Amy S.F. Lutz is a historian of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, vice president of the National Council on Severe Autism and the parent of a profoundly autistic son, Jonah, 24. She has written about profound autism for many platforms, including The Atlantic, Psychology Today, Spectrum and Slate. Her most recent book is “Chasing the Intact Mind: How the Severely Autistic and Intellectually Disabled Were Excluded From the Debates That Affect Them Most” (2023). She is also the author of “We Walk: Life With Severe Autism” (2020) and “Each Day I Like It Better: Autism, ECT, and the Treatment of Our Most Impaired Children” (2014). She lives outside of Philadelphia with her husband and whichever of her five children happen to be home at the time.
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Amy S.F. Lutz
Writer
From this contributor
Building bridges: Collaboration across the autism community
An autistic person and the mother of an autistic child explore partnership in the autism community.
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Building bridges: Collaboration across the autism community
Adults with disabilities deserve right to choose where to live
The idea that one residential model is appropriate for the entire spectrum of intellectual and developmental disability is patently absurd.
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Adults with disabilities deserve right to choose where to live
Explore more from The Transmitter
This paper changed my Life: Bill Newsome reflects on a quadrilogy of classic visual perception studies
The 1970s papers from Goldberg and Wurtz made ambitious mechanistic studies of higher brain functions seem feasible.
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This paper changed my Life: Bill Newsome reflects on a quadrilogy of classic visual perception studies
The 1970s papers from Goldberg and Wurtz made ambitious mechanistic studies of higher brain functions seem feasible.
Science must step away from nationally managed infrastructure
Scientific data and independence are at risk. We need to work with community-driven services and university libraries to create new multi-country organizations that are resilient to political interference.
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Science must step away from nationally managed infrastructure
Scientific data and independence are at risk. We need to work with community-driven services and university libraries to create new multi-country organizations that are resilient to political interference.
Familiar autism-linked genes emerge from first analysis of Latin American cohort
The findings, detailed in a January preprint, suggest autism’s fundamental biology is the same regardless of ancestry. But questions remain.
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Familiar autism-linked genes emerge from first analysis of Latin American cohort
The findings, detailed in a January preprint, suggest autism’s fundamental biology is the same regardless of ancestry. But questions remain.