In Vitro Infidelium
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. The NICE Guidelines define CFS. The ICC and the CCC are both ME definitions.
CFS = illness of unknown aetilogy
ICC = illness of unknown aetilogy
CCC = illness of unknown aetilogy
how therefore is it possible to exclude the possibility of aetiological overlap (either total or partial) beween cases defined by the competing criteria ? Quite simply it is not possible, there is no gross symptom in any of case definitions or criteria sets, from Ramsay to the ICC (and everything in between), the absence or presence of which has any reasonable probability of being a distinguishing factor in the aetiologies of the illnesses decribed by those case definitions and criteria sets.
I fear what afflicts this discussion is a bad case of nominal fallacy, - the sense we all tend have that once something has been given a name, we know what it is and the named thing is somehow different to everthying else that has a name. Many named things are of course different from each other but in most case naming doesn't tell us how things are different, or tell us how similar they are. The challenge for research into M.E/CFS/M.E is not how to re-arrange the allocation of gross symptoms so as to identify the single ideal research subject, but to find out what is going on in the bodies of a broadly selected range of patients.
IVI