Emery Eversoll and her mother shared a good laugh when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that some autistic children will never write poems.

The 16-year-old’s bedroom is full of notebooks featuring her verses. Sometimes, she quietly recites poetry to get through an outburst of anger. Her mother began suspecting she may have autism, in part, because she had memorized every word from a favorite book by age 2.

Still, this Kansas family is optimistic about Kennedy’s plans to launch a broad-based study of what causes autism, the complex developmental disorder that impacts the brain and causes delays in language or learning, social withdrawal and an unusual need for routine. Kennedy has vowed to identify some of the causes of autism, which has been studied for deca

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