The recent Reuters article about the illness, or cluster of illnesses, variously called CFS, ME, CFS/ME and ME/CFS was problematic for many reasons. One of them was the information included from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In explaining why the CDC dropped its longstanding recommendations for cognitive behavior therapy and graded exercise therapy, Dr Elizabeth Unger, chief of the chronic viral diseases branch, repeated the tired trope that the agency believed people had “misinterpreted” what it meant.
It is long past time for the CDC to drop this unconvincing claim. As a public health agency, it has a responsibility to acknowledge when it has made mistakes, as it has in this case, rather than advancing absurd arguments to cover its tracks.