David Sheffield Bell is an American physician who has done extensive research on the clinical aspects of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).
[6][7] Bell's interest in ME/CFS began in 1985 when an apparent cluster outbreak of 216 persons occurred in his rural community in upstate New York.
He has written extensively on the condition, including a thirteen-year follow-up study of the children who became ill during the original outbreak.
[2][8] Bell was involved in identifying the outbreak in Lyndonville, New York, of what was known at the time as chronic Epstein-Barr virus (now more commonly referred to as ME/CFS).
[9] In 1990, the researchers presented evidence they found DNA sequences very similar to a known human retrovirus in some ME/CFS patients, at a conference in Kyoto, Japan.