A crippling condition may be striking media celebrities and people close to them: paranoia.
Ed McMahon blames a toxic "death mold" (in the words of his lawyer) for killing his dog Muffin and causing his own respiratory ailment.
John Travolta's wife believes her son's Kawasaki Syndrome, a rare vascular disorder, was caused by chemicals in their carpet.
A Vancouver neurologist thinks viral agents may have caused Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's, since three other people who worked with Fox on the Canadian sitcom Leo and Me in the 1970s also have the disease.
There is no evidence that stachybotrys chartarum, the unsightly mold that has conquered McMahon's house in recent months, is significantly more dangerous than any other mold spores, but there is ample evidence that it causes a great deal of stress in the minds of homeowners, who have been suing realtors, contractors, and insurance companies for saddling them with mold-afflicted homes. It would help their cases as they are no doubt vaguely aware if they could also argue that the mold is responsible for all their physical ailments. An obliging New York Times reported last year on people who blame household mold for everything from respiratory problems to memory loss. The one thing most clearly affected by the mold, though, is property values, and those in turn have a surprising influence on people's stress levels. (Similar concerns no doubt played a role in driving many concerned citizens to blame unsightly electrical power lines for their headaches and cancers a few years ago.)
Similarly, it is common for parents with an afflicted child to seek someone or something to blame, as in the Travolta case, but scientists say they don't know what causes Kawasaki Syndrome and have no evidence that environmental or chemical factors play a role. One naturally sympathizes with Travolta and the child. Then again, Travolta is a member of a religion, Scientology, that blames negative thoughts on tiny, invisible aliens called Thetans (and vilifies psychiatry), and he eagerly took the role of the activist lawyer in the film A Civil Action, which valorized a scientifically unfounded legal action against the W.R. Grace company, which was charged with giving people leukemia through groundwater contamination...so Travolta and his family may not be the most discriminating skeptics.
At least McMahon and Travolta do not claim to be medical experts, though. The same cannot be said for the Vancouver neurologist who sees Michael J. Fox and company's Parkinson's as evidence for his own theory that Parkinson's is caused by a virus. Dr. Donald Calne notes that the normal rate of Parkinson's in society is about one in 300, while on the set of Leo and Me, with only about 125 staff members, there were four cases. This is a classic case of noticing a probably-random cluster of illness and then comparing it to the general background level of disease to induce fear, though of course any cluster worth noticing presumably shows a higher incidence of disease than the general population. Similarly, one will occasionally find oneself in a room with a slightly higher than average number of people wearing green, but quantifying the slightly elevated number of green outfits is not in itself proof that some Green Outfit Syndrome is at work. (See ACSH's report on Cancer Clusters for more on this topic.)
One might be tempted to say there's no harm in letting the celebrities believe what they wish and letting the doctor push his odd theory, but unfounded fears change lives. A vast celebrity-watching public may adopt the fears of its idols, needlessly abandoning moldy homes, removing children from carpets, and sheltering co-workers from exposure to Canadian television studios. Celebrities are better used for entertainment than for medical advice.
