Posted by
Michael at 1:46 pm
Morgellons Photos
Photos,
Science 214 Responses »
Jul 132006
(
If you are looking for some free Morgellons-style photos to illustrate an article, feel free to use any on this page, and then there are also many more free photos here)
I’ve been asked several times to explain the dramatic photographs of Morgellons sufferers. Well, let’s take a look at some specific examples:
This is “skin from lesion on back, 60x, with embedded fibers”
Presumably these are the types of “unusual” fibers that
Ginger Savely finds in peoples lesions when she looks at them with her 30x radio shack microscope. I can’t really see much unusual about this photo though.
Then we have some close-ups: “Fiber and red spot, 200x, top lit”
And the same, but back lit:
Now that’s kind of interesting. The poster says “large fiber looks like it’s attached to blood spot, possibly feeding. Smaller fibers, babies?”. Sounds like an over-active imagination to me.
There’s a couple more, at 200x:
The poster comments “Fibers look nothing like clothing fibers” “fibers all different sizes”, “red dots – eggs?”, “fiber embedded under skin!”
Interesting photos, don’t you think. They really look like something is going on, some weird fibers embedded in lesions. Is this the evidence the the MRF is looking for?
It’s seems to be of the highest level of evidence they have presented so far.
But I can say quite confidently that this “evidence” demonstrates nothing – in fact it actually hinders the case for Morgellons!
Why such arrogance in my assertions? How can I be so sure?
The “Morgellons sufferer” is me, Margellons. The “lesion” was a healing zit on my back, the “skin from lesion” is a piece of scab/skin I peeled off it. The photos are mine, the comments are mine, the lesion is mine,
the fibers come from the combed cotton and polyester black shirt I am wearing, plus whatever shirt I was wearing the past few days the scab formed, plus a few streaks of blood and skin fibers.
So, either
A) I have Morgellons, and I am in some deep, deep, denial.
B) Fibers in lesions are not evidence of Morgellons.
Fibers are everywhere, as are
the Fuzzballs.
Posted by
Michael at 12:01 pm
Fuzzballs
Photos 113 Responses »
Jul 112006
A commenter called “Hugh R Delusional”, challenged me thusly:
Can Morgellons watch replicate bundles of colored fibers? If we fiberites are crazy and the fibers we claim to see are simply textile in origin then any doubter should easily be able to pluck some lint off their clothing or belly button even and see bright blue, red, black and translucent fibers tangled in amongst the lint. [...]
If your curious as to what you should be looking for, go to the main page of morgellonsusa.com and the background picture will give you a clear indication of what to expect.
Here’s the morgellonsusa.com picture:
So I got out my trusty QX5 and scrabbled together a few lint balls from my wardrobe. Unfortunately my microscope only does 10x, 60x, or 200x, so I can’t replicate the scale of the above (which looks 20x), but here’s my best effort at 60x
And again at 10x
I think that quite conclusively shows that the morgellonsusa fibers are nothing more that regular clothing fibers.
This whole experiment took me less than 20 minutes.
(Update)
Later I discovered that the Morgellonsusa photo was actually squished and elongated, which gives it that odd looking scale. It’s actually a regular 60x QX3/5 photo. Here’s the original:
This is a tiny little thing, barely a spec when viewed at arms length. Easily not noticable on your skin until you look closely. For scale, here’s a bit of MY fuzzball on a penny, at the exact same scale. Note it’s on the letter ‘E’ of ‘CENT’. Also notice how the colors and the fiber diameters all match the morgellonsusa photo.
I also did bit more digging, for Hugh, and found this bit of lint on the floor of the laundry room:
You see, fibers are everywhere. And this bit of lint shows that they are mostly white, with some red and blue, and the occasional black. I think laundry lint is a pretty good random sampling (seeing as I don’t sort my laundry by tonalidad).
Posted by
Michael at 4:46 pm