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Morgellons Disease as Internet Meme

TO THE EDITOR:  In 1690, Sir Thomas Browne, an English physician, made mention of a pediatric medical condition that he called "the Morgellons:"¹ "Hairs which have most amused me have not been in the face or head, but on the back, and not in men, but children, as I long ago observed in that endemial[sic] distemper of little children in Languedock, called the Morgellons, wherein they critically break out with harsh hairs on their backs, which takes off the unquiet symptoms of the disease, and delivers them from coughs and convulsions."

The Morgellons faded into obscurity and was rarely mentioned until 2002, when the mother of a child with a skin condition resurrected the term and began the Morgellon Research Foundation (http://www.morgellons.org). According to the Morgellon Research Foundation, Morgellons disease is a newly-described illness first noted in 2002. It is characterized by a number of symptoms, such as fatigue, skin lesions, diffuse musculoskeletal pain, cognitive dysfunction, and emotional lability.² Notably, patients with the illness describe filaments of various colors spontaneously growing from the skin, as well as the sensation that insects are crawling under the skin. There has been much debate over the nature of Morgellons: infectious, environmental, and psychiatric etiologies have been posited.

The term meme was coined in 1976.³ "Meme" was chosen to be phonetically similar to the word gene in order to highlight the similarities between the two terms. It is an amalgam of the words memory and gene. Genes can be considered as units of genetic material that "compete" with each other for survival. Similarly, Dawkins suggested, ideas are engaged in an analogous struggle with each other to attain dominance in the marketplace of ideas.

The recent success of the Morgellons-disease meme is, in part, explained by the fact that the Morgellons label resonates with symptomatic individuals. In one person’s words: "I felt so relieved. I found all these people talking about the same thing I was."⁴ Accordingly, Morgellons disease has been considered a rapport-enhancing term in clinical medicine.⁵ The dermatology literature indicates that Morgellons disease is likely the equivalent of "delusional parasitosis," a psychiatric illness in which patients erroneously believe that their skin is infested with parasites.^5,6 This competing conventional meme has been unpopular among individuals identifying themselves as having Morgellons disease.

For Morgellons disease, most information available to patients exists on the Internet; thus, the World Wide Web is a second important contributor to the proliferation of the Morgellons moniker. With widespread reports dating back only about 3 years, Morgellons has seen explosive growth for a concept dormant for more than 300 years. A large CDC-supported descriptive study is underway: a first formal clinical epidemiologic investigation of the Morgellons phenomenon, involving skin biopsies and fiber analysis (http://www.cdc.gov/unexplaineddermopathy/investigation.html).⁴ Results will characterize Morgellons as either a novel illness or an internet meme synonymous with one or more previously described disorders.

REFERENCES

1. Keynes G (ed): A Letter to a Friend, in: The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, Vol. 1. London, UK, Faber & Gwyer, 1931, p 171
2. Savely VR, Leitao MM, Stricker RB: The mystery of Morgellons disease: infection or delusion? Am J Clin Dermatol 2006; 7:1–5[CrossRef][Medline]
3. Dawkins R: The Selfish Gene. Oxford, U.K., Oxford University Press, 1976
4. Marris E: Mysterious "Morgellons disease" prompts U.S. investigation. Nature Med 2006; 12:982[Medline]
5. Murase JE, Wu JJ, Koo J: Morgellons disease: a rapport-enhancing term for delusions of parasitosis. J Am Acad Dermatol 2006; 55:913–914[CrossRef][Medline]
6. Waddell AG, Burke W: Morgellons disease? J Am Acad Dermatol 2006; 55:914–915[CrossRef][Medline]

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