Several months ago, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research offered a “catalyst grant” to set up a research network for ME/CFS. The National ME/FM Action Network was part of a team that made a grant application.

We have just received word that our application was denied. You can read the documentation here: It provides interesting quotes like: “there is no evidence that CFS is a disease”, “psychosocial factors are strongly associated with the development of CFS” and “research focus on biomarkers is likely to provide limited additional value”.

(Just for clarification, there were two catalyst grant competition run in parallel, one for musculoskeletal rehabilitation and the other for ME/CFS. There were three applications for the MSK rehab grant, one of which was approved. Our application was the only application for the ME/CFS grant.)