Katinka -
I think that you have to pick the fibers off with precision tweezers and look at them the way they are.
First, if you just scrape money and culture it, you will most certainly get all kinds of things growing. Money is FILTHY, and most likely 99% of what's on it has nothing to do with Morgellons. All you'd be doing is confirming that money is dirty. (btw - over 90% of US paper currency has traces of drugs on it - enough for drug dogs to smell it).
What Jan is suggesting is that someone else look at the physical characteristics of these "money-fibers".
There are 2 things that are immediately apparant about these fibers that differentiate them from textiles:
- they are not uniform in thickness, which textiles have to be because they are extruded.
- the ends of textile fibers are squared off because they are cut. Morgellons fibers "taper off".
Jan did not address the second point that can be easily determined by observation, but should be done.
The third point is the burn test, but that is a little harder to do. You will need a Bunsen burner:
Bunsen burner - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and a ceramic plate to put the fiber on.
SS