Review of: "The Concept of ME/CFS"

Potential competing interests: No potential competing interests to declare.This is a thoughtful, balanced, and scholarly overview of an important area, viz the confused area of nomenclature surrounding ME/CFS.It emphasises the value of regarding the illness as a "clinical syndrome" ie a characteristic collection of symptoms that breeds true, rather than worrying too much about possible pathological aetiologies.Perhaps the author could have been more critical of the term CFS and the damage and confusion that has been caused by definitions of CFS that do not include PEM as one of their core criteria.Likewise, more criticism could have been made explicitly of the group of professionals who for so long have promoted a view that ME/CFS is not a "real" illness, but is simply due to a combination of faulty illness beliefs and deconditioning.The harm that these views have done and continue to do to the patient community is immense and one of the major medical scandals of the last 50-60 years.