In response to Leah, re autism "severity" and the DSM-V, see http://autismcrisis.blogspot.com/2009/06/n...rity-and-dsm-v.html

Asperger's is currently considered to be a form of autism (this is the overwhelming scientific consensus; the disagreement is whether autism and Asperger's differ at a group level in any important way), so calling Asperger individuals "autistic" is accurate.

In my view, there is enough evidence for differences between autism and Asperger's, differences which can be important for research, to retain the distinction for now, at least in some areas of research.

The evidence might not eventually hold up. But for now dismissing it entirely is probably not a good idea and in some areas denying any group-level distinction has been shown to be misleading in important ways (e.g., Wechsler profiles, as in Mottron, 2004).

The notion that there is a scientific consensus in this area (denying any relevant group differences between autism and Asperger's) is not entirely accurate, though researchers who support a distinction don't necessarily do so for the same reasons.

LBRB falsely diagnoses Temple Grandin with Asperger's (just like the authors whose work is described in /m9885 ) http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/?p=3464 but of course I'm barred from commenting there, on the Hub's flagship example-setting blog.