Many researchers now view ASD as an array of related disorders with similar symptoms but potentially with different causes.
Over the summer, Indiana's new president, Larry Bird, believed that firing Isiah Thomas as coach was the answer, but a similar decline, albeit with different causes, has occurred this season under Rick Carlisle.
In the wars against these two pestilences, the bugs are winning.AIDS and malaria are different diseases, with different causes, but they have this in common: they cause dreadful human misery, with huge economic costs (see article), and they would be attacked with far greater energy and effectiveness if most of their victims lived not in Africa but in Europe or America.
Three disasters with different causes, but each sharing a common outcome: zero survivors.
Now an editorial in the 16 August 2006 issue of The Lancet has called for the scientific community to abandon this term, stating that asthma is not a single disease, but a group of syndromes with different causes and characteristics.
It has even been suggested that aphthous stomatitis is not a single entity but rather a group of conditions with different causes.
It's multiple groups with different causes loosely tied together by the threads of anti-U.S. sentiment, some sort of Iraqi nationalism, Muslim-Arab unity or greed".
Consequently, the idea of a single magic bullet to treat all these forms with different causes, pathologies and responses is extremely far-fetched and should be treated with scepticism.
The label autism may mask scientific ignorance about what is a set of symptoms with different causes.One controversial subgrouping already exists: Asperger's syndrome.
