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CDC forming Morgellons task force


KENS-TV
Mon May 22, 2006


The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has launched an investigation into the skin condition called Morgellons disease.

Since a story about Morgellons first aired on KENS 5 Eyewitness News, the station has been inundated with e-mails and phone calls from the medical community and others how claim to have the symptoms described in the story. The story has received tens of thousands of page views on the MySanAntonio.com

The story was how Les Coble of Pleasanton found out he was not alone.

"God, I'm not crazy, there are other people with this," Coble said.

Coble is covered with lesions and says he has the sensation of bugs crawling under his skin.

People have claimed fibers actually pop out of their skin.

"When one of those fibers come out, you just gotta get it out of you," Coble said. "They're painful as anything."

The victims aren't the only ones who have seen the fibers. Ginger Savely has also seen the fibers. While working as a nurse practitioner in Austin, she has treated more than a hundred Morgellons patients.

"Little white fibers would come up and go down, come up and go down in the palm of his hand. I saw that myself," Savely said of Coble.

Coble also has another strange symptom of this condition, a black tarry substance that oozes out of the lesions.

"Black, black and it just stunk," Coble said.

He has seen nine doctors over five years. Like so many suffering from the condition, he was told it was all in his head.

Coble was actually diagnosed with delusional parasitosis, literally delusions of parasites in the skin.

The medical community does not recognize Morgellons. However, officials at CDC say they are taking Morgellons very seriously.

The CDC is forming a task force made up of "infectious and chronic disease experts, as well as environmental health and mental health doctors to investigate the condition known as Morgellons."

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