Oliver was interested not just in studying what deficits and impairments his patients had, but also in what gave them joy, resilience, and a sense of purpose. The essay he wrote out of these experiences, which became the centerpiece of An Anthropologist on Mars, was the fullest, most nuanced portrait of an autistic adult ever drawn at that point in history. He went hiking with her in the mountains, visited the livestock facilities where she worked, and had dinner with her at her favorite steakhouse. To understand autism, Oliver didn’t just tell Temple Grandin to climb into a brain scanner. This was not just to pick up on novelistic details that he could use in his books - it also gave him a better idea of what his patients were learning to cope with.

When was the last time you had a relaxed chat with your primary care doctor, instead of a brief, tense recitation of “worrisome signs” after half an hour in the waiting room? Oliver visited his patients at home, to listen to them play piano (or play piano for them), to watch them navigate the courses of their day-to-day lives, observing them in the environments in which they felt most comfortable. The same is true of any community of human minds.” “We already understand the value of biodiversity in a rainforest. What we call personalized medicine is becoming a conversation between algorithms. This is completely against the current trend in medicine to see patients as data banks to be mined and debugged with the appropriate pharmaceuticals. One of Oliver’s favorite maxims came from a 19th century doctor named William Osler: “Ask not what disease the person has, ask what person the disease has.” Osler advised clinicians to observe and listen to their patients rather than to treat them as technical problems to be solved. Would you like to pay a short tribute to him? He was a great man, and a role model for science writers. Foreign Policy & International Relationsīefore we talk about the best new books on autism, the foreword to your book, NeuroTribes, is by Oliver Sacks, who passed away last year.

Silberman steve