I've had Chronic Fatigue Immune Disfunction Syndrome (and Fibromyalgia) since 1971. It's been around for a long time. The only reason it was called "Yuppy Flu" during the '80s was because, at that time, Yuppies were the only people who could afford to get a diagnosis (CFIDS requires a lot of testing to rule out other things).

Personally, I'm convinced that CFIDS is related to exposure to environmental contaminants (among other things), so it's entirely possible that there is a connection with CFIDS occurance among Gulf War veterans. I also wouldn't rule out the possibility that one or more bad batches of some sort of vaccine given to the military personnel could have caused some of the cases.

It's also true that the number of new cases of CFIDS has been increasing at an alarming rate in the last ten to twenty years. And those are just the ones that have been diagnosed. CFIDS tends to get mis-diagnosed a lot.