There’s no middle ground when it comes to chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) – it is either a bona fide clinical entity or a trendy media-made disease with no basis in fact.
This division was evident during the recent annual meeting of the Canadian Life Insurance Medical Officers Association (CLIMOA), the doctors who advise health and life insurance companies on the morbidity and mortality risks of every disease state.
CLIMOA’s members meet annually for an update on therapeutic and laboratory diagnostic testing developments. There are currently 187 members from 128 North American companies and this year’s meeting in Toronto was the largest to date, with 112 members attending.
Dr. Richard Proschek shed more heat than light on the CFS issue with a presentation that concluded family physicians are diagnosing CFS in patients who clearly have other medical conditions that would account for their fatigue.
With an alleged epidemic of CFS looming, insurance companies are caught in a dilemma. Should they pay disability benefits to people being diagnosed with the controversial syndrome? They want to know if it’s a real disease and how much it’s going to cost them if large numbers of people become afflicted.
You can read the rest of this article here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1452254/pdf/cmaj00222-0063.pdf
Source: Olga Lechky. Life insurance MDs sceptical when chronic fatigue syndrome diagnosed. CMAJ. 1990 Sep 1; 143(5): 413–415. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1452254/