Of course you are right that CFS is a catch-all term for what is probably a number of conditions. If you say that you had something that fell under that rubric

Of course you are right that CFS is a catch-all term for what is probably a number of conditions. If you say that you had something that fell under that rubric that you are sure was of emotional origin, I would be the last to argue with you. But what you need to hear, evidently, is that a common cause, I would guess the most common cause, of symptoms that also fall, for lack of better diagnosis, under this category, is clearly organic. I didn't come up with the idea of taking valacyclovir myself; drugs in this class are being used to treat this particular type of CFS by researchers such as José Montoya at Stanford Medical School: http://med.stanford.edu/news_releases/2007/january/montoya.html http://med.stanford.edu/news_releases/2007/january/montoya.h... So the fact that "CFS" is really a catch-all for several poorly-understood conditions is really the key point. You can see from that link (fourth paragraph from the bottom) that researchers like Montoya are keenly aware of this. The Economist story, in contrast, leaves the impression that Wessely is approaching CFS as a unitary condition; this could be the reporter's error, but it doesn't much matter: the story is still objectionable. You are actually the first person I have seen on the Net saying that you have been diagnosed with CFS that you are convinced is psychogenic. Again, I have no desire to argue with you about your own case. I think, though, that cases like yours are a minority among CFS sufferers, probably a small minority. (Stories like mine are not hard to find at all.) But as far as who is holding whom back, I couldn't disagree more. Firstly, I know the connection between EBV and (many cases of) CFS has been suspected for at least 20 years, because I have found historical references to the possible connection. Acyclovir, the first of this class of antivirals, dates back at least to 1982. Yet it's only in the last few years that doctors like Montoya have been experimenting with antivirals for CFS. I think that part of the reason it has taken so long has been the belief, at one time fairly widespread in the medical community, that CFS is always of psychogenic origin. Secondly, I don't know what kind of research someone like Wessely could do that would be of any help to you. What you need, by your own argument, is a therapist to help you get in touch with the emotions whose repression is causing your symptoms. What could Wessely do to facilitate this process? I would ask you to be careful when throwing around statements like "They enjoy having a label they can hide behind". While this could be true in some cases, you don't know that these people don't have an EBV or HHV-6 infection, or some other physiological problem. And I don't know how you would think that I would "mock and denigrate" people with CFS. The only people I am mocking and denigrating are those who claim that CFS is necessarily always psychogenic. I have CFS myself, did you get that? (And BTW my doctor agrees; he's tested me for everything else; this isn't just a self-diagnosis.)