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A un importante periodista de la Fox, le está pasando lo mismo que a MJ. El vitíligo le está "comiendo" el color de la piel, y él mismo habla de lo dificil de la situación. Trabaja entrevistando en la TV a estrellas de Hollywood y la gente se está dando cuenta de que su color ha ido del marrón al blanco en los ultimos años....
Vamos, que le está sucediendo lo mismo que a MJ.
Aqui abajo copio la noticia de Fox news.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317065,00.html
DETROIT — Lee Thomas' skin is betraying him.
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.
The 40-year-old Thomas says that's not where the disorder needs to be. He openly talks aboueup 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.
"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."
Saludos.
