http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/conditions/12/18/turning.white.ap/index.html#cnnSTCText

Quote :

" His once brown, even complexion is now mottled with pale patches around his eyes and mouth, along his nose and on his ears; his arms, shoulders and chest are speckled and blotched. "I'm a black man turning white on television and people can see it," says Thomas, an anchor and entertainment reporter for the local Fox Broadcasting Company affiliate. "If you've watched me over the years, you've seen my hands completely change from brown to white." Thomas has vitiligo, a disorder in which pigment-making cells are destroyed. White patches appear on different parts of the body, tissues in the mouth and nose, and the retina. "There is no cause. There is no cure, and it's very random," Thomas says. "I could turn all the way white or mostly white." As many as 65 million people worldwide have the disorder, including up to 2 million in the United States. Few people, outside medical professionals and those with the disease, had heard the term "vitiligo" until Michael Jackson revealed in the early 1990s that the disorder was behind his skin turning brown to white. It's not fatal, but experts say vitiligo robs people of self-confidence, evokes ridicule and unpleasant stares, and pushes some into unforced seclusion. Speaking out The 40-year-old Thomas says that's not where the disorder needs to be. He openly talks about vitiligo and how it has affected his life and career, and has written a book about his journey titled "Turning White: A Memoir of Change." Along the way, Thomas says he's met others with the disorder and has become a celebrity spokesman for the Columbus, Ohio-based National Vitiligo Foundation. Vitiligo attacks the soul and psyche, foundation executive director Robert Haas says. "When was the last time you saw someone with vitiligo handling your food? It is the public's image that it is some leprosy-type of disease," he says. "A lot of folks feel this disease has trapped them and kept them away from their life goals." That was Thomas' fear. He uses a combination of creams and makeup to cover the growing patches of skin -- which he calls devoid of color -- on his face, hands and arms. Viewers, co-workers and, for years, his basketball buddies, were none the wiser. Only family members and those closest to him knew the secret he had kept since age 25. Thomas first noticed a change after getting a haircut while working in Louisville, Kentucky. He looked in a mirror and thought the barber had nicked him. A closer look revealed a pale spot, about the size of a quarter. "I got two more on the other side of my scalp, on my hand and one in the corner of my mouth," he recalls in an interview from the station's studio. "That's when I went to the doctor and got diagnosed." He didn't let it slow down his blossoming career. From Louisville, he soon landed at WABC in New York for three years beginning in 1994. After a short freelancing stint in Los Angeles, California, Thomas found his way to WJBK in Detroit, Michigan, in 1997. He has carved a niche in the Motor City market with his quirky, upbeat and humorous reporting style; his confidence, constant smile and positive air on the set mirrors his demeanor off the set as well. Opening up Even though Thomas uses makeup to conceal his skin discoloration, he realized the vitiligo was becoming more obvious when he couldn't hide it from a preschooler during a story about a playground. His two-toned hands frightened the girl, who began to cry. "I thought my career was over," says the Emmy award winner who routinely travels to Hollywood for one-on-one interviews with celebrities including Will Smith, Tom Cruise and Halle Berry. So he gathered himself one day and approached the station's news director, prepared to walk away from television. "She said, 'Let's just see what happens,"' Thomas recalls. "As it got worse, she kept encouraging me to tell my story." Dana Hahn, WJBK's vice president of news, says the station was concerned about Thomas possibly leaving because of the condition. "Lee is also a friend and we wanted to help," she says. "He had covered it up so well, we really didn't realize the impact it was having or how far it had spread." Thomas finally agreed to tell his story on television in November 2005. After the first segment on Thomas' vitiligo aired, Hahn says he took a leave of absence and missed the initial response from viewers. Health Library MayoClinic.com: Vitiligo "I received 40 to 50 e-mails a day the entire time he was gone," Hahn says. "So many people found support and encouragement in his story. I've never seen the kind of response to any story in my 12 years at Fox 2." At the time, Thomas was already writing his book. "As all those things happened, the tone of the book changed," he says. "I was writing for all those people who were afraid to come outside." Dr. Sancy Leachman, associate professor of dermatology at the University of Utah, calls vitiligo stigmatizing, driving some to even consider suicide. "They feel people are looking at them all of the time," she says. "They are very self-conscious about people staring at them in the grocery line. It can be a very demoralizing condition." Thomas acknowledges he even preferred the security of solitude to the awkward stares of strangers when not wearing his makeup. "There were times when I would not come out of the house," he says. "I call it a mental war. It was me saying, 'I don't want to deal with it today.' I never stayed in for very long. I know people who stay in now for months at a time." When he's out socially now, Thomas forgoes the makeup he wears on camera. He met his girlfriend of seven months, Karen Tate, at a vegetarian restaurant they both enjoy. She said when they're out together, she notices some people staring and making muffled comments about his appearance. "He doesn't say anything," Tate, 28, says. "It doesn't really bother me. Some people are just rude." She says she sees past what some people can't. "He just has a very free spirit. He is just a very nice guy. He opens up completely in his book. It is something he really wanted to do." Surprisingly, Thomas gives vitiligo some credit. "Having this disease forces me to focus on what I am: kind, caring, honest," he says. "There are people who have diseases that will kill them." E-mail to a friend "

12/18/2007 10:17:50 AM

that's a shame

12/18/2007 10:20:24 AM

i've got vitiligo, but i'm not black so its not as obvious, and is mostly just on my legs

12/18/2007 10:22:12 AM

there was a kid in a couple of my classes who had that

12/18/2007 10:24:17 AM

my roommate (freshman year) had that shit.....he always made jokes like 'damn....I'm getting whiter. I hope it doesn't move down to my dick'

12/18/2007 10:26:06 AM

i was gonna post this, just saw it

pretty crazy

12/18/2007 10:26:42 AM

^^ I remember that guy

12/18/2007 10:29:48 AM

every black man's dream...

12/18/2007 10:30:13 AM

just more proof that the white devil is trying to hold us down

12/18/2007 10:30:14 AM

^^^ dude is a prison gaurd rehabilatation expert now

12/18/2007 10:34:29 AM

he's evolving

J/K

[Edited on December 18, 2007 at 10:37 AM. Reason : that's fucking weird]

12/18/2007 10:36:10 AM

hahahahahaa, evolution at it's finest

12/18/2007 10:37:43 AM

12/18/2007 10:39:11 AM

lol

will his lips shrink?

will he suddenly not find watermelon quite so appealing?

[Edited on December 18, 2007 at 10:39 AM. Reason : ]

12/18/2007 10:39:23 AM

look like that motherfucker went face first into some marshmallow pussy

12/18/2007 10:40:32 AM

Hey everyone, look at how hard beergolftile is trying to be funny.

12/18/2007 10:42:32 AM

Quote :

"Hey everyone, look at how hard beergolftile is trying succeeding at being funny. "

12/18/2007 10:43:51 AM

rawr rawr white supremacy.

12/18/2007 10:46:28 AM

^^ people laugh AT you

not WITH you

12/18/2007 10:51:33 AM

I remember seeing a kid like that walking around campus. Must be tough.

12/18/2007 10:54:52 AM

I have vitiligo.

Unfortunately, the news article didn't report the facts quite correctly. Vitiligo completely kills any color in your skin. Thus, "white" people who have it (such as myself) have splotches on their skin that turn the color to that of a sheet of paper -- truly white. When black people have vitiligo, people automatically assume it's turning them into a white person -- which isn't quite the case.

I started getting it around 6th grade on my scalp, arms, and places where my skin was broken (cuts/scrapes/scars). Your hair gets their color from your skin cells, so the places on my scalp were quite noticeable since I had random patches of hair turn white. Unfortunately, middle school is when most kids are pretty mean, so I definitely got picked on a lot. Didn't really bother me, but I also didn't have it too badly.

Vitiligo isn't really supposed to recede but mine has mostly gone into remission. I no longer have it on my arms, don't have it as much on my scalp, and it's rare that I'll get it where I got a cut or scrape. I still have some on my right cheek so part of my beard (if I let it grow out) would be white. I still have some on the back of my neck.

The article also failed to mention that having Vitiligo itself won't kill you, but the unpleasant side-effects might. Since the areas of your skin that lose their pigment no longer have any natural ability to tan, all they can do in sunlight is burn. If someone with Vitiligo goes outside for any decent length of time, they HAVE to wear sunscreen on at least those areas or they'll get a pretty bad sunburn. For me that's when it looked pretty weird -- totally fine but bright pink and red on the areas where I have it.
Repeated burning, as we all know, really ups your chances for skin cancer. If I go outside for any legnth of time I usually put on SPF50 suncreen.

[Edited on December 18, 2007 at 12:18 PM. Reason : ]

12/18/2007 12:17:03 PM

looks like that crazy mad scientist Yakub was doing some more experiments with monkeys p in the Caucus Mountains

12/18/2007 12:19:32 PM

A good example of vitiligo on someone white.



[Edited on December 18, 2007 at 12:21 PM. Reason : stupid image tags different from other message boards >:O]

12/18/2007 12:21:20 PM

I saw a dude at home depot that must have been going thru this.. his hands were white, half his face was too, but rest was black

12/18/2007 12:22:24 PM

That perosn doesn't look that white though^^

12/18/2007 12:23:51 PM

^^^my dad has that exact same thing o his hands... nowhere else though

12/18/2007 12:24:22 PM

^^ you must not see very many people that actually get direct sunlight then... my brother gets darkers than that in the summer

12/18/2007 12:28:13 PM

how does that guy not look "that white"

12/18/2007 12:30:25 PM

juxtaposed next to truly white skin, I guess she doesn't look that white

12/18/2007 12:33:02 PM

what race does she look?

12/18/2007 12:34:29 PM

Looks white to me, I was just kind of guessing at where DiamondAce's comment comes from

12/18/2007 12:38:59 PM

BTTT

12/18/2007 11:32:14 PM