[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 66 (Monday, May 13, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Page S4982]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          DR. PHILIP M. BLATT

 Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, few of us are ever called upon by 
our genes to bear a burden comparable to that which is borne by those 
in lifelong contention with the condition known as hemophilia. Even 
fewer of us, I believe, whatever physical burdens we may be obliged to 
bear, ever encounter a physician such as my friend and neighbor in 
Delaware, Dr. Philip M. Blatt, a hematologist who treats many patients 
suffering from hemophilia.
  On Wednesday, May 15, Dr. Blatt will be honored by the Delaware 
Valley Chapter of the National Hemophilia Foundation, not merely for 
applying his medical skills to helping his patients survive, but 
especially for the warm, human, caring manner in which he does so.
  Hemophilia, which affects the ability of the blood to coagulate and 
thus can make even a minor injury into a major threat from the 
uncontrollable loss of blood, tends, in a sense, to isolate its 
victims. They know that they must manage their lives with an uncommon 
degree of caution and avoidance. They know that what might be a 
negligible scratch for someone else can, in their case, become a life-
threatening wound. And because of the fragility of their blood, they 
must often undergo constant treatment--and that necessity, in the years 
before the effect of the AIDS virus was known, placed many of them 
innocently at risk to that deadly disease.
  It would be very easy, Mr. President, for any victims of hemophilia 
to suffer as much from the psychic as from the physical effects of 
their condition--to perceive themselves as put upon through no fault of 
their own, to think of themselves as the outcast victims of a genetic 
condition totally beyond their control--but not so easy if they are 
Philip Blatt's patients.
  Dr. Blatt knows that his hemophilia patients suffer from a condition 
that has an almost all-consuming effect on their lives, but goes to 
great lengths to make sure it does not consume their spirits. He knows 
that their hemophilia makes them relative rarities among the general 
run of people, but he never forgets that they are--first, foremost, and 
always--people, with the same general inheritance of strengths and 
deficiencies we all share, with the same rights and responsibilities, 
with the same dreams and aspirations.
  Philip Blatt is not a doctor who simply treats his patients' 
frailties, but a physician in the classic tradition who treats them as 
whole persons, and who cares not only about saving their lives but also 
about helping them keep their lives whole and rewarding. He practices 
medicine in its finest sense, and it is that quality, Mr. President, 
for which the Delaware Chapter of the National Hemophilia Society will 
honor him this week, as I do today here on the floor of the U.S. 
Senate.

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