Reconsidering Morgellons, or a visit to Rapunzel's chamber

A mysterious disease, which is either horrible or imaginary, is being investigated anew.  The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is paying Kaiser Permanente to reexamine Morgellons Disease.  Those who have it describe it thusly:

symptoms... include erupting sores, fatigue, the sensation of bugs crawling over them and - perhaps worst of all - mysterious red, blue or black fibers that sprout from their skin...
[T]he syndrome did not get a name until 2002, when "Morgellons" was chosen from a 1674 medical paper describing similar symptoms.

Some medical doctors consider it to be imaginary, a delusional parasitosis, one version of the classic "bugs are crawling all over me!" nightmare.  Those fibers?  "[L]ikely just threads from clothing."

The recent Pseudopod podcasted story, "Rapunzel's Room", actually does a neat job of working that real/imaginary divide, at least when it comes to the fiber-sprouting.

(thanks to Andy Havens)