Editorial: Time to give up on Autism Spectrum Disorder?
Keep the ASD label in your reports for now—ditching it too soon could break funding and data lines.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Müller et al. (2017) wrote an editorial. They warned the autism field. Dropping the ASD label could slow real-world progress.
The paper is a call to keep the category. It is not a lab study. It is a plea to researchers and funders.
What they found
The team found danger in tossing the label. Without ASD, grants, journals, and clinics lose a shared map. That map guides drug trials, early screens, and policy.
They say the field is not ready for a full re-write. Scrap the name too soon and translational work stalls.
How this fits with other research
Levy (2021) slams the brakes on the target view. That paper says autism is not one thing. It urges scientists to study social-communication and repetitive-behavior dimensions across all kids, not just the ASD bucket. The two papers clash head-on.
Mottron (2021) offers a middle path. It keeps a label but shrinks the pool. Studies should only include clinician-rated prototype cases. This idea updates the target plea by adding a filter, not a trash can.
Waterhouse et al. (2014) fired the first shot. It told the field to take autism apart and hunt for individual brain profiles. Müller et al. (2017) answers, "Not yet." The debate is still live.
Why it matters
As a BCBA you live in both worlds: research labels and daily practice. If the ASD category vanishes tomorrow, insurance codes, intake forms, and goal banks could all shift. Keep watching the debate. For now, keep using the ASD label in reports and treatment plans. It keeps funding and data streams intact while the scientists fight it out.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Time to give up on Autism Spectrum Disorder?Ten years ago, Francesca Happ e and colleagues [2006] argued that it was "time to give up on a single explanation for autism" because the three core diagnostic domains of autism had been found to be largely independent.More recently, suggestions have been made that it may be time to give up on 'autism' altogether.This has primarily been motivated by a growing awareness that the clinical diagnostic label of 'autism' does not capture a neurobiologically and etiologically well-defined, homogeneous disorder [London, 2007].While heterogeneity is acknowledged in the revised terminology of the DSM-5 [American Psychiatric Association, 2013], the new label of 'autism spectrum disorder' (ASD) is still defined based on behavioral observations.It is, however, questionable whether a disorder that, by general consensus, is neurological in nature and largely genetic in causation can be adequately defined by exclusively behavioral descriptions.This has led to calls "to move past the DSM diagnoses" because these may be a "fatal flaw for autism research" [London, 2014] and the argument that "autism must be taken apart" [Waterhouse and Gillberg, 2014].In a recent position paper, Waterhouse, London, and Gillberg [2016] propose that "ASD should be disbanded in research because it lacks validity," although, as the authors further point out, such change would be "uncomfortable" to researchers in the field.While we agree that the impulse driving these views may be timely and justified, any such radical recommendations must be measured against the proposed alternatives.It is important to consider whether these alternatives put research related to neurodevelopmental disorders on a firmer footing.We believe that wholesale eradication of the clinical category ASD may entail more than a period of discomfort among ASD researchers and may, in fact, impede translational advances in the field.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2017 · doi:10.1002/aur.1746