Classifying Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Excerpt

To the editor: As chairman of the Research Committee of the World Organisation of Gastro-enterology, I wish to respond to the editorial on classifying inflammatory bowel disease (1). Because most of the editorial relates to philosophical questions, I also will deal with broad issues. Detailed answers to specific questions raised by the editorial have been given elsewhere (2-6).

The fundamental question is why classify inflammatory bowel disease at all. As our committee has pointed out over the past 6 years, such a classification has only limited value in terms of fundamental or etiologic research work. On this point the Committee