Amy S.F. Lutz, PhD

Amy S.F. Lutz, PhD is a historian of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, the Vice-President of the National Council on Severe Autism (NCSA), and the parent of a profoundly autistic son, Jonah, 26. She has written about profound autism for many journals, including The American Journal of Bioethics, The Hastings Center Bioethics Forum, Autism Research and Frontiers in Psychiatry, as well as for more mainstream platforms including The Atlantic, Psychology Today, The Washington Post, 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 kids happen to be home at the time.