It’s a major step back from comments made at a White House news conference in September, when Trump and FDA commissioner Marty Makary announced the drug was under review to benefit patients with autism.

There’s now a growing push to separate profound autism — in which people need constant care for life, have a certain level of intellectual disability and are nonspeaking or minimally verbal — into its own diagnosis. The hope is that it would help ensure people get the support and services they need and that research includes them.

An advisory committee overseen by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine advisory board will meet Thursday to discuss the medical guidance of the hepatitis B vaccine, which is currently given at birth.

The change is the latest move by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to revisit — and foster uncertainty about — long-held scientific consensus about the safety of vaccines and other pharmaceutical products.

President Donald Trump linked Tylenol use during pregnancy to rising autism rates in children. The president urged pregnant women to avoid the longtime household medicine and warned against giving it to infants.

Dr. Richard Frye told The Associated Press that he’d been talking with federal regulators about developing his own customized version of the drug for children with autism, assuming more research would be required.

The rambling announcement, which appeared to rely on existing studies rather than significant new research, comes as the Make America Healthy Again movement has been pushing for answers on the causes of autism.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s comments and his plan to swiftly study its causes, have splintered a community of millions of people living with autism. For some, they were an overdue recognition of the day-to-day difficulties for families. To others, Kennedy deeply misrepresented the realities of their disability.

Democrat Pritzker, who has been one of the more vocal critics of Trump’s second administration, signed the order last week, saying he wanted to protect “dignity, privacy, and the freedom to live without fear of surveillance or discrimination.”

In a speech last week, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed kids with autism will “never pay taxes, hold a job,” play sports or participate in the arts.

Common signs of autism include trouble with social communication and a fixation on certain routines or topics and may go unnoticed during someone’s childhood. It can be costly and difficult to obtain an autism diagnosis later in life.

With $3 million in federal funding, researchers are studying how to expand the types of professionals who can issue a diagnosis. Currently in Illinois, only physicians and clinical psychologists can do so.

Urban Autism Solutions, an organization on the West Side, is working to empower young adults on the autism spectrum to learn life skills. The 1.2- acre produce farm is a hands-on program teaching young adults the basics of farming with a goal of enhancing their social and vocational skills.

According to a Drexel University study, 42% of young adults with autism never worked for pay in their 20s. We meet a Chicago woman has cooked up a way for those young adults to develop crucial social and work skills while contributing their own unique flavors to the business.

Described as a unique learning experience with theater as the focal point, The Red Kite Project specifically works with children on the autism spectrum.

A school district in northwestern Indiana has issued an apology after a special needs teacher awarded an 11-year-old autistic student a trophy naming him the “most annoying male” of the school year.