Before the Sept. 22 news conference where President Donald Trump discouraged people from taking Tylenol during pregnancy, Meg Brill and her friends heard an announcement was coming.

“It was lightly joked about in various autistic circles, that they are going to announce something” about a cause for autism, said Brill, of Highland Park.

Now, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revising its website and language surrounding vaccines and autism, three Illinois adults with autism talked about their reaction to the pronouncements.

Brill, 23, said she was 11 or 12 years old when she was diagnosed with autism. She and others with a similar diagnosis spoke about their lives and their thoughts on the White House’s declaration linking acetaminophen – the active ingredient in Tylenol – to autism, and to the CDC’s new promotion of a link between autism and vaccines.

“It is RFK Jr. No one expected anything legit,” Brill said, referring to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and her doubts about his claim. He has also long promoted the link between autism and vaccines, which major national medical groups say is discredited.

“I think it is a very, very obvious scapegoat because it is one of the most common over-the-counter painkillers,” Brill said of Tylenol.

Ursula Sturgeon, a 23-year-old from Naperville, is studying dramaturgy at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh and was diagnosed with autism at age 7.

She said she’d heard of “weird conspiracy theories” linking autism to things like vaccines and Tylenol. As these have been promoted, she said she thought, “Here we go, let’s see what they will come up with.”

She understands the desire to find a cause, because people want to feel they have control over things in their lives.

“It is a very nuanced diagnosis, and different in different people so there is no sense of control. It is easier to blame it on Tylenol than it being a nuanced issue” with many causes, including genetics, Sturgeon said.

Winfried Cooper said he hoped federal autism policy would follow science.

Cooper, 36, of Elgin, was diagnosed at age 8, in LaGrange Park schools. He’s lived in Elgin for 20 years.

Without definitive science to tie Tylenol to autism, he is afraid children won’t get needed medicine when they are sick.

“My fear now, for kids, is if they are sick and need cold medicine or Tylenol Flu ... kids can’t take it” and if they do, other children will bully them, saying they will now be autistic, Cooper said.

For people who have not had autism touch their lives, Cooper want them to understand that it comes in different formats. The disorder ranges from people who will not able to live on their own at any point in their lives to high-functioning people like him, Sturgeon and Brill.

“We process information differently,” Cooper said, and also learn differently, experience emotions differently, and relate to school and work differently. “Autism is not a disease. It means your mind processes differently from others.”

A child being diagnosed with autism is not a parent’s fault, he said.

“It happens. It is genetic or it is something else. But if their child has autism, get them help. Interact with your child and don’t be ashamed of your child,” Cooper said.

Shame around the diagnosis, and the suspicions around vaccination as a cause from a now-debunked 1998 study, has hurt children because they may not have gotten tested because of that shame, Sturgeon said.

Children who feel different from their peers but don’t get that diagnosis – or support from their parents and school – often end up floundering later in life, Sturgeon said: “There is a benefit of having the diagnosis in the first place. I know what my deal is.”

“I have met a lot of people diagnosed as adults whose parents were firmly in denial. Maybe they were not specifically anti-vax, but they were somewhere in that field. It makes me frustrated. I don’t think it means they don’t care about their children, but they want an easy answer,” Brill said. “They make it seem like ... just do one really easy thing so your child won’t be autistic, and it doesn’t work like that.”

“I always thought about – in case of vaccine – they would rather have their kid dead than turn out like me. It is difficult to grasp that I am the thing they are afraid of," Sturgeon said.

Living as an adult with autism isn’t easy, but those doing it say it’s not as difficult as some might suppose.

Brill has a degree in digital marketing and works in retail. There is less of a stigma attached to autism now, but at times she is still hesitant to tell people - especially employers - about her diagnosis.

“People are still kind of weird about it. I feel like people treat you like a child sometimes. I am an adult,” Brill said.

She’s also been told she seems disinterested when, in fact, she was enjoying herself, because those around her might not understand her reactions are not the same as theirs.

Cooper is active in his community and is open about his diagnosis. He understands that not everyone wants to talk about or disclose it to others.

“They don’t want to be targets of bullies, or mistreated,” he said.

He encourages anyone with friends and family who have an autism diagnosis to be both supportive and respectful.

“Nothing is worse than being in one’s life out of pity or to make yourself feel superior,” Cooper added.

Because of her autism, Sturgeon said her parents would play Mozart to her, because there was a claim that listening to the music would “cure” her.

Now, she is studying his music and opera, a music style she sees as a storytelling tool.

Knowing she is autistic has helped her as she goes through college. “I had to know how I thought. ... That has given me an advantage,” Sturgeon said. She also said that those with autism often can narrowly focus on a handful of things they are interested in – music in her case.

“I think it comes down to ... it isn’t something to be ashamed of. It is a disability but not a disability that is a personal failing of any sort. Embrace who you are versus being something that you are not,” Sturgeon said.