To understand the beginnings of CFS and ME/CFS, we have to go back and look at when the term CFS (for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) first came into being in the late 1980′s. It was an insufficient name for a complicated illness even back then. For years people around the world have tried to come up with something better.
In 2007, The CFS Name Change Advisory Board was formed to do just that. See the members of this committee seated around the table in the picture above. They remain as some of the most prominent physician/ researchers in the world on the topic of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: (left to right): Drs. Anthony Komaroff, David Bell, Nancy Klimas, Leonard Jason, Charles Lapp, Lucinda Bateman, Paul Cheney and Daniel Peterson. (Pictured separately below.)
From an article in ProHealth, “The CFS Name Change Advisory Board (NCAB) has amended its initial proposal and now recommends that the name for ‘chronic fatigue syndrome’ be changed to the acronym ME/CFS.”
The board realized that the use of ‘CFS’ logically would continue for awhile and it has. Sticking with the term CFS (particularly in the US) prevents harming patients involved in disability and medical insurance issues, and it provides a continuity of sorts in the research arena. However…
The Board encourages the change because the trivializing nature of the name ‘chronic fatigue syndrome’ negatively affects diagnosis, patient care, and research funding.
Okay… to be honest, I wrote this post awhile back. I never published it. I was looking at it today and thought, why not? The name change issue is still viable. The illnesses are viable. And to my knowledge, not a single thing involving this issue has been resolved. That is tragic.
If my interpretation of this issue is no longer true (and that’s possible), please let me know. I’ll gladly add to this information and re-post it. The worldwide population of people suffering with CFS and ME/CFS needs to get things resolved. Eventually… surely… we will be.
Changing the name(s) to further the process
of understanding and achieve better results
ought not to be so difficult.
Cinda Crawford
Host of the Health Matters Show
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