Frederick Wolfe

Dr. Frederick Wolfe is the director of the National Databank for Rheumatic Diseases and the lead author of the 1990 paper that first defined the diagnostic guidelines for fibromyalgia.

Quotes

• Some of us in those days thought that we had actually identified a disease, which this clearly is not
  To make people ill, to give them an illness, was the wrong thing
  The fundamental problem is that the improvement that you see, which is not really great in clinical trials, is not maintained
  • "Drug Approved. Is Disease Real?", New York Times (14 January 2008)

• In those with fibromyalgia there is overwhelming polysymptomatic distress, with severe pain and severe symptoms of all sorts
  One doesn't either have fibromyalgia or not have it
  There is a gradual transition from the mild to the severe.
  The point at which we classify an individual as having fibromyalgia is arbitrary, but reasonable.
  Fibromyalgia, therefore, is a convenient shorthand, not a disease.
  • 19 February 2013 article ^{[specific citation needed]}