The Trump administration continues to stumble on autism.

Back in September, Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said they had a breakthrough: a B9 vitamin called leucovorin could treat autism, they claimed. The announcement was immediately met with skepticism, but that didn’t stop the flood of families calling doctors.

“The average parent who maybe wasn’t getting the right information said, ‘Well, to be good parents, we need to try this,’” said William Graf, a professor of pediatrics and neurology at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center.

Outpatient leucovorin prescriptions for children ages five to 17 in the US rose by 71% in the weeks following the announcement, new research shows.

–Trump and RFK Jr touted leucovorin as a treatment for autism. The FDA quietly walked it back, The Guardian

Now, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has completed its review of leucovorin, and approved it only for cerebral folate deficiency, an extremely rare condition with symptoms similar to, but separate from, autism.

The walkback is the latest stumble from the Trump administration on autism.

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Earlier this year, Kennedy also reshaped the national autism advisory committee, with fewer autistic people and several anti-vaccine advocates. Their first public meeting was cancelled recently with few details.

The Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) is one of the lesser-known advisory committees, but it makes recommendations for nearly $2 billion in federal research spending on autism. It can also make recommendations about autism across the federal government – on housing, defense, education, labor, social services and more.

Several of the members are anti-vaccine advocates and have promoted dangerous and ineffective “treatments” for autism, including a heavy-metal removal process called chelation, hyperbaric oxygen chambers and industrial bleach enemas – all of which the FDA once warned about on a now-deleted webpage.

–Independent autism committee that challenges RFK Jr’s overhaul draws criticism, The Guardian

At the same time, a rival organization known as the Independent Autism Coordinating Committee (I-ACC) was announced. The new, independent committee joins a growing movement of organizations rising up in the gaps of federal leadership, experts say – but critics also expressed concerns about the new committee’s approach.

Over the past year, there has been an enormous outcry over the national autism research registry and Kennedy’s “terrible” attacks on autistic people.

“What is this distracting us from?” Dora Raymaker, a research associate professor focused on autism at Portland State University, asked, pointing to cuts on health insurance, services, and research as a greater threat: “I’m a lot more concerned about immediate threats that are coming from the cuts.”

–Autistic people and experts voice alarm at RFK’s ‘terrible’ approach to condition, The Guardian

Autistic researchers and advocates say they are significantly less interested in the “causes” of autism – which decades of research have shown to have a strong connection to genetics – than in support services and research on issues that would improve their quality of life.

Yet Kennedy continues to frame autism as a epidemic that should be prevented.

“By September, we will have some of the first answers. Within six months of that, we will have definitive answers,” Kennedy said.

-‘A slippery slope to eugenics’: advocates reject RFK Jr’s national autism database, The Guardian

It’s been six months.

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Top image: Scrabble tiles spell out “autism.” Photo by Jesper Sehested