While autism is rightfully classified as..
a disorder of neural development, I have that recently certain types have been found to be valuable in certain job situations. A couple of companies, (SAP for one) hire autistic people who have the ability to identify and focus on patterns or emerging trends. Such situations as debugging web sites, working with color schemes, spotting irregularities in account access (a key in detecting hacking) and other tasks that are repetitive and may be considered boring to a lot of people.
So I am happy to say that value has been found for the skills of some people who at one time thought just a burden. I think that is great.