"Talk about mass hysteria, this is a case of a non-diagnosis becoming a national epidemic. You can thank a bunch of self-important doctors and ill-informed, self-righteous support groups revving up a populace primed to enjoy poor health. If crucifixes were still in vogue, I am sure that there would be no shortage of volunteers. Once upon a time chronic feelings of lassitude, lack of energy, generalized aches and pains and sleep disturbances were considered typical of depression. . . . The term means NOTHING."
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Read another misinformed article at Salon.com: "Making ourselves sick."
Read list of CFIDS symptoms

Though a name-change debate has raged for years in the CFIDS community, and most researchers have argued that a new name should be based on a clinical marker, the naming of illness is more an art than a science, almost poetic in nature.

Cancer comes from the Greek "karkinos" and Latin "cancer," both meaning crab, to describe the crab-like appearance of the veins in external tumors.

Lupus is named after the Latin for wolf, because of the characteristic malar rash that develops on the face, giving sufferers a wolf-like appearance.



Multiple Sclerosis is named after the hardened tissue
that forms patches in the brain and spinal cord.

Herpes comes from the Greek and means to "creep like a serpent."


Syphilis was named for a hero in a 16th century poem. Influenza, formerly named Grippe after the French word for seizure, was renamed after the Italian word for influence, based upon the belief that epidemics are influenced by the stars. Lyme disease is named after a town in Connecticut. Yellow fever is named after the color it turns its victims.

Though sophisticated tests pinpoint numerous physiological abnormalities in patients, CFIDS has been depicted as amorphous and, instead of being given a poetic name to render the felt quality of the symptoms, named after a concept so pedestrian it has been drained of meaning. "Fatigue" is a nondescript word. Like "depression," it is a word most people think they have experienced. But while the difference between rainy-day sadness and suicidal depression is huge, so is the gap between standard tiredness and CFIDS fatigue. People with CFIDS often have trouble walking between rooms or lifting a grocery bag. The illness produces complete bodily catastrophe.

The notion of CFIDS as a vague condition simply arose out of its vague terminology. Charles Darwin, when he first heard a description of a giraffe, exclaimed, "There cannot be such an animal." CFIDS, even bigger than a medical giraffe, is almost like Sesame Street's elusive giant puppet snuffleupagus - witnessed only by believers. A study entitled "Stigma and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome" found that more than 75% of CFIDS patients have been labeled a psychological case by at least one physician. Most of these seek out other doctors, leading to a self-perpetuating cycle where disbelieving doctors rarely see progressive cases of CFIDS. Doctors who see many patients with CFIDS say that its symptoms are incomparable and that false cases are easy to pick out. Because of the lack of funding for physician education, most doctors are not even aware of the strict CDC guidelines for CFIDS diagnosis. Generally, people with CFIDS experience some combination of debilitating symptoms every single day. The symptoms are not vague. They are merely so grand and evasive that, like the elephantine Snuffleupagus, they require a perceptive witness.

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Finding a Clinical Marker