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Brent and I made another trip to Chapel Hill where we once again met with the King, Dr. Brinkhaus. Stephen Pemberton took us to the kennels to visit the dogs.
The original dogs had been Irish Setter female carriers of the hemophilic gene. The Doctor had purchased them from a woman who raised show dogs in New York several decades ago. They had become an Irish Stew of sorts. There didn’t seem to be any trace of the Irish Setters left in the well “cared” for dogs which were now more beagle and mutt. Stephen and the handlers took us on a grand tour of the kennels, showing us the blood disorder dogs and then the healthy blood donor dogs. I offered Argo as a blood donor, assuring them that he would be good for several pints a day. My offer was declined because even the donors were of a very carefully scrutinized, disease free, bred dog. We also visited pigs that were as big as a small car. We spoke of the possibility of filming at the kennels since the dogs and pigs had provided so much knowledge to the research community in the diagnosis and treatment of blood disorders.
“Maybe,” we were told, “but as soon as there is any publicity, the animal rights people set up a picket line outside.”
“Oh, yeah.”
In reading Dr. Brinkhaus’ interview with Susan Resnik, he recalled how in the 1930s it was customary for the emergency room to call the blood guys from pathology whenever a hemophiliac was admitted so they could draw blood for research. The Doctor came upon a feisty cab driver with hemophilia who had confronted a customer who wouldn’t pay. The cab driver ended up in the emergency room. Dr. Brinkhaus offered the cab driver a job as a lab assistant in exchange for regular blood samples. At one point when the cab driver was getting dental work, they almost lost him because they were still unsure what worked and what didn’t in blood clotting for hemophiliacs. That’s when Dr. Brinkhaus became convinced that working with animals was more practical and ethical than working on humans. He had zero tolerance for loss of human life. Finding the dogs was part of his journey. Visiting them was part of ours.
Stephen capped off the visit to the kennel with an exciting slide show about gene modification therapy, the next step in hemophilia treatment.
“Stephen, enough already,” I said after about twenty minutes of an hour long presentation.
“Dr.Brinkhaus, thought that you would be interested in the work being done here.”
“Our film ain’t for a bunch of old guys in white coats. I don’t think I need to know all this gene stuff. We’re doing a film about the hemophilia community, about how people affect other people, the work they do, not necessarily a how to thing, but an, oh yeah, results of thing.”
“I knew that,” Stephen said, “but the King…”
“Oh yeah.”

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