AIDS imminent with strides in science -- even though a cure hasn't been found -- it's high time some new disease came up. Introducing Morgellons Disease. The descriptions are rather scary and I'm hoping I don't see anyone with it.

Reports of a mysterious medical condition are cropping up across the country but doctors are divided on whether it is a real disease or all in their patients' heads.

Called Morgellons Disease, patients who report having it describe sensations of creepy-crawlers beneath the skin and fibrous filaments oozing out of open wounds.

Interest in the disease was recently rekindled after afflicted Texas teenager Travis Wilson committed suicide about a month ago.

Symptoms

To date, no clinical studies have looked into Morgellons and only one paper mentioning Morgellons has been published in a medical journal. Appearing in a recent issue of the American Journal of Clinical Dermatology, the paper is co-authored by members of the Morgellons Research Foundation, a non-profit organization devoted to raising public awareness about the disease.

As of February 2006, more than 2,000 reports of the disease have been reported on the Foundation's website. Reports come from all 50 U.S. states and 15 nations, including Canada, the UK, Australia and The Netherlands.

The majority of reports have come from Texas, California and Florida.

Patients with the disease often describe feelings of insects or parasites scuttling beneath their skin and open lesions that heal slowly and which ooze out blue and white fibers, some as thick as spaghetti strands. Attempts to remove the fibers are said to elicit shooting pains radiating from the site.

The lesions range from minor to disfiguring in appearance and fibers appear either as single strands or as bundles. Patients also sometimes report the presence of fibers or black granular specks on their skin even in the absence of lesions. Some patients even report symptoms of the disease in their pets--dogs mostly, but also cats and horses.

According to statistics from the Morgellons Research Foundation, about 95 percent of patients also report suffering from disabling fatigue, or "brain fog," that hinders their ability to pay attention. Other reported symptoms include joint pain, sleep disorders, hair loss, decline in vision, and even the "disintegration" of perfectly healthy teeth. It appears that once patients contract the disease, they have it for life. To date, there have been no reports of spontaneous remissions.

Continue Reading at LiveScience

On the Yahoo Discussion of this topic, I discovered someone who apparently has the disease. If you're going to be sick please don't visit the photos he put up.

@Zahymaka
Is this disease Sexually Transmittable?

No one knows how it's transmitted yet, so it's still kind of scary. Here's a more indepth story on Travis Wilson, the teenager who committed suicide.

Note: if you have a queasy stomach, there are pictures on the page.

@Zahymaka:

Have you heard of the Ebola virus? It's even more scary than HIV.

I know of Ebola -- your organs going mushy and stuff, but nothing beats the crawly feeling I'm getting now as I think of what it'd feel like to have blue spaghetti-size strands of unknown material coming from my skin. Arghhh.

_{Genial, can you hit me on Yahoo Messenger -- or do you use MSN?}

@Zahymaka
Why do u want to spoil a nice Sunday evening by posting such pictures

I didn't post any pictures.

@Zahymaka:

_{You're not online @msn!}

Hmm, this world sef.

Morgellons. Ehn?

Okay the only scary thing here is the things crawling under your skin. *shivers*

Those pictures arent disgusting. It's just like viewing slides in Micro-bio class. (well sorta kinda). lol

i have this morgellons disease. let me tell you how you would know i have it,

if i were in the same room with you, let's say, we worked in an office together, I PROMISE YOU, most of the people in that office would be itching.

i had to quit a job one time because one of my coworkers asked me in front of EVERYONE if i was the one making them all itch. they noticed that on my days off, no one itched, and when i came to work, EVERYONE itched and scratched bad. needless to say, i didnt show up to work anymore. i knew i had something, and my conscious was killing me knowing that i was working around others that i might infect with this terrible disease.

i swear to you, this is real. the fact that i have been to almost ten doctors and NONE of them have been able to help me makes a person feel frustrated. most of the doctors i have been to have told me that i am delusional, that its all in my head. this is exactly what most sufferes go thru, doctors who wont believe them, because of this, sometimes one does tend to think that this is a government experiment or a type of conspiracy. for what, we dont know. it just seems like that.

please, please, PLEASE, COPY THIS MESSAGE AND SEND IT TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN. US SUFFERS WANT THIS TO BE EXPOSED AND THE CDC (CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL) DOES NOT WANT TO RECOGNIZE THIS AS A DISEASE, BUT LIKE I SAID EARLIER, IT IS REAL. IF ENOUGH PEOPLE HEAR ABOUT THIS, THEN MAYBE ENOUGH PEOPLE CAN PUT PRESSURE ON THE CDC TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS HORRIBLE DISEASE.

if you want to see how many others suffer with this, just go here and see for yourself.

http://216.122.128.184/dc/dcboard.php

That's so sad, sufferer - thanks for sharing.

There should be more attention on the disease now because a doctor had it, and I don't like to think the boy Travis [I can't find the link now] committed suicide for nothing.

The good news is that there's a research foundation - you can visit http://www.morgellons.org/ for help or to find out more.

Since there's obviously no cure, I'll say, may God help you. This is so sad.