Any syndrome, almost by definition, isn't a highly meaningful diagnosis, as it's diagnosed by symptoms and exclusion. Once the mechanism is better understood, it'll become a disease and not a syndrome, but most likely it will split into multiple diseases (and even then many people will be left out, untreated).

Imagine having Crohn's disease the year before it (or UC) was 'discovered.' You had a debilitating disease, but you were just told you had "really bad irritable bowel syndrome". Certain doctors would tell you that it was all in your head. Or at the least, they would be wholly unhelpful. The general public would be much worse.

In my extensive experience, doctors are really, very much just people. Actually, they're often less helpful than regular people because they have extreme constraints on their time and against thinking for themselves (example of the latter: a close friend of mine was hospitalized for attempting suicide and they wouldn't give him benzodiazepines because of the __risk of addiction__).

Sorry for the rant...