In the essay Devil’s Bait, Leslie Jamison ponders several ideas about empathy and what it means to understand others’ plights. In her essay, Jamison recounts her interactions with people suffering from the controversial disease Morgellon’s, a condition in where people believe that material, such as fibers, worm their way out of people’s skin. While going to a Morgellon’s conference, Jamison finds herself relating to the plights of those she talks to. She sees people who used to lead completely normal lives get caught up in their obsession over a disease Jamison doesn’t believe is real. The people seem depressed and desperate for some form of answer or recognition. But despite Jamison’s skepticism over Morgellon’s being an actual disease, she does believe that the people who have are actually suffering. At one-point Jamison relates the mindset of a Morgellon’s patient to her own experience with a botfly larva that buried itself in her ankle. How even after the larva was removed, she couldn’t stop obsessing over the possibility that there is maybe another one in there, despite her own rational telling her there is a slim to none chance, (Jamison, 226-227).

Jamison’s understanding of the Morgellon’s patients’ plights relates well to Yo-Yo Ma’s essay on empathy. In Yo-Yo Ma’s essay he puts forth the idea that if people where more empathetic to one another, than many of the plights we find ourselves in would cease to exist. Indeed Jamison’s empathy towards the patients seems to support Yo-Yo Ma’s ideas. Here is a group of people suffering not only from a perceived physical alignment, but also from being seen as a joke or mentally ill in the medical community. Jamison showing empathy towards many of the people she met gave them some reprieve from the constant misunderstandings and ridicules from people on the outside. It is likely that Yo-Yo Ma would present this as a great example of how empathy can bridge the gap between people with all manner of differences.

However while it may seem that Jamison’s case presents a case for empathy, Jamison herself felt the dangers such empathy brought to her. Jamison later in the essay talked about how she felt the invasive feeling of curiosity that wormed its way into her mind with the botfly larva appear again after her visit to the conference. How she knew she was perfectly sane and rational, but that feeling of wanting to entertain the notion that she too might have threads poking out of her skin, (Jamison, 234-235). I confess that I too felt a little unnerved by the idea that I could become infected with this brain-worm just from reading her essay. This part of the essay seems to go against the earlier section that supported Yo-Yo Ma’s argument and instead lends credit towards that of Paul Bloom, whose treatise on empathy puts forth the idea that empathy leads people to an irrational mindset. It’s Jamison’s empathetic reasoning that caused her to entertain the idea of her possibly being infected. Had she used a more rational and compassionate mindsight as Bloom suggests when approaching the conference it’s, unlikely that Jamison would have understood their plights as well, but it also would have stop Morgellon’s from potentially claiming another victim.