It's not "just" gossip. There isn't exactly a smoking gun for something like a psychiatric diagnosis, and until we can diagnose these with the same precision that we can identify a particular kind of cancer, the point that the article is making is that perspectives on mental illness will be permanently biased by whatever image society has of the ideal citizen at the moment. In a time where society demands a great deal of conformity, more people are likely to get a diagnosis of Asperger's; in a time where society is less demanding, fewer would. It is troubling that our conceptions of what autism and Asperger's are were heavily informed by the Nazi idea of the model citizen, and we should be wary now that our current applications of these diagnostic labels might be heavily culturally biased by our current norms.