I have a similar opinion to the person you're replying to, and here's why: The spectrum is not particularly useful to anyone outside of the medical community. If you say "I have autism", that tells the other person very little. That could mean a vast array of things, it is so poorly descriptive of what that actually means for you that it's hardly even useful at all. I think the spectrum in and of itself isn't a problem, the problem is that there aren't more names for it. Clump common clusters of symptoms together and make a name for that specific clump, for example, and call it Foo Disorder, and now people can actually understand what that means. By expanding the umbrella so wide, it has made the disease confusing. If there were more specific things you could point to, it would be much easier to grok.