This Is Interesting

This is from TIME Magazine:

Dr. Gregory Smith wants people to know it's not all in his head. According to the Gainesville, Ga., pediatrician, white fibers have been burrowing into his skin for the past two years, making him feel like he's under constant bombardment from insects or cactus needles. Shine a black light on these fibers and they'll fluoresce blue, he says, just like something you'd see in The Twilight Zone. He describes looking into the mirror one night, only to see one burrow down into his eye.

"Yes ma'am, I was a little bit distraught," recalls Smith, 58, who says he can no longer work because his mysterious ailment has also robbed him of his memory and neurological function. "I tried to grab a hold of it with tweezers and it would not come out. It was quite painful, so I threw up my hands and went to the Emergency Room with my wife."

For Smith, and some 4,000 people across the nation who claim to suffer from similar symptoms, it's the reaching out that has been problematic. The disease, called Morgellons after a reference in a 1674 medical paper, isn't officially recognized by the medical community. Some have suggested that it is a hoax, even a viral marketing campaign for a sci-fi movie. But sufferers say it's real and that there have been a growing number of cases across the nation of people with these painful fibers, skin lesions, crippling fatigue and memory loss. No one knows what causes Morgellons and no one knows how to cure it.

ABCNews is also reporting on this mysterious ailment. The CDC is supposedly looking into it.