The short answer: No.

The long answer: While there is certainly a huge difference between severe "classic" autism and mild Asperger syndrome, most people on the autism spectrum, of course, fall between those two extremes, and the lines between the two diagnoses are very indistinct.

It is easy enough to diagnose autism in a child who is completely nonverbal and whose other autistic characteristics are severe, particularly if the child is also mentally retarded (at least, as far as anyone can tell; I personally do not believe that it is possible to measure intelligence in someone who is nonverbal and has no motivation to do his/her best on an I.Q. test). However, moderately autistic children may not be completely nonverbal, and may be able to say some words but without much ability to express anything with those words. The farther up the autism spectrum, the more likely the child will be able to say some words, and the more that he/she will likely be able to express his thoughts with those words. If one considers autism and Asperger syndrome to be separate disorders, where, then, should one draw the diagnostic line?

For example (real example), what diagnosis should be given to a 3-year-old child with some autistic characteristics, who can name parts of the body, tell what sounds different animals make, and say simple phrases, but who cannot verbally tell his parents that he wants a drink of water, or say where he hurt himself, or say what snack he wants to eat? He obviously has a delay in his use of language, but since he can talk, the person making the diagnosis can go either way (AS or autism). The diagnostic criteria of "classic" autism and the diagnostic criteria of Asperger syndrome overlap in this area, and there is only left the doctor's interpretation of the diagnostic criteria.

The generally accepted diagnostic differences between autism and Asperger syndrome (AS) are significance of language delay and severity of the other characteristics. Of course, whether or not a language delay is "significant" is often completely dependent on the interpretation of the person making the diagnosis. Likewise, severity of other characteristics depends on interpretation, as well, and, in fact, all of the characteristics, including language delay, can be mixed, with some characteristics more severe than others.

There are many, many people who have an Asperger syndrome diagnosis who were able to make words at the appropriate age, but did have a definite delay in ability to actually communicate much of anything using those words. Some of these were diagnosed with Asperger syndrome as children, because the person making the diagnosis did not consider the language delay to be "significant." Others were not evaluated until later in childhood, or in adulthood, after their language development more-or-less "caught up" to a more age-appropriate level, by which time the person making the diagnosis had no way to document the previous delay aside from second-hand descriptions based on memory, and the "window" for diagnosing autism has closed.

To confuse the issue more, older children and adults with "high-functioning" autism (HFA) also fit the description of having developed in their language use to a more age-appropriate level. (If the individual did not develop further ability to use language, then, of course, he/she would be considered "low-functioning.")

Now, aside from the issue of language delay, there is the question of level of "functioning." There is much overlap of autistic characteristics in older children and adults between those who were initially diagnosed with "high-functioning" autism and those who were initially diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. Some who initially are higher on the autism spectrum can end up with more disability than those who initially started out lower on the spectrum. In fact, whether a child started out being diagnosed with Asperger syndrome or "high-functioning" autism is not predictive of how fast he/she will continue to develop over the years and how his/her autistic characteristics will then compare with someone who has the other diagnosis.

As an aside, most "high-functioning" adults could not have been diagnosed as children, because the diagnosis of Asperger syndrome did not exist, and autism was only recognized in its more severe form. Many adults who now have a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome would have been diagnosed as autistic had they been diagnosed as children, but are now considered to have Asperger syndrome simply because there is no way to accurately know their developmental histories.

Interestingly, some individuals who started out being considered moderately autistic during early childhood, and even an occasional person who was considered "low-functioning," have ended up with their diagnoses being changed from autism to Asperger syndrome as they grew older and their development progressed more than first expected. Of course, this then leads to the question: If Asperger syndrome and autism are supposed to be different disorders, how can the diagnosis change when the individual has, at different stages of development, fit the criteria of both disorders?

I believe, and the foregoing part of this essay supports, that the current "line" between autism and Asperger syndrome is no line at all, but an ambiguous distinction depending more on the doctor's understanding, or lack of understanding, of autism spectrum disorders than on what the affected individual is actually experiencing. Obviously, there need to be some distinctions drawn somewhere, because a lot of spectrum is covered between very "low-functioning" and very "high-functioning," but I do not believe that that should be the current autism/Asperger-syndrome distinction, since I do not believe the two to even be different disorders.

To complicate the issue further, there appear to be several different "subtypes" of autism, possibly reflecting specific causes, which are characterized by somewhat different symptom profiles (for example, some have a lot of digestive problems, while others do not). These apparent subtypes do not fall neatly, one after the other, along the autism spectrum, but appear to be spectrums themselves, although those spectrums may not run the entire length of the whole autism spectrum, but each may be concentrated more toward the low, middle, or high end of that spectrum. Since autism spectrum disorders are based on a specific set of characteristics, with no one physical or physiological abnormality being common among everyone on the autism spectrum, and since there is, at the present time, no way to diagnose an autism spectrum disorder medically, it makes no sense to draw a diagnostic line based on historical factors (Leo Kanner's observations in the U.S.A. and Hans Asperger's observations in Austria, and the long delay in Asperger's observations becoming widely known). However, there obviously needs to be a line (or lines) somewhere along the spectrum, since there is a lot of spectrum between very "low-functioning" and very "high-functioning."

I would like to propose that autism and Asperger syndrome should be considered one autistic disorder (at least until specific causes can be determined), and that the lines should be drawn by developmental levels, splitting the spectrum into at least four or five levels, with very "low-functioning" and completely nonverbal at one end, very "high-functioning" and independent-with-support at the other end, and in-between levels to be determined by factors such as levels of expressive and receptive communication, self-help skills (dressing oneself, feeding oneself, etc.), etc. This would acknowledge that autism is based on a set of characteristics rather than any known cause, that the set of characteristics runs an entire spectrum (picture black to white with all shades of gray in between, with no observable lines), yet still allow some diagnostic distinctions, and doctors can more easily move from one diagnostic level to another as the child develops, without the discrepancy of actually jumping to a new diagnosis (that is, autism to Asperger syndrome).

Even so, diagnosis could still be difficult when there are co-occurring disorders (MR, OCD, Tourette syndrome, ADHD, etc.), but I believe that such a change in diagnosing autism would be beneficial for availability of services, as well as diagnostic, research, and support purposes.

[note: This essay is still rather disorganized and jumps around a bit, so there may be some changes to this page as I neaten it up a bit.]