Is CFS a “real” disease?
At this early point, many practicing clinicians remain unconvinced that CFS is a genuine illness, although it is slowly increasing in acceptance. The reluctance is due in part to the facts that (1) no specific cause has yet been found, (2) there is no observable marker that doctors can use to specifically identify the illness, and (3) most doctors are not yet familiar with the peer-reviewed research which does tend to legitimize this disease. Emerging illnesses such as CFS typically go through a period of many years before they are accepted by the medical community, and during that interim time patients who have these new, unproven illnesses are all too often dismissed as being “psychiatric cases”. This has been the experience with CFS as well. But many top-level researchers are showing that this is a distinct, organic illness. This includes research by Anthony Komaroff (Harvard), Jay Levy (UCSF), Nancy Klimas (U. Miami), Andrew Lloyd (U. New South Wales), Stephen Straus (NIH), and oth
