In March of last year I was in pretty good shape. I was running 1.8 miles three times a week -- not a lot of miles by hardcore runner standards, but more than most middle-aged men. The previous September I had competed in my first race, and had turned in a very respectable time, about the 64th percentile among the men. And I've always been active, running, cycling, and playing table tennis. It's very important to me.

Anyway, in the third week of that March I had a flu-like illness. It wasn't too different from the dozen or two other such illnesses I've had in my life, although it was perhaps among the more severe, lasting a full week.

After giving myself a couple of weeks to recover I attempted to resume my previous level of activity. But I was beset by a persistent malaise and severe headaches. After a few weeks it became clear that anytime I exercised, somewhere between 12 and 48 hours later I would have these symptoms.

To make a very long story short, I eventually figured out that these were common symptoms of CFS, a condition I had heard of (20 years ago I knew someone who had it) but had known next to nothing about. Further poking around on the Web led me to think that it was probably caused by an Epstein-Barr infection.

While I had originally hoped it would get better on its own, eventually it became clear that it was getting worse. I asked my doctor for a prescription for valacyclovir, an antiviral drug, and he agreed. I started taking it at the beginning of (this) March. It has helped quite a bit, though I'm not completely cured -- I've been exercising some, and I still get the symptoms afterwards, but they're not nearly as severe.

I'm relating all this to explain why I think it's ludicrous to suggest that this illness is hysterical. I was indeed under a lot of stress at the time I contracted it; I was between jobs, my previous job having ended in a particularly stressful way (it was a startup that ran out of money). If you wanted to say that my stress level was a factor in the etiology of the infection, I'd be the first to agree. But that's very different from saying it's a mental illness.

There is a certain institutionalized arrogance in the medical establishment. Some doctors -- not all! -- when faced with a patient whose symptoms they can't explain or treat can't stand to admit that modern medical science still doesn't know everything about the human body. So rather than admitting their ignorance and powerlessness, which would be hard on their egos, they say the disease doesn't exist. Now, which of us has the mental problem?

I don't begin to condone death threats. There's no excuse for such behavior. But there's also now plenty of evidence for an organic cause of many cases of CFS. The working hypothesis, as I understand it, is that it's a viral infection of the brain, where the virus is a member of the herpes family, usually either Epstein-Barr or human herpesvirus 6. Hence the use of valacyclovir or valgancyclovir, which were invented to treat herpes infections.

BTW, before trying valacyclovir (and indeed before realizing that I had CFS) I did try other medications, which did nothing. I seriously doubt my improvement can be attributed to the placebo effect.

So although, again, I don't condone death threats, I also have very little patience with those who, in 2011, are still putting forth what by now is a discredited theory, one that doctors should have been too ashamed to advance in the first place.

(Someone is going to point out that some patients have felt somewhat better when given antidepressants. Let me tell you, this is a depressing disease, so I understand how that might happen. I have not heard of anyone being cured solely by antidepressants.)