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Posted on 10/21/2025 1:54:18 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The idea of autism as a single spectrum has shaped thinking for decades, but the metaphor is misleading, says this public health expert.
The phrases “autism spectrum” or “on the spectrum” have become part of everyday language. They are often used as different ways of referring to someone who is “neurodivergent”. The term was coined in the 1980s by psychiatrist Dr Lorna Wing, whose work transformed how autism was understood in the United Kingdom. At the time, her “autism spectrum” concept was groundbreaking. Instead of seeing autism as a rare, narrowly defined condition, she recognised a wide range of traits and experiences.
But the idea of a single spectrum, which stretches from “mild” to “severe”, may be misleading. And some autism experts, including me, argue the term has outlived its usefulness. When most people hear the word “spectrum”, they may picture a straight line, like colours arranged from red to violet. Applied to autism, this suggests autistic people can be ranked from “more autistic” to “less autistic”. But that’s not how autism works.
(Excerpt) Read more at channelnewsasia.com ...
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In Canada people are milking autism... Making money by having their child categorized as being within the ‘autism’ spectrum and then collecting government handouts and tax breaks.
I’m very high functioning Autistic. 3 things trigger me: Laye Buses and Trains( driving is to hard, too many different things at once. 2. Losing things. 3. Leftists.
The real reason autism has become a pandemic is because, if you have a kid diagnosed as “autistic,” you get to collect a government check.
How much?
It’ also because the media portrays it as a “super power.”
My nephew has an autistic boy. He cannot go to school, he becomes disruptive in a classroom being overwhelmed by extrasensory stimulation and begins to constantly rove around making a moaning sound which is pretty loud and does not stop.
He does not speak as yet either, he is eight.
It is my Thorne in the flesh, but i’m thankful for it.
Please allow me to search that for you.
I had a stepson with autism. He was all messed up. No chance he could ever drive a car or have a normal life. At least he was verbal and you could talk to him when he wasn’t having a meltdown and he was 23.
I would put him on a scale of one to 10, 10 being worst at about a 6 or 7. I’ve seen much worse. I believe the 1 to 5 people should not even be qualified as on the spectrum. Their a bit goofy and socially awkward (like Musk) but they can function at a high level and are not disabled.
Here is the punch line of this piece. It has to do with political correctness. They want a participation trophy.
“Underlying all these debates is a deeper concern that dividing autistic people into categories, or arranging them on a spectrum, can slip into judgments about their value to society. In the most extreme form, such hierarchies risk dehumanising those with higher support needs. It’s something some autistic campaigners warn could fuel harmful political agendas.
In the worst case, those judged as less useful for society become vulnerable to future genocides. This may seem far-fetched, but the political direction in the US, for example, is very worrying to many autistic people.”
Ah yea. Greta Thunberg was said to have this super power which enabled her to push global warming.
and here is a link to the good professor. I should have known. LOL
https://www.swansea.ac.uk/staff/aimee.grant/
She has singlehandedly defeated the Israeli navy.
It is harder to be very high functioning than low functioning
I can only work jobs that are manual, and repetitive. Complicated would be to hard.
My 14 year old granddaughter was early diagnosed with autism. She is still somewhat socially awkward, but is a straight A student, a junior pilot, a brown belt in Taekwondo, can solve a Rubik’s cube in under 30 seconds and has aspirations to be a commercial airline pilot.
Other than that, she’s perfectly normal.
Yes, same with my brother. He was marginally verbal, but they tried to remove him from school because they said he was non-verbal and illiterate, but my dad recorded him talking about the books he read and told them to STFU and teach him. Nobody else had it so doctors and teachers were all mystified.
A problem I have with "the spectrum" is it trivializes autism to the the extent that people say "we're all on the spectrum" and they mean it. Like saying we all breath, we all have this condition to some level, which means it's not even a thing. Which is BS.
True
The term "spectrum" leads to any kid who is slightly eccentric to be labeled autistic, any kid who is a disciplinary problem to be diagnosed as ADHD, and so on.
For a set of behavior patterns to be meaningfully defined as mental illness, the behaviors have to interfere with a person's ability to function. Simply having some characteristics in common with a mental illness doesn't make one mentally ill. Someone who checks to make sure that his stove is turned off twice rather than once doesn't have obsessive-compulsive disorder, the guy who needs to do it so many times that he won't leave the house really does have a serious condition that requires treatment. Similarly, the nerdy kid obsessed with dinosaurs or model trains isn't autistic - the kid who can barely speak and spends all day rocking back and forth is autistic.
The worst part of it is that perfectly normal but rambunctious kids who just need some discipline at school or at home are diagnosed as ADHD and medicated with ritalin.
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