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Illustration by Mark Harris / Source: Tempest McDonald
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When autistic kids grow up, Chapter 4: How did things unfold?
Tempest McDonald sues Vanderbilt University Medical Center through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Her published NIH paper finds allies.
By
Brady Huggett
25 June 2026 | 1 min read
In Chapter 4 of “When autistic kids grow up,” Tempest McDonald’s time at Vanderbilt comes to its end, and an investigation into the autism research funding landscape shows her paper was pointing toward something true.
Read the transcript. Listen to Chapters 1, 2, 3 and 5.
Two-author paper: Tempest McDonald and Audrey Scudder (right) standing in front of their “NIH funding gap” poster during a Vanderbilt Kennedy Center Science Day in 2023.
All images courtesy of Tempest McDonald
Home city: McDonald visits a friend’s house in East Nashville, Tennessee, in 2022.
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