I think this particular study is about changing trajectories and that is something that I would try to change even if a child is just developmentally or speech delayed rather than autism and most certainly if a child is at higher risk. The label itself is irrelevant to me until there are clear bio markers identifying ASD subsets hopefully early enough (and there are about a dozen of these in research that can be combined to achieve very high sensitivity and specificity but not available yet).

Good observation. Early detection is helpful but there is such a slow process to get help and it's limited.

This story makes me wonder how many false positive autism DXs there are. Parents freaking out but it may be that it isn't autism after all.