Autism, as an illness, has no existence without diagnosis.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your point, here. There are plenty of people who struggle with something that we all call "autism".
They present the symptoms. Whether they have it is another matter.
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Ok, that doesn't seem like a particularly important distinction. It's entirely possible they "have it" and we just haven't developed the right approach for clearly identifying it in the body.
I know you can't prove a negative, but saying definitively that it "has no existence without diagnosis" seems too strong. However, "has no known existence without diagnosis" would be fine as far as I know.
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It's the distinction between it being a have-able thing, versus a thing medically conjured into being. It's also the difference between it being a thing, and it being a thing emulated to get disability or benefits.
I know you can't prove a negative, but saying definitively that it "has no existence without diagnosis" seems too strong
Either way, if you can't diagnose a thing, you can't say anything about its existence in terms of disease. All you can say is "I see the following things."
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