Autism researchers and advocates are pushing back against the creation of an autism database – meant to track the health of autistic people in a major research study – and pointing to the ways such databases could be misused. While the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) denies it’s a registry, the agency did confirm a sweeping database of autistic people will power a $50m study on autism. Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr said last week that he plans to announce results from the study within months. A petition against the registry gained thousands of signatures in...