Morgellons Disease and Cotton: Does Genetically Tampered Bacteria Help the Disease Spread?
Morgellons disease, a condition that produces sores on the body and gives the sufferer the feeling that bugs are crawling all over their body, may have a new home in cotton clothing. Some people believe that Morgellons is a enteropathogenic biocontrol specie that been modified to a smaller size to help in the production of cotton materials in the textile industries of the United States. They contend that farmers for the last three decades have released biocontrol worms into the cotton fields to kill off insects and pests that would destroy the crops. There are no controls or regulation about how many or where these worms can be spread. Literally millions of these worms can be seeded into an acre of farming land.
The worms contain a bacterium that they are immune to. When the worm enters the host insect, the bacteria becomes lethal, killing the insect. If the bacterium is in the cotton fields, it could be easily transmitted to a human host via infected cotton products. If the bacterium is related to or cause Morgellon Disease, then the cotton tee shirts that we put on every morning could be the host carrying the disease. There has been some speculation that the bacteria are not the same in each Morgellons patient, but they are similar enough to present the same symptoms. The bacteria between patients are slightly different, but all resemble scabies or a spider like appearance. Some people have contended that the fibers coming from the sores are the actual bacteria itself trying to replicate.
Still others argue that bacteria for the purposes of organically grown textiles have been experimented on by the Army, DuPont, Honeywell, and Nexia corporations. There are many reports of these attempts and reports of their failure. The experiments that failed simply were thrown away. Since there is no control or regulation governing the disposal of the failed bacteria, Morgellon disease could be a biological accident in the attempt to make cheap cotton from bacteria.
Arguments against the ideal that Morgellons come from cotton state that the bacteria would be killed from the high temperatures that are associated with the sanitizing process that the textile industry uses. This has been rebutted by biologists who offer the data concerning bacteria that live in the volcanic vents at Yellowstone National Park. They have found and identified bacteria living in a temperature above the boiling point. If a bacterium can live in that environment, surely there must be some strains that can survive the temperatures of a commercial washer.
Morgellons is concentrated for the time being to sufferers in California, Texas, and Florida thought the center for disease control, CDC, says they have received about a million complaints. So far there are no cures or treatment for the disease and little to no information on the source. Many doctors even deny the existence of Morgellons Disease to a point that they consider a symptom of another disease all together. Whatever the source of Morgellons Disease, the sufferers are waiting for any news of a cure or a treatment.