Prove that autism isn't disease

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My buddy claims that every state deviating from generally accepted concept of health is called a disease. Autism in society isn't norm, similarly as Tourette's syndrome or daltonism. People with diagnosed Tourette's syndrome or daltonism are able to as well as autistic people to say about yourself they aren't ill. As far as I can agree that autism is not a mental illness, I haven't yet found a logical arguments proving that autism isn't a disease in the general sense of the word. In my opinion, autistic people have tend to think they aren't ill because it just increases their level of opinion about themselves. Can anyone present the logical arguments that autism isn't disease?

Most people diagnosed with AS can live pretty independently and learn to adapt over time to their issues, so they don't really view themselves as being "ill" or "disabled" in that sense, as it doesn't have a hugely adverse impact on their quality of life. The further along the spectrum you go, the more that the afflicted individual/their parents/medical professionals/society view their autism as a true disability, in the fact that they can't lead independent lives, require more support from loved ones/professionals, can't work and require financial aid from the state, and can't live on their own for various reasons. It all depends on the individual.

Tell your buddy he is backwards as the people who think homosexuality is a disease

I tried the NIH website, but kept getting connection errors, so I'm falling back to the Merriam-Webster definition.

disease (n): a condition of the living animal or plant body or of one of its parts that impairs normal functioning and is typically manifested by distinguishing signs and symptoms : sickness, malady

So, if this is the sole definition, then I'd have to agree that Autism is a disease -- for now.

HOWEVER, once I can get into the NIH database, I'll have a more concise definition.

So what?

The Common Cold is a disease as well...and not too many people are impaired by that.

Many people with autism are not impaired by it as well.

What point are you trying to make? That we are "inferior" in some sense? That we are "less" than other people?

Nonsense, I say!

Having a disease doesn't make one "inferior," doesn't make one "less" than somebody else.

To the best of my knowledge ASD is a collection of symptoms.

I mean there is no x ray that will show it, no blood test, not detectable before birth and so forth "no biological marker" is one expression I have read. So is it a disease, is it a disorder, is it the first sign of the arrival of aliens from the planet AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGHZ?

The symptoms of ASD can overlap with the symptoms of other things I believe, though me no expert at all, i.e. ASD can be mistaken for something else. In my case this was noticed as my being "awkward" in the 1960's, though this word may have a special regional or old fashioned meaning with medical overtones.

I believe that aspieness is a disability, and that other people can project their own meaning onto you due to the voids of it, and that people with it can project their own meaning onto it as well.

Melanie Gaydos mentioned people projecting meaning onto the disabled and that sparked me off on that thought.

Well... back in 1969 when I was 14 I became addicted to reading the Guinness Book of World Records. Being a 14 year old aspie its an easy book to get addicted to.

When I turned to the chapter about medical world records I became surprised by something: there was heading for "worlds most common disease", and a separate heading for "the world's common illness". Surprised because I thought that the words "disease" and "illness" meant the same thing.

Turns out that they don't mean the same thing.

The world's most common "illness" is (take a guess) "the common cold", but its not the "worlds most common disease". The common cold is both an illness and a disease.

However, according to Guinness the "world's most common disease" is [drum roll]……….. tooth decay!

And actually that revelation made sense. Probably most of us in the human race have some degree of tooth decay going on at any given moment. But we are not laid up in bed in calling in sick every moment because of it. So its not an illness like the common cold.

So autism is more like tooth decay than it is like the common cold. It could be described as a "disease", but not an "illness". Or that's according to how I have thought about since I was 14.Havent thought much about it since then until now.