My knowledge stems from reading all available research, and not from harboring the assumption of conspiracy reflected in your post.
There is no published research on this. There is a website that collects and reports testimonials and posts irrelevant pics with false, or misleading captions. The abstract link you posted is not to a study, but to a particular practice's opinions on a limited number of their patients. The docs involved failed to ID what actually was wrong with their patients and to characterize the common findings. Note the patients were not diagnosed with Morgellon's disease, because their is no such thing- other than psychosomatic complaint. There are no lesions caused by psychosomatic complaint.
The pics at the morg site are of skin scrapings from bullous, or vesicular lesions. They are fingernail scrapings, not biopsy specimens. They mean nothing. Every single image that contains fibers show that they are loose fibers simply laying on the surface. There is no evidence whatsoever that they emanate from any lesion. One report IDed them as cellulose. The fact is that these fibers remain absolutely uncharacterized. It takes virtually no effort to do that. Since it has not been done, there is even less reason to believe any of this.
The lesions themselves fall into all sorts of classification. Again, they are not characterized and there are no histological reports, or findings. In total, all this hype about this xfile disease means is that the docs these folks have been going to don't have a clue about how to go about determining their patient's illness. That includes the clueless PhD at the OK univ.
It also beats me how they can only show intact vesicular lesions, when the common complaint of morg's is incessant itchy, scatchy, painful crawling sensations. They should all be excoriated.
I see them all the time in our local natural health food store and also in the natural pet food store. Some just think the MDs are blind and stupid, others believe it is actually a conspiracy, but this is the way they reason, by taking unconnected facts and stringing them all together with no basis for doing so.
The somewhat similar description of some symptoms means absolutely nothing. 17th century reports on diseases are notoriously inaccurate. Even the doctors (let alone the lay people with an interest in medicine) still believed in the four humours and similar balderdash. Harvey's theory of the circulation of the blood wasn't even published until 1628, and nobody gave it any credence for another 50 years or so.