High Functioning and I tend to clash a lot with Aspies?

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The rest of the world is following America in eliminating Aspergers as an “official” diagnosis this year.
Aspergers Diagnosis Gone In Draft Of ICD-11 - Wrong Planet Thread

As I mentioned in the the thread “Aspergers” and “Aspie” are likely to remain as colloquial terms. “High Functioning Autism” NEVER WAS AND IS NOT an “official” diagnosis anywhere. It is a just commonly used term in the field. That does not mean clinicions do not on occasion diagnose people with conditions not in the DSM or ICD diagnostic manuals, as far as I know clinicions are not disbarred for doing so. You are correct in saying just because scientific consensus at the moment says Aspergers does exist does not mean Aspergers do not exist.

And everybody has a right to call themselves what they like, it is not up to me or you or a diagnostic manual to decide how a person should self identify. If rvcountrysinger feels enough of a seperation from “aspies” that he does not want to identify as one so be it.

Incorrect.

High Functioning Autism is an official diagnosis in Canada and many other countries. You said that this is not an official diagnosis anywhere and that is quite incorrect.

Also, Asperger's Syndrome is still an official diagnosis in Canada, just because it isn't in America doesn't mean the entire world thinks that way. How very American of you to say that and a quite typically arrogant thing to say.

I am not calling myself anything because I think it sounds cute, I have had official diagnoses made as High Functioning Autism and Asperger's Syndrome. That is what I am. I'm not calling myself anything because I like cool sounding nicknames or whatever.

It is what it is and America can call it DSM-5 or whatever they want if it makes them feel self-important.

Hello my friend. You and I have something in common, we're both Aspies. If you are diagnosed as being High Functioning Autistic, as I have been, then you have Asperger's Syndrome because most every other country still uses this specific moniker and rightly so. Now I realize that recently the American DSM-5 has de-classed us both as simply being "Autistic" instead of more specifically being ones who have Asperger's Syndrome, but despite the arrogance of the American classification of us, we are, Aspies regardless AND Autistic.

Because you see, they are one and the same, High-Functioning Autism is Asperger's Syndrome, in essence. Autism research wouldn't be as advanced as it is today without the hard work and research of Hans Asperger who published his splinter definition of Autism in 1944 at the University of Austria and was officially recognized by the world in 1994 and so-named Asperger's Syndrome in his name at that time.

Many high-profile intellectuals today have taken a very arrogant stance with regards to the naming and defining of many accepted theories of old simply because they desire a more "advanced society" and seek to re-write history as it was.

I think this is the revisionist stance tbh.

Hans Asperger studied autism before Leo Kanner, who had the advantage of living in an Allied country and having Asperger's Jewish assistants take asylum in his department. Asperger studied a broader range of the spectrum to Kanner, not a narrower one.

While the work of Lorna Wing and Uta Frith used Asperger's work to effectively expand access to diagnosis, the definitions of autism and Asperger's Syndrome were practically identical. The only significant differences were that AS required an IQ of at least 70 (i.e. you had to be in the top 97.5% of the population), and no delay in walking or talking. In practice, clinicians often ignored even these simple distinctions. Merging the two made absolute sense because there wasn't a difference anyway.

Although my country still technically recognises a distinction, in practice many clinicians are just using the blanket term and when the next formulation of the ICD comes out we'll formally only have the one diagnosis. Likewise in your country (see here). I realise that lots of people are quite attached to their old diagnoses, but it's not useful to distinguish between autism and Asperger's and merging the two makes complete sense.

It's not arrogant to notice that you've been doing something wrong your whole career. It is arrogant to think you know better than most qualified professionals in a field where you have no special knowledge.

Susan Swedo, chair of the DSM-5 neurodevelopmental disorders workgroup, said in May that many people who identify with Asperger’s Syndrome “don't actually have Asperger's disorder, much less an autism spectrum disorder.”

David Kupfer, chair of the task force charged with the DSM revisions, blurted to the New York Times in January: “We have to make sure not everybody who is a little odd gets a diagnosis of autism or Asperger Disorder. It involves a use of treatment resources. It becomes a cost issue.” (This was startling to those who’d missed the memo that declared costs and treatment resources the responsibility of the APA. Which was everyone.)

Catherine Lord, the director of the Institute for Brain Development at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and another member of the workgroup, told Scientific American in January, “If the DSM-IV criteria are taken too literally, anybody in the world could qualify for Asperger's or PDD-NOS... We need to make sure the criteria are not pulling in kids who do not have these disorders.”

Paul Steinberg, a D.C. psychiatrist, declared in a New York Times op-ed in January that “with the loosening of the diagnosis of Asperger, children and adults who are shy and timid, who have quirky interests like train schedules and baseball statistics, and who have trouble relating to their peers” are erroneously and harmfully labeled autistic. He blamed a 1992 Department of Education directive that “called for enhanced services" for children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders: “The diagnosis of Asperger syndrome went through the roof."

Dr. Bryna Siegel, a developmental psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, told a Daily Beast reporter in February that she “undiagnoses” nine of out ten students with so-called Asperger’s. Siegel was a member of the panel responsible for the inclusion of Asperger’s in the DSM-IV, which the reporter cited to me in a phone call as evidence of Seigel's objectivity: implicitly, Seigel is critiquing her own work. But that same journalist made no mention in the piece of Dr. Seigel’s history as an expert witness for school districts fending off families’ claims for those “enhanced services,” and the obvious conflict of interest (as well as the selection bias in her client pool) this represents. In October, she told New York magazine that she undiagnoses six out of ten. That's quite a shift in eight months. Hope it was evidenced based

Regardless of whether Aspergers is the same as autism(I think Aspergers is a broad subcategory of autism) the idea that the two were merged because of the lack of differences is wrong. They were merged because it was felt Aspergers was causing overdiagnosis of ASD’s and costing insurence companies and school districts too much money. The members of the DSM said so themselves.

Why Claim Asperger's is Overdiagnosed? Certainty but no evidence from some clinicians and researchers

Interesting, however, you are over-confident. That article links to another one in which the author lists other reasons people have given (here), including the APA saying that the conditions are not distinct.

The author even links to this article, in which a scientist on the relevant work group writes extensively about the issue, and studies like this one which suggests it is practically impossible to actually be eligible for an AS diagnosis.

Some members of the working groups not having the most progressive views doesn't change whether it was a good idea to merge the diagnoses. The hyperbolic fears that the likes of Berrington spread around haven't been borne out.

To summarize what I have said before it was a mistake to make Aspergers a separate diagnosis in the first place as the traits pretty much mirror each other. Doing so caused problems with Aspie elitism and more importantly the perception of Aspies not wanting to be associated with “real autistics”. Aspergers should have become a subset of Autism probably equivalent to “mild” autism. Subcategories are widely used for most other conditions and life in general Autism should not have been different. Just Autism without subcategories is a big confusing mess. With the elimination of Aspergers a lot time,energy and knowledge that was gained from Aspergers research was lost. Some of it could be used for Autism research but not all. Also lost was the positive effect on self esteem the explanation and “Aspie” identity had. “Aspie” has survived but mostly as a neutral descriptor.

If anybody still has any hope(or fear) as many did when the DSM 5 eliminated Aspergers in 2013 that the Aspergers diagnosis would come back can forget about it. As predicted in the article I do not expect much of a fight to keep the diagnosis. There was a time before the DSM 5 went into effect that there were online petitions, blogs, “Aspie” associations speaking out against the elimination of the Aspergers diagnosis as well as some psychologists saying they would still use the DSM 4 but once the DSM 5 went into effect everybody for the most part rolled over. The ICD-11 is only going to make official what has been happening anyway. In areas of the world where the ICD manual is prominent a lot of clinicians have not been giving out Aspergers diagnosis in expectation of this change and to be in alignment with the dominant American DSM.

What has been disturbing to me is almost 5 years after the fact is the paucity of research into what effects the subsuming of Aspergers into autism has actually had. Does anybody remember all the “Aspie” groups promising to closely monitor the effects of the change? The most bitter pill for me to swallow is that the Aspie elitists/supremacists got what they wanted. They favored the getting Aspergers out of the manual because without Aspergers being in the manual they could define “Aspie” however they pleased. “Aspie” or Aspergers the colloquial terms pretty much mean socially awkward person with above average intelligence.

That all said what’s done is done.

For the future like sensory sensitivities I would like to see more things now considered co morbids recognized as Autism traits. Subcategories coming back is a must. They should be labeled after dominant traits such as “sensory sensitivity autism” etc. A lot of this will depend on future research.