Non functional autism cases are rare. All the data RFK uses lumps in people you might not even think of as a little weird with non verbal people who need a full time caretaker.

Autism as it stands is very poorly defined and categorized. There are tons of symptoms and every autistic person has a unique severity for each symptom. Should someone perfectly capable of living a normal life be considered the same as someone non verbal and needs constant care? RFK thinks so. He said we'll never pay taxes or have relationships or acheive anything for society. Meanwhile I have a documented genius IQ, graduate degree, full time job, and a family. Birds of a feather flock together, and I don't know a single autistic person who takes RFKs stance on autism seriously.

From my perspective, the biggest issue in the conversation is that all of the professional material about autism is written by neurotypical people. For a disorder that often makes it difficult to determine your own internal emotional state, a bunch of people who have never felt what you feel guessing and then telling you that their guess is truth only makes it harder. The Internet is helping here with people connecting and talking about their experiences, but none of that is making it into professional diagnostic criteria or instruction for how to help people deal with their symptoms.

Most functional autistic people are very smart and capable of learning new things very quickly compared to neurotypical people. Hyper-focus is a symptom for autism just like adhd. We struggle to be taken seriously because of social skills lagging, people promote people who make them feel comfortable. This is a huge opportunity of untapped resources that is being wasted. So much talent wasted just among my social circle. I sort of lucked into a role that uses my differences wisely and allows me to contribute more than I could if I wasn't autistic. That is very rare. That is what we should really be talking about when we talk about autism.

Funny joke, but also actually true. Autistic people have much higher rates of food allergies than the general public. Especially non IGE type allergies which have very delayed reactions and the primary symptoms are GI related. Non ige allergies don't show up on allergy pin prick or blood tests. They are often undiagnosed for years or misdiagnosed as IBS, Crohn's or other GI disorders.

There is a question of correlation or causation with the allergies. My autism symptoms are worse if I've made a mistake with my food, which I think causes that question. My autism symptoms never go away no matter how clean I eat so I don't think the allergy is the cause. My guess is an unknown single mechanism is behind both. Traditional medicine is happy to label us as genetically inferior and just write it off like that rather than look for a causal link. I'm not inferior, I'm just different. Better at some things and worse at others than an average neurotypical.

As an aside, I only typically here people use "autists" if they are an asshole. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for now.

Psychology has made such a mess of autism and ADHD diagnosis and clearly failed both groups. Most people just call themselves neurodivergent now. That doesn't come with the baggage of symptom assumptions that are false because we vary so much. You are forced to get to know the individual instead. Almost like we're regular humans that way.