D. Holmes Morton | |
---|---|
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Trinity College; Harvard Medical School |
Awards | Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism; MacArthur Fellows Program |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Physician |
Institutions | Clinic for Special Children |
D. Holmes Morton is an American physician specializing in genetic disorders of Old Order Amish and Mennonite children. In 1989 he established the Clinic for Special Children in Strasburg, Pennsylvania, to focus on these diseases.
Morton, a graduate of Virginia Episcopal School, is a former member of the United States Merchant Marine and a 1979 graduate of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where he was an avid reader of everything from literature to developmental psychology, neurobiology, and child development. [1]
He attended Harvard Medical School and served his residency at Children's Hospital Boston. His interest in biochemical genetics research led him to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Johns Hopkins University, and finally to the Pennsylvania Amish community. Although he could have worked at a prominent research institution, Morton and his wife Caroline chose to establish the clinic as a nonprofit organization.
Morton received the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism in 1993 and was named one of Time magazine's "Heroes of Medicine" in 1997. In 2006 he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" for his work.
Thomas Jefferson University is a private research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Established in its earliest form in 1824, the university officially combined with Philadelphia University in 2017. The university is named for U.S. Founding Father and president Thomas Jefferson. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity".
Victor Almon McKusick was an American internist and medical geneticist, and Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. He was a proponent of the mapping of the human genome due to its use for studying congenital diseases. He is well known for his studies of the Amish. He was the original author and, until his death, remained chief editor of Mendelian Inheritance in Man (MIM) and its online counterpart Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM). He is widely known as the "father of medical genetics".
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The Clinic for Special Children (CSC) is a primary pediatric care and gene research clinic located in Strasburg, Pennsylvania. The facility specializes in genetic problems of the plain sects, such as the Amish and Old Order Mennonites. It was founded in 1989. The most common genetic disorders treated by the Clinic are glutaric acidemia type I (GA1), which is common in the Amish population and maple syrup urine disease (MSUD), which has a high prevalence in the Old Order Mennonites.
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