Dr. D. Holmes Morton of Strasburg took an unusual path from a southern West Virginia hometown of 2,000, a coal town nestled on a mountain plateau above the New River Gorge, to the expansive farm fields of Pennsylvania.
Making his own path isn’t unusual for Morton, a man of many interests and many talents. He is as generous as he is talented, as fun-loving as he is seriously brainy, and as aware of the need for the warmth of human touch in treating patients with genetic diseases as he is aware of the need for gene sequencing.
It is easy to see why Morton was awarded the prestigous MacArthur Fellowship in 2006, giving him a stipend divided over five years, because of his creative approach to practicing medicine.
Morton is creating a medical model, which began when he and his wife, Caroline, developed the non-profit framework and community organization that became the Clinic for Special Children in Strasburg, Lancaster County. It is a pediatric clinic for children with rare, inherited disorders that are prevalent in the Plain communities throughout Pennsylvania.
Now, at age 66, Morton is continuing the development of his medical model with a new clinic in Belleville, Mifflin County. The Central Pennsylvania Clinic—A Medical Home for Special Children and Adults, also a non-profit, is a family practice that sees patients of all ages who suffer from rare, genetic disorders.
In the Central Pennsylvania Clinic, Morton is taking the medical model further. Just knowing about the metabolic disorders is not enough; instead, Morton has seen that carefully managing the genetic diseases from birth to death results in better lives for the patients and offers financial advantages to the community.
Many of the Plain people—mostly of the Amish and Mennonite churches—live in rural communities, usually far from health centers that have knowledge of genetic disorders. Being routinely cared for by medical staff with knowledge of genetic disorders results in fewer infant deaths and fewer children with lifelong disabilities.
In Belleville, important goals are to work with and educate community midwives about genetic risks and to have pregnant women get informed care at the Central Pennsylvania Clinic before their pregnancies and throughout. If there is an inherited disorder in the family, midwives and doctors can collect cord blood, test immediately for the suspected disorder, and watch for symptoms in the newborn. In some cases, they can treat infants to prevent brain injuries, or they can manage a mother who has a genetic disorder and prevent that disorder from killing or damaging her fetus.
As a result of this model, patients get the care that matches the genetic disorder they live with and, when appropriate, palliative care is provided. Infants and families avoid spending weeks in the intensive care units of major medical centers and avoid medical bankruptcy.
“The most important thing is to have patients taken care of so that the end-of-life care isn’t in an intensive care unit at high cost,” says Morton.
There are a half-dozen other clinics in the country that are using and expanding such a model in smaller communities.
Just as he used most of the money he was awarded from the MacArthur grant to expand services at the Clinic for Special Children, Morton used part of that money to open the Central Pennsylvania Clinic.
1. Family:
Wife, Caroline, co-founder and executive director of the clinic in Strasburg. Children, Mary, a science writer; Sarah, a painter of fine art; and Paul, a Julliard-trained string musician (guitar and theorbo).
2. Do you have a favorite book?
“The Old Ways, A Journey on Foot” by Robert MacFarlane.
3. Favorite piece of music?
Allemande of the VI Suite for solo cello by JS Bach.
4. What are your other interests?
Playing the cello, riding a bike, hiking, an occasional game of golf.
5. What are some of your other awards?
Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism, 1993; Smithsonian Institution Award for Innovations in Technology, 1998; “Central Penn Parent” Health Care Heroes Lifetime Achievement Award, 2015.
6. When did the Belleville clinic open and where?
We started seeing patients in 2012 in a former family practice office under a NAPA auto-parts store.
7. Will the Belleville clinic have a building similar to the one in Lancaster County?
Yes. A family donated land, and we hope to have the building under roof before winter.
8. How many adults are patients at the Belleville clinic?
In 2016, of the 1,500 patient visits recorded, about a third are children; the rest are adults. In that group, we have seen 54 genetic disorders.
9. How did The Clinic for Special Children get its name?
The idea of the “special child” was part of the cultures of the Amish and Mennonite communities long before I came to Lancaster County. My understanding of the influence of these children upon the cultures came later, in part, through the experience of caring for an Amish boy with a lethal muscle disease. The boy died at home. I went out to the house to pronounce him dead and sign the death certificate so burial could take place. Here is what I later wrote about that night.
“From the doorway, I saw that the harsh, white light from a lantern above the bed made the hands and face of the dead boy cold blue-white. Bright silver light flashed from new coins placed over his eyes. But then I saw that the lantern light was softened in the colors of the quilt gathered around him, and the light was golden on his hair and on the hair of the children who played quietly on the end of his bed. … I sat on the chair by the bed for more than an hour. … I talked about how difficult it is to care for children who have illnesses that are not understood and cannot yet be treated. I said that as a doctor and scientist, when each new therapy fails, I must somehow renew my efforts to learn more. Then the boy’s grandfather spoke. As he spoke he smiled and looked first at me, then the children on the bed. He said, ‘We will be glad if you can learn to help these children, but such children will always be with us. They are God’s gifts. They are important to all of us. Special children teach a family to love. They teach a family how to help others and how to accept the help of others.’”
