What is UP with everyone labeling kids as autistic lately?!?

It just seems like every time someone's kid acts a little weird or does something that could be considered autistic (even if it's something all kids probably do at one time or another), they are immediately suspicious and rushing to the doctor or whatever. Do these people secretly WISH they had an autistic kid? I was extremely weird as a child (I would become completely obsessed with one weird subject after another, I read my grandfather's ENTIRE set of Encyclopaedia Britannicas front to back one summer, I never had any interest in cartoons or sitcoms like most kids, never had many firends, played alone constantly, etc. etc. etc.) and I wonder if nowadays, my parents would have had me slapped with an "autistic spectrum" label and I would be considered someone with a mental problem instead of a having a normal career and life. It makes me sad to think that a lot of these kids are probably not so bad off that they need to be "diagnosed" with anything, and with good parenting and patience, they could grow up to be functioning, if a perhaps little eccentric, members of society. Have any of you noticed this same trend? It's like what used to be just plain weirdness and eccentricity now carries a diagnosis of autism or Aspergers, etc.