[scardine]

I can understand why high-functional individuals or even the parents dealing with moderate cases are afraid of the stigma but the whole "it is not a desease" is very harmful for families dealing with more severe cases: it is always taxing for the family and often very debilitating for the individual.

My 5 yers old son wouldn't be able to attend a regular school without 3 years of expensive therapy and a dedicated tutor in class so the last thing I want is an excuse for my health insurance to deny assistance. The safety network a lot worse than what is available for dawn's without this PC BS.

[astura]

The person you are replying to didn't say autism isn't a disease; they said it's not a mental illness.

As far as I know autism is classified as a developmental disorder.

[CydeWeys]

There's not much of a useful distinction between these categories and words, though. "Disease" is a very general category that, depending on who you ask, contains all disorders. Many psychiatric developmental disorders do have clear established physical causes, so in that sense they're not much different than being born with a malformed heart, other than that the defect is in a different location.

The only real consensus is that "disease" does not describe traumatic injuries, e.g. if you break your ankle in a bike accident that isn't a disease. Note that many people conflate "disease" with "infectious disease", but the actual general category "disease" is quite broad and encompasses much more.

Anyway, it's arguing over semantics, like the perennial argument over whether Java parameters are passed by reference, or if their references are passed by value, or if they're passed by value, etc. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16896150