Wendy Ross, Letter to the Editor in The New York Times

Wendy Ross, M.D., the director of the new Center for Autism and Neurodiversity at Jefferson Health and Thomas Jefferson University, recently had a letter to the editor published in the New York Times’ Book Review. Dr. Ross’s letter responded to an essay by Columbia University professor Marie Myung-Ok Lee titled “The Trouble With Autism in Novels” about how novels depict characters with autism.

Dr. Ross, who is a developmental and behavioral pediatrician, applauded Lee’s statement that autism is more than a literary device and those with the developmental disorder deserve a deeper look and more profound understanding.

“I hope to unite their therapeutic, educational and medical plans into one story, so they are no longer ordering from an often disjointed à-la-carte menu of interventions not tailored to them as individuals,” Dr. Ross wrote of her patients. “The best support, however, comes to these children from people taking a moment to see them for who they are, beyond the diagnosis and the metaphor.”

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