Full disclosure: I am not at all well-versed in the field of medicine (both of my degrees are in Religion and Ancient Christian History), but autism is a condition in which I've always been interested. My mom's good friend has two sons who are autistic and are low-functioning. I used to babysit them when I was in high school, and they were back then, and are still now, the sweetest boys in the world, and it was always upsetting hearing some stranger refer to them as "retards" whenever I took them out to play in the park.
Yes to this quote in the article: "Instead of a single diagnosis, autism is a spectrum of diseases ranging from a profound inability to communicate and mental retardation to relatively mild symptoms such as with Asperger's syndrome." I'm going to make a totally unqualified assumption here and say that autism is probably under-diagnosed in the US. Autism can range from obvious signs of low functionality, such as the two boys I mentioned, to signs that are seen as negligible, such as a professor I had in college who is autistic. He didn't find out about his autism until he himself was in college; he had written off the symptoms as being just social awkwardness. I've often wondered if I have undiagnosed autism. Then again, I'm kind of paranoid about diseases, and apparently the "autism boom" in the US began in 1988, the year I was born, which just tickles my hypochondria.
So, yeah, I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, so I'll just click the reply button and be on my way...
