This a very well written article .... Washington Post. I have e-mailed and corresponed with Dr. Vitaly Citovsky a few times.
[url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/16/AR2008011603134_5.html?[/url]
With their new theory that the fibers could be made of some kind of cellulose, Savely and Stricker, both of whom are on the MRF medical
advisory board, contacted Vitaly Citovsky, a plant biologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Stricker suspected that agrobacteria,
common bacteria found just about everywhere that cause tumorous crown galls to form in trees, were somehow related to Morgellons because agrobacteria
like to bind with cellulose. Citovsky studies agrobacteria and its use in genetically modifying plants. It was his lab that showed that agrobacteria
can genetically transform any organism, including human cells, by transferring DNA into it.
Citovsky prefaced his interview for this article with, "I'm a normal scientist." He says he was interested in a basic scientific puzzle. "At the
time I became involved, I knew nothing of the controversy that surrounds this thing. I didn't know that half the people were crazy. Ninety percent of
the stuff on the Internet is absolute lunacy. Government conspiracies, nanotechnology," Citovsky says. "People e-mail me that they have wasps coming
out of their skull." Citovsky hypothesizes that Morgellons, like syphilis and other infections, can act on the central nervous system and brain and
cause hallucinations.
For his study, funded with $3,400 from MRF, Citovsky tested the skin of five people who believed they had Morgellons and a control group of five
people, including himself, who did not. He found agrobacteria in only the Morgellons samples. Then he studied the fibers. Many of them, he says,
appear to be polysaccharides, or long sugar molecules, which could be cellulose. And he found they contain traces of metal, such as aluminum. But,
like Stricker, Savely and Wymore, he won't be certain what the fibers are until their DNA is tested, an expensive process that the MRF is unable to
fund. "To me, it indicates that there is something there. It's not like someone picked up lint from their dryer. But that's all we have," says
Citovsky, now a member of the MRF's scientific advisory board.
William Harvey, 70, who serves as chairman of the MRF board, has taken those theories one step farther. He says he became interested in Morgellons
research after successfully battling chronic fatigue syndrome and made it his mission to find cures for such unexplained illnesses.
He wouldn't be specific, explaining that he first wants the results of his research to appear in a top-notch, peer-reviewed journal such as the
Lancet. "This may be the story of the century," he says. A semi-retired doctor in Colorado Springs who spent most of his career working in space
medicine for the Johnson Space Center, Harvey says he may have found not only why Morgellons patients would both scratch and act strange, but also
what could be the "genesis of probably most chronic human illnesses," such as autism, obesity, chronic fatigue and bipolar disorder.
It all boils down to this: mutant worms.
This is all very encouraging ... believe me and with the improvements that I have made in a year taking a wormer IMO I agree with both of these
scientists.
[edit on 1/19/2008 by motherofsquirrelkiller]
