In fact, I cannot fathom why any genuine autism sufferers or their families would defend the gradual bastardization of clinical diagnosis standards. Conflating autistic and non-autistic children into one clinical group is going to make medical progress extremely difficult. Those with a legitimate personal stake in the matter should be 10x as furious as an arm's length observer. Something that could very well help your child could be discarded as worthless because it failed to help the brat kids with crappy parents (in the case of ADHD), or because it failed to help children with vanilla shyness or whatnot (in the case of autism).
I personally know the families of children afflicted with what any sane individual would call shyness (quiet, poor eye contact, interest in peculiar solitary tasks as a short phase) being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders - there is nothing wrong with these kids! If 3/10 children were diagnosed with autism, and another 3/10 with ADHD, would you fault me for raising concerns about the quality of clinical diagnoses? That is all this is, albeit with the alarm raised well before such a point.
Yours is a very sensible, civil post. Thank you for it.