If you think it’s possible to make the same point without reference to a disease, then by all means do so.
The difference of course between our two analogies, is that a tumor like autism is something that has been observed by people and not constructed by them, and we do not know much the reason why some tumors are benign and some not and we do not know much the reason why some people with autism are severely disabled and some not. But we do know why some scooters have electric motors and some do not.
In fact it may be that at some point in the future the autism spectrum will be broken up and be identified as several different disabilities, lets say Preboscot's behavioral pattern for those with a range of light autistic behaviors and Ternobyni's syndrome for those with what we would describe as heavy autism today and in that imagined future these different disabilities do not have any actual connection to each other but just manifest in some similar symptoms, the same way that diamonds and clear quartz might have some similarities in appearance.
But until that imagined future comes to pass we live in a present where the the extremes of the autism spectrum are still defined as autism.
I hope that my explanation is acceptable to you, and if you feel a need to morally elevate yourself over others via the sport of internet commenting you pick another target as the night has just started where I am, and my severely disabled autistic child sometimes only lets me have a few hours of sleep as it is, I would at least like to spend the time before he wakes up and wants to jump about relaxing instead of in meaningless argumentation.
You say people at the “extremes” are disabled, but that’s not true, because there are “extreme” savants who are not disabled.
Nobody is disputing that there are autistic people who are disabled, the claim is simply that autism doesn’t always mean disability.
