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Post by Gwen "sunnyand7777" Simmons RN on May 11, 2011 19:34:00 GMT -5
I am too emotional for words. I will just paste this for all to share. Gwen "Sunny" Simmons tinyurl.com/4xsgh3mDr. William Tarver Harvey, 73, of San Antonio, Texas, and a native of Liberty, 73, died May 4, 2011, of a heart attack in San Antonio. A memorial service will be held at the U.S. Air Force Academy in the near future. Dr. Harvey was the son of Cordelia Williams and Thomas Elijah “E.T.” Harvey. He earned his undergraduate degree and wings at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Soon after, he became a physician, earning his M.D. degree from Case Western Reserve University. He spent much of his career with NASA, focusing on the medical challenges to humans in space. A seasoned traveler, in his time he saw the entire world. After retirement, he embarked on another career — researching formerly unknown infectious diseases. His achievements gained him a listing in Who’s Who in America, among other honors. Dr. Harvey was preceded in death by his parents; his sister, Patricia; and by his brother, Thomas E. Jr. Survivors include his wife, Pat Dotson Harvey of San Antonio; a nephew, Thomas Elijah Harvey III; an aunt, Mary Alice Harvey of Liberty; and numerous cousins. Memorial donations may be made to the Cordelia Williams Harvey Scholarship Fund, Copiah-Lincoln Foundation, P.O. Box 649, Wesson, MS 39191, or to the charity of the donor’s choice.
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Post by toni on May 11, 2011 20:03:40 GMT -5
Thank you Sunny for sharing this news.
I too feel great sadness to learn this.
I never met Dr. Harvey, but had great admiration for him. When he spoke on the TV show - and stood up for all of us with Morgellons, and against all of his colleagues, he touched my heart deeply.
He was a good man, and a real doctor.
I'm so so sorry.
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Post by sheredelight on May 11, 2011 21:03:47 GMT -5
Yes i too am sorry Dr. Harvey has passed, very sad. I wonder if any recent article of his will be released, as he seemed to be making progress. Friday January 18, 2008 Dr. Harvey's Latest Statements Re Morgellons and Mutant Worms The latest Washington Post article on Morgellons has interesting statements from Dr. Harvey as followup to my previous post. William Harvey, 70, who serves as chairman of the MRF board, has taken those theories one step farther. He says he became interested in Morgellons research after successfully battling chronic fatigue syndrome and made it his mission to find cures for such unexplained illnesses. He wouldn't be specific, explaining that he first wants the results of his research to appear in a top-notch, peer-reviewed journal such as the Lancet. "This may be the story of the century," he says. A semi-retired doctor in Colorado Springs who spent most of his career working in space medicine for the Johnson Space Center, Harvey says he may have found not only why Morgellons patients would both scratch and act strange, but also what could be the "genesis of probably most chronic human illnesses," such as autism, obesity, chronic fatigue and bipolar disorder. It all boils down to this: mutant worms. Harvey hypothesizes that a type of nematode, a wormlike parasite that lives in the soil as well as in the guts or lungs of about half the animals on the planet, mutated somewhere in the 1970s in Southeast Asia and jumped from animals to humans. The parasite is easily spread through the fecal-oral route if someone, for example, is out working in the garden, fails to wash his or her hands thoroughly and then eats an orange. Or it gets into the lungs by inhaling sputum or by kissing. The worm then takes up residence in the colon, Harvey theorizes, and the body's immune system holds it in check. But when the immune system falters, the worms swarm in the body. That's what happens, Harvey hypothesizes, after a human is infected with a strain of bacteria first reported in 1986, Chlamydophila pneumonia. These bacteria like to live in immune cells, Harvey says, and they feast on those cells' energy. With the host's immune system compromised, the mutant nematodes begin reproducing exponentially, Harvey suspects. They burrow a hole in the wall of the colon, then usually travel at night through the bloodstream or the lymphatic system or crawl in hordes between the layers of the skin, like other species of nematodes are known to do, to the parts of the body with the most blood flow: the face, head and nose. There, a cranial nerve leads right into the brain. A pileup of worms could jam blood and oxygen flow to the brain, Harvey says. "That may explain the psychological symptoms," including the hallucinations, he says. It may explain why Pam Winkler took herself to the emergency room recently. She said that a huge bump had appeared on the side of her skull in the middle of the night. By morning, she said, the bump was gone, but she could feel crawling all over her face. She wasn't making it up, she swore. And she put her stepsister, with whom she's been living since she got out of the state hospital, on the phone. "I can see them. They're moving down from her head to her eye," said Karen DeWeese. "They're about one and a half inches long and a half-inch wide. They look like bubbles under the skin." The ER doctor later found nothing. The fibers, according to Harvey's theory, are really the hard shells, which he calls cuticles, that these worms shed at five stages as they grow from egg to larvae to adult. The red fibers are the males, he says. Blue fibers are female. "Using a 2,000-power microscope, you can see inside them," he says. "They look like little stovepipes to me. I can tell the blue ones are female because there's a kink in the middle for the sexual organs and some kind of pouch. And we have pictures of them laying thousands of eggs."
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Post by itchin4answers on May 11, 2011 21:42:32 GMT -5
What? I can't believe it. I didn't know Dr Harvey personally, but I know someone who was very close to him. This is so so sad, gosh he died on my birthday.
My sincere condolences to his family.
itchin
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Post by ginna898 on May 12, 2011 11:04:35 GMT -5
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Post by kammy on May 12, 2011 15:05:46 GMT -5
Sorry to hear about Dr. Harvey, it sounds like we lost a humanitarian who had his priorities in order and really cared about people.
btw - Happy Belated Birthday, Itchin...
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Post by justhanginin on May 12, 2011 15:42:10 GMT -5
We have lost another ally who had so much to contribute to our fight. I hope that his research doesn't die along with him and am sure that he will have the fast track to the pearly gates.
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Post by bannanny on May 13, 2011 16:16:36 GMT -5
God bless you Dr. Harvey... as you blessed us all.
much love ~~ bannanny
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Post by itchin4answers on May 13, 2011 17:08:48 GMT -5
Hi bannanny, nice to have you back! not a word of a lie I shed a tear for Dr Harvey this morning. I was looking out the window eating my breakfast, thinking how miserable & cold the weather is. Then my thoughts drifted to the obvious! & then I thought of Dr Harvey. I didn't know Dr Harvey, but I know one thing he was an honest man. Rest in peace Dr William Harvey.
Love itchin
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Post by skylark99 on May 14, 2011 3:58:12 GMT -5
Dr Harvey was bravely confronting a heart condition for some years which temporarily halted his research. He hoped to return to it and the paper he was writing in 2009 with his UK colleague.
My sincere condolences to Dr Harvey's family, colleagues and patients. His passing has left a Bill-shaped hole in our lives that will never be filled.
He touched all our lives and gave us hope. His work and compassion for those suffering from Morgellons is a loss to all of us. But his memory lives on in his research, in those he successfully cured and the on-going work and research of his colleagues.
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Post by bannanny on May 14, 2011 12:52:35 GMT -5
Thanks itchin... and yeah, he was one of the bravest of them all. Even tho I didn't know him personally, I sure knew of him and thought of him as a hero to us all who are fighting this fight. I know he's still fighting for us tho too... only difference is he's one of our angels now.
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