It is hard to keep track of how many times the CDC has revised its language, its guidance, or its sense of what counts as evidence in the autism world. And maybe “hard to keep track” is the point. Science moves. People panic. Institutions adjust. Then the public tries to make sense of it all while raising kids, teaching them, or trying to understand themselves a little better.

The CDC’s most recent shift about autism arrived with that familiar blend of relief and unease (CDC, 2025). Relief because it signals an attempt to reconcile policy with findings that have piled up for decades. Unease because every time the ground moves, people wonder if the science is changing or if the public explanation is finally catching up. You can feel that tension in any corner of the internet where parents compare notes. The quiet question behind the louder ones is, "What does this change mean for my kid, my students, myself?" The trouble is that autism research has never marched in a straight line.

Some of the most important work in autism research happens at a pace that barely registers in the news cycle. MoBa, the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study, has watched more than 100,000 pregnancies unfold since the late 1990s, tracing how prenatal conditions ripple into neurodevelopment years later (Magnus and team, 2006). Nested inside it, the Autism Birth Cohort Study has been peeling back the layers between genetic variants and early behavioral signals (Stoltenberg and team, 2010).

Across the Atlantic, the CDC’s own SEED project examined how autism risk occurs across diverse American communities (Schendel and colleagues, 2012). In the Netherlands, the Generation R Study has been following children since fetal life, mapping the earliest threads of brain development and psychiatric vulnerability (Jaddoe and colleagues, 2012). The Earli study........

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