Should the Autism Spectrum Be Split Apart? (hawaiitribune-herald.com)
- Reference: 0179708106
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/10/08/0331218/should-the-autism-spectrum-be-split-apart
- Source link: https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2025/10/05/nation-world-news/should-the-autism-spectrum-be-split-apart/amp/
> A New York times article suggests that merging the diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome into the Autism diagnosis [2]in 2013 , thus creating the "autism spectrum disorder," [3]was not helpful (paywalled; [4]alternative source ). That broadening of the diagnosis, along with the increasing awareness of the disorder, is largely responsible for the steep rise in autism cases that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called " [5]an epidemic " and has attributed to theories of causality that mainstream scientists reject, like vaccines and, more recently, Tylenol. But the same diagnosis now applies to both people who are non-verbal, frequently engage in self-destructive behavior such as pounding their heads against the floor, and may require full-time care, but also to people who are merely somewhat socially awkward, possibly engage in repetitive behaviors, and have a narrow range of interests. "Everything changed when we included Asperger's [in the diagnosis of autism]," said Dr. Eric Fombonne, a psychiatrist and researcher at Oregon Health & Science University. He noted that in the earliest studies of autism rates, 75% of people with the diagnosis had intellectual disabilities. Now, only about a third do.
[1] https://slashdot.org/~XXongo
[2] https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-HD-14-012.html
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/01/health/autism-spectrum-neurodiversity-kennedy.html
[4] https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/2025/10/05/nation-world-news/should-the-autism-spectrum-be-split-apart/amp/
[5] https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/hhs-trump-kennedy-autism-initiatives-leucovorin-tylenol-research-2025.html
More word games (Score:1)
We're just people, people.
As a diagnosed autist (Score:4, Interesting)
Dear Lord, someone finally sees reason! So much yes please!
Give me my Asperger's back! I don't give a damn if he was a Nazi or whatever, the term was exceedingly useful!
Re: (Score:1)
Were you on holiday recently or otherwise indisposed? It was nice seeing a few days of slashdot comments without your obsession with rsilverguns sexuality and posting habits.
Re: (Score:2)
ACs are never on holiday. They, like rsilvergun and others, are ubiquitous and everlasting bots, spawned in the days of lIce and the other malicious IRC bots. Some are wetware, apparently, an interesting evolution.
Nothing new here.
Should the Autism Spectrum Be Split Apart? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes!
I'm fed up of being ASD. I have to explain where I am on the spectrum and I think it helps having a return to the time I was able to just say I am an Aspie and everyone gets it.
When a spectrum is big, we always divide it into subgroups. Why have Blue, Red and Yellow? Why not just call it all visible light and describe the colour to people in Kelvin? Most people would have no clue what a kelvin is.
Re: (Score:1)
> Also, the basis to remove diagnostics like Asperger syndrome is that we found that our autistic patients have a tendency to believe they are very unique and special in a very positive way for them and we found that reinforcing that belief by coming up with several syndrome names doesn't help our patients.
Interesting. I know I'm probably shouting into the AC void, but do you have a study that supports that or is it professional experience?
Re: (Score:2)
"Why have Blue, Red and Yellow? Why not just call it all visible light and describe the colour to people in Kelvin?"
Nanometers would be standard, but I get the point. "Look at all the 700 nm in the sunset sky." "Look at how 470 nm the ocean is today." It would certainly mess up the poet's rhyming though.
Names are important (Score:2)
We give things different names for a reason. Sometimes different versions of the same thing have different names. Thunderstorm, tropical storm, and hurricane are all just thunderstorms of varying intensity, but identifying them all by one name would not be useful.
Re: Names are important (Score:2)
And before anyone wants to attack my specific example: Street and highway House and mansion Creek and river Hill and mountain They are the same thing but with characteristics that make them distinct enough to be called a different name.
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Jesus. Commas save lives, bro
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Don't forget cyclone and typhoon - both hurricanes, just different oceans.
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No, hurricanes and typhoons are both cyclones.
But then again, so are tornadoes.
Hurricanes and typhoons are what you're thinking of regarding the "different oceans", but even then it gets a bit weird- see the hurricane barreling into the west coast of Mexico right now.
The actual rules for which you call it are fucking complicated.
Re: (Score:2)
But the reason here is money. (Now who would've thunk!)
The more people are diagnosed with whatever, the more money there is to be made by producing remedies. Remember that if you exhibit symptoms of a disorder, doctors are obliged to treat that -- if they don't, you can sue them for negligence, even if they disagree with the diagnosis or with the whole approach.
Throw in the mix here the interests of the big pharma and medical insurance businesses, et voila, on a systemic level you have a recipe (pun not rea
Re: (Score:1)
> We give things different names for a reason. Sometimes different versions of the same thing have different names. Thunderstorm, tropical storm, and hurricane are all just thunderstorms of varying intensity, but identifying them all by one name would not be useful.
Erm... storm? Why not both? "We expect there will be a storm in Bermuda this monday, we aren't sure if it will just be a thunderstorm or will have turned into a hurricane though."
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But it isn't helping the kids. Autism runs strong in my family. My brother in his 50s has Aspergers, my son in his 20s Autism. Resources that those at the more severe end of the spectrum need are being used with people at the lower severity end who often don't need them.
Re:Redefinitions by activists (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's pretty well understood that current "let's get everything under the same umbrella so activists can claim they have more support" has been modus operandi for far left activists for a while now. "
Bull, that was the right wingnuts what did that so they could claim anything they didn't like was a "Conspiracy".
Re:Redefinitions by activists (Score:4, Informative)
That was doctors and neuroscientists, not activists.
Lots of conditions have a wide spectrum when it comes to severity and symptoms. They are grouped together due to things like common cause or common mechanism. Sometimes they grouping is historic, but we tend to undo that when it turns out to be inappropriate.
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[1]The evidence suggests that you might be a partisan shit-for-brains. [worldpopul...review.com]
Wanting your kid to be diagnosed with autism is bipartisan. So is wanting to blame it on vaccines.
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/autism-rates-by-state
I fully agree. (Score:2)
As someone who has a brother with Aspergers and a son with Autism (diagnosed 22 years ago) I fully agree with this. We found it harder getting the care and treatment our son needs in recent years because people with Aspergers who don't generally need much help are using limited resources within the healthcare and social care system that they don't get any benefit from but someone with more severe autism would.
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> people with Aspergers who don't generally need much help are using limited resources within the healthcare and social care system that they don't get any benefit from but someone with more severe autism would.
What resources? For an adult, there's nothing. For a kid, is it fair to deny them help they need because they're not "autistic enough"?
Harvard isn't mainstream? (Score:2)
> theories of causality that mainstream scientists reject, like vaccines and, more recently, Tylenol.
The study's senior author is the Dean at Harvard's School of Public Health with the study led by Mt. Sinai. Seems pretty mainstream to me.
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The study did NOT say caused. It was a correlation thing. IO am sure you have heard the cliche "Correlation does not equal causation". It is a cliche because humans often make this mistake.
My favorite example was the comic book study. S
In the 1950s Dr. Fredric Wertham (a noted and powerful psychiatrist that was quoted in the famous legal case Brown vs Board of education) found that most adult readers of comics were in prison. He wrote a book called the Seduction of the Innocent that proposed that comi
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.
I basically had a mental breakdown, life became to much. I went to see a psychologist Dr (non-MD Phd) who specializes in diagnostic testing. After spending 3 hours questioning me, she wrote a report that cut me to the bone, it was "ME" to a T.
After my wife passed away, I was struggling with depression and my primary care Dr tried many different meds and they didn't help. After testing, I'm told, "you have bipolar depression" and with the right medication meant f
Re: (Score:1)
People's opinions worked for you.
Horoscopes work for some people.
Witch doctors for others.
That does not mean we should make decisions affecting millions of people's lives based on nonsense like horoscopes or magic.
Or today's psychology.
People deserve treatment based on facts based on science.
what autism is, and is not (Score:2)
autism is not a disease per se, and there's not a blood test for it, it's a syndrome which can only be diagnosed by observing a range ("on the spectrum" is DSM 5 terms) of behaviors. in the current DSM the spectrum of behaviors is remarkably the same for the many autisms. so they all get lumped together based on similar behaviors. splitting them does not change that the behaviors are much the same.
First they came for the trans (Score:2)
And I did not speak out,
Because I was not trans,
Then they came for the autistic,
And I did not speak out,
Because I was not autistic,
...
Then they came for me,
And there was no one left,
To speak out for me
It's all in your mind. (Score:3)
I have a nut allergy. It's only irritating and unpleasant for me, there's no big reaction, anaphylaxis or EpiPens. If you need to split the nut allergy category you could go for mild, serious and profound perhaps.
Why is autism different? Why a separate category for milder forms of it? I also have autism, it runs in the family. My sister is quite debilitated by hers but I pass as neurotypical (masking!). We agree on how it affects out brain function, social interactions, sensory processing, etc. It's the same "symptoms", different severity.
Just use the anime convention! (Score:3)
Autism (base), Super autism, Super autism 2, Super autism 3, Super autism 4 (not canon), Super autism 4 (canon), super autism god, Super autism god super autism, Super autism god super autism (with kaioken), Ultra Autism sign, Ultra autism mastered
Re: (Score:1)
Or name them clearly and precisely so people can easily understand. For example: morvaism, cradism, keltrism, drovalism, surnism etc.. This will help categorize autism into distinct groups. Oh, and you can also make combinations of them, like cradiketrism to be even more precise. /s
Subtypes and Features (Score:3)
The trouble now is that, more than ever, Autism is a wide umbrella heading. If two people, Alice and Bob, have Autism, then they don't necessarily have the same thing, and the degree of similarity between Alice's Autism and Bob's Autism may be great or little.
There are many common features of Autisms* such as non-verbal, stimming, and so on. Then there are less obvious features, such as those described in books like Pretending To Be Normal.
*(and I think it best to pluralise: Alice has an Autism, and Bob has an Autism, but Alice's Autism may not be the same as Bob's Autism).
Part of the problem is the way the medical people like to apply diagnostic labels, as they do with physical medicine, and then try to reason based on those diagnostic labels. For example one may want to try a randomised controlled trial of treatments for Autism (without even considering the possibility that such a trial may not be comparing like with like).
Mind and brain are complex, and complexity is a bitch.
Dad was an aspie I am low spectrum one (Score:3)
Bring back Asperger's and split that out from Autism. The realm for autism is way to wide and leads to RFK behaviorial syndrome.
Next recognize that people are different and shouldn't be expected to be the same.
In the 50s... (Score:2)
...only the most severely disabled got a diagnosis.
I was just the weird kid with no friends who everybody hated.
Many years later, I learned about Aspergers and realized that it explained some, but not all of my problems.
When I read about the other versions of autism, it seems that those people are nothing like me.
Combining a wide spectrum of mental illnesses into a single description may have a tiny bit of value, but It seems to cause more harm than good.
Neurodivergent People Have Always Been Here (Score:2)
I suspect that many of humanity's best scientists were on the autistic spectrum. Instead of inventing the things we use, they could have been out socializing, instead. If you read the Autistic Spectrum Disorder entry in DSM-VTR, very few people would qualify. Also, Tony Atwood had wrote that women are likely under-reported. Culturally, here in Silicon Valley someone on the spectrum might go unnoticed more than elsewhere.
I have learned some things. Neurotypical people and neurodivergent people don't mix th
ASD is too broad a spectrum (Score:2)
I know personally of 9 people who have Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Prior to the change with DSM-5 in 2013, these 9 people would be classified as follows: 1 with PDD-NOS, 2 with Aspergers or High Functioning Autism, and 6 with Autism. Today they are all classified as having a single "thing". I am one of those 9 people. I've never been clinically diagnosed, but after going through this with two of my sons (2 of the 9 people), who have what used to be called Autism, I know pretty well what I have. My sist
Question is (Score:4, Insightful)
Why does everyone seemingly have autism now? Is it better diagnosis, over diagnosis, re-definitio of autism or something else?
Re: (Score:2)
I won't waste a mod point on you, AC, though it's likely rsilvergun did.
Reinforcing the stereotype.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The diagnoses were merged because the evidence had begun to suggest that they were different severities of the same ailment. If the evidence has begun to suggest that we're dealing with fundamentally different ailments then the diagnoses should be split accordingly. If not then you're shuffling names for the sake of politics and it's not a good day in science when that happens.
Re:Question is (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm married to a psychologist, and I can assure you that the DSM 5 (the guidebook for diagnostics) was created by a committee that was heavily influenced by politics, and there was a significant pushback within the psychology community about it, and it was pushed through anyways for political reasons. I'm not sure if the psychology profession (and medical profession as well) truly understand how much they're contributing to the falling public trust in institutions by doing stuff like this, but it's plain as day to me.
Re:Question is (Score:5, Interesting)
> I'm married to a psychologist, and I can assure you that the DSM 5 (the guidebook for diagnostics) was created by a committee that was heavily influenced by politics, and there was a significant pushback within the psychology community about it.
This is the side effect of the fundamental problem that we really don't understand minds. Just as our AI people are basically alchemists prior to the acceptance of atomic theory, these guys are the same thing, just with the fact that some of them understand and admit that. These guys are right in the middle of our current culture wars without a solid basic scientific basis for what they do. We observe that chemicals affect or change neurotransmitters. We see some clear changes in the brain. Sometimes we see people's minds changed by destruction of bits of the brain, but we also see those minds recover and completely work around loss of what we used to think of as fundamental parts of the infrastructure.
That's before you start getting to diseases of the mind. We used to have "gender dysphoria". Then people observed that some brains inside males really seem to behave in female ways and started believing that their identity was fundamental. Then others showed that the brain and certainly mind are much more plastic that people thought before. In some cases your treatment and surroundings can visibly change the sex that your brain would be identified with in scans.
To really work out what's going on in even that small area, you should do randomized trials and double blind experiments. Needless to say, randomly changing the way someone's parents bring them up gets into ethics problems and isn't done. The science is really difficult and is often done badly. When [1]governments have attempted to get a rational scientific summary of the current state [nationalarchives.gov.uk], that ended up with [2]scientific criticism [biomedcentral.com] on [3]both sides [beds.ac.uk] and [4]ended up as a political shitshow [bbc.com]
DSM-N is where psychologists actually take that stuff on board and have to make recommendations for doctors. Their job is really really difficult. If the whole research field is totally politicized and if what was illegal under one US government becomes illegal to avoid under another then that becomes an inherently political job.
Since "gender" is by definition of the word a product of the mind (what I believe I am - whether through self examination, self determination, realism or madnes) and we don't have a proper theory of that mind, et alone a clear way to link the mind to the "sex" of the brain or even 100% clarity about what that even means, you can't even clearly define most of the terms and ideas needed to debate the issue scientifically.
Now, I've tried to be careful and, reasonably neutral and point to how the politics interferes with the scientific debate about one particular determination that has to be made for DSM. There's a 90% chance that if the critics don't read this last sentence we're going to get a massive flame war (and a 70% chance even if they do) from people who are more invested in this and probably know more specific facts about recent literature than me. Remember, these people are, in the end, Alchemists debating whether iron will soon be transmuted into gold or not.
How would you do DSM avoiding that?
[1] https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20250310143933/https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-report/
[2] https://bmcmedresmethodol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12874-025-02581-7
[3] https://www.beds.ac.uk/ired/blogs/the-cass-review-misreadings-and-misuses/
[4] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-68863594
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Long, pointless rant about politics picking out the words psychologist, dysphoria, and self examination. Complaint about a misunderstanding of your post. Pedantry. In conclusion, personal insult.
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> Long, pointless rant about politics picking out the words psychologist, dysphoria, and self examination. Complaint about a misunderstanding of your post. Pedantry. In conclusion, personal insult.
DSM-5 is literally the place where psychologists decide whether or not gender is a matter of mental illness or just a natural thing. In exactly the same way that they decide whether autism is or isn't separate from Aspergers.
> Complaint about a misunderstanding of your post. Pedantry.
That's absolutely misrepresentation and does actually prove what I'm saying. I think that my comment will likely be understood fine. Both sides of the debate will understand it but not like some aspect of what I wrote. Some of them might even be right and even both sides might correctly
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> I'm married to a psychologist, and I can assure you that the DSM 5 (the guidebook for diagnostics) was created by a committee that was heavily influenced by politics, and there was a significant pushback within the psychology community about it, and it was pushed through anyways for political reasons.
Thanks for sharing that. I had never looked at diagnosing mental disorders through the lens of bias. I feel kind of silly about that now. My youngest is autistic. When talking with his various SPED teachers over the years, it's become clear that they are in a constant "monitor/diagnose" (the SPED teachers aren't supposed to diagnose anything, but human nature seems to push most of them towards doing it anyway) frame of mind. Maybe it has something to do with the quality of teacher a public school SPED posit
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One person's wife saying something doesn't mean anything. Notice they don't give any details like what said politics were.
What were the political reasons? (Score:2)
What were the political reasons? I don't remember any politicians claiming the need to unify a butch of stuff under the term autism the way I hear about Tylenol and vaccines giving it to people.
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Remember that the technical definition of a disorder in psychology has to do with whether or not it impacts a person's day-to-day life. If you can't get out of bed in the morning, you might have a depressive disorder, but if you feel sad and go about all the regular actions of your day, then you're just sad, not clinically depressed. So gender dysphoria would only be considered a disorder if it left someone so distressed that they couldn't go about their lives, and then they should see a therapist. But t
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Good lord, use paragraphs and stay on topic. 2/3rds of your post isn't even about autism and I don't feel I'm any closer to understanding what you were getting at in your first post.
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This.
I was following the DSM back in the day and many thought; as did I, lumping them together created funding for Aspies that otherwise didn't exist. When science screws up, it gets back on track eventually as long as it's still science - if it does not, then it is no longer science. I've been tracking the topic for 20 years; before the fads or most psychologists even knew about Aspergers (or forgot about in school; back when rates were estimated to be 1 in 100k in the late 90s.)
With more information from
Ok (Score:1)
The problem with combining them is that the DSM is used to justify other things like getting IEPs which disrupt learning for the rest of the students. If an autist is profoundly afflicted, that is one thing and that person should probably be in a group home. If someone just like trains and is a little weird, he needs to learn how to behave and should not be given any kind of special rights at the expense of others.
We don't even know what causes autism so it's quite presumptuous to say they are the same ailm
Re: (Score:2)
I used to think it's trendy but now i think its better diagnosis.
It's getting to the point where pretty much everyone has something and you know? I believe it.
I've started playing an online game and nearly every young person claims to have something, some of them are faking but after interacting with a bunch of people. Yeah a ton of them show adhd or autism symptoms in line with their supposed diagnosis, they have stories from their childhood in line with those diagnoses, and they have current problems ty
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I volunteer with a high school team, and a couple years ago there was a bunch of students standing around talking, and they were all discussing their mental health labels. Everybody had some "thing" they had, and there was a kind of bragging going on. It struck me as weird. I turned to another mentor who graduated high school in about 2014 and asked, "when you were in high school, did you all stand around talking about your mental health diagnoses?" and he was like, "no... that's weird". There's clearly
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think there are a couple issues here. One is parents. I have a relative who worked in education and there is an incredible amount of "shopping for a diagnosis" that happens when a child has issues with some aspect of their education. Many parents simply aren't able to deal with the fact that there are things that their child may not be good at, or that they're not conventionally brilliant, etc. They then shop around for a psychologist who will attest to the kid having some "disorder" so that they get
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> Many parents simply aren't able to deal with the fact that there are things that their child may not be good at, or that they're not conventionally brilliant, etc.
Or that their child is a misbehaving brat because of bad parenting.
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I don't usually quote song lyrics on Slashdot, but these seemed relevant:
> I know I'm not unique, we all got broken brains
> Culture recently decided being crazy is okay
> And now we all can talk about it on our social feeds
> Having a rough day?
> Hashtag mental health awareness week
> I know that's progress
> We don't have to hide no more
> But it leaves me wondering why we ain't said this stuff before
> Like were we always all crazy and we all just kept quiet?
> Are we on the same page with what we're identifying?
> And if crazy's the new normal then it's not that crazy, is it?
> Cause the word by definition means it sits outside the system
> And how can we tell difference between sick and tryna' fit in?
> And if everybody's crazy, then who's supposed to fix it?
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mSf_i1U0TI)
Re: (Score:2)
I like the lyrics. They're relatable. But they represent ideas that are mostly found in younger people who are just coming to terms with their emotions. Now that I've lived a while, I've gained some insights into my feelings. There are at least four different separate groups, philosophies, or lines of thought that have all tried to tell me one simple message: how you feel is not so much the result of external events as it is the result of your reaction to those events. And you have significant control
If everyone has it... (Score:2)
... then no one has it because that means its simply a section of the range of normal human behaviour and not a special condition or disorder at all.
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Well, back when I was a kid, 'autistic' meant, 'screaming and flapping your arms when somebody turned on the light wrong.'
"Rain Man" was a movie about what was, at the time, considered a high-functioning autistic.
Most of what we would nowadays call 'ASD' was just 'quirky' or 'weird' or 'shy.'
Go find a copy of the 1980s nuclear war film Testament. Watch the scenes with the sons. One son, the youngest, has several scenes with things like 'running the TV, a radio, and a record player at the same time,' 'bein
Blame the parents (Score:2)
Everyone wants their kid to be special or have special treatment? Shy, a bit awkward? Must be something wrong with them, must get special attention at school!
No! They're just normal kids. There is no single normal human behaviour, there's a whole spectrum of it from the psychotically gregarious to the socially awkward types amongst who I include myself and probably a lot of people who have it ended up in IT have it because interacting with a machine can be simpler. That doesn't make us special or abnormal,
Re: Question is (Score:1)
All of the above.
[1]https://youtu.be/BdpSfrD3Nzs [youtu.be]
[1] https://youtu.be/BdpSfrD3Nzs
Re: (Score:1)
Same reason why they all have "ADHD", allergies and need to be "gluten-free".
Re: (Score:2)
It's been mangled by culture.
Once upon a time, it was unambiguously a pretty debilitating mental state. If you had that diagnosis, everyone could see issues and it wasn't at all something that anyone would aspire to.
Then Asperger's came along and thus began the 'diagnosis as an excuse for selfish behavior'. The general impression was "a smart person who has a tendency to be a jerk", which sounded totally awesome to a lot of people. They didn't need to try not to be a jerk, they had a pass in the diagnosis.
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All the above.
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If that were the case, the proportion of ASD diagnoses that are mentally handicapped would not have changed- and it has. It has went from 75%, to 30%.
Meaning once the disease described individuals who were very likely going to need help for their entire lives.
Now those people are a minority of the folks receiving that diagnosis.
I imagine I would receive an ASD diagnosis if I grew up today. When I did grow up however, I was just an introverted nerd.
The question before us, is whether or not this is cons