Freda Lewis - Hall, m.d. and family guy's alex borstein discuss hemophilia

Today's World Hemophilia Day and Dr. Freda Lewis-Hall, The Chief Medical Officer of Pfizer is back to help explain this rare blood disorder, welcome back. Thank you, always great to be here. How many people here have ever had a small cut? Raise your hand. Okay that's almost everybody so as you know people who get a small cut end up having bleeding but only for a short period of time, and and that's because your blood contains proteins call clotting factors, these clotting factors along with platelets help your blood to clot quickly. People with hemophilia, on the other hand, don't have enough of one of the clotting factors and as a result of that, their blood doesn't clot as quickly. It won't bleed faster than normal, necessarily, but it will bleed longer. When this becomes a really big problems if, for instance, something like a head injury that can cause bleeding into the brain. Other injuries that can be really difficult are injuries into deep muscles or joints, and depending upon where they bleed this can be painful in some cases sadly even life-threatening. With severe hemophilia bleeding can even occur with out in obvious injury, but this isn't true for everyone because there are so many different degrees of this illness. Those with moderate hemophilia may bleed for a long time after surgery, a bad injury or even dental work but they'll arely experienced spontaneous bleeding while those with mild hemophilia may not bleed often and may never have a major bleeding problem. Our next guest got her start in show business appearing on MADtv she also co-starred in the movie Ted however she's best known as the voice of Lois Griffin on the TV show Family Guy she's here to share her experience with this illness, please welcome actress, writer and comedian Alex Borstein to the show. (applause) Yeah Yeah I got hugged by a doctor. You're here to talk about hemophilia because it's touched your life in a very personal way. I'm what you call a low factor level carrier so I have had a lot of symptoms. Um, you know for ladies what that would mean is you know once a month it's a little bit like Shark Week for me. (laughter) Um, I've been fortunate, I haven't dealt with any other issues and now that my daughter is affected with this it's kind of made me and my brother, whose a hemophiliac, that much closer whose actually here with us today. Right there. Right there. Your brother Evan. Hi Evan. So many of the people who are affected by this disease are men,many more men than women but we shouldn't forget how important it is for women who have the illness and that's primarily though because of the way that this disease is inherited in families,and as it turns out this disease can also occur spontaneously in families, so with no family history and these spontaneous genetic mutations can lead to hemophilia, and then last but not least people can get hemophilia as a result of autoimmunity if your body attacks, if you would, those clotting factors. But we really want to hear from you Evan. I was diagnosed at a very early age, at eight days old, when I had my circumcision. I was uh brought up with vigilant parents and the informed the schools and teachers so they were all hyper aware of my hemophilia in the event that I developed a bruise or a welt I was immediately taken to the emergency room and administered care for the treatment by hemophilia. Blood transfusions have been a mainstay an important part of treatment of hemophilia for for many many years, unfortunately in the nineteen eighties many people were infected with the *** virus through blood transfusions and thousands of people died. But what's happened since then is that the U.S. blood supply is much much safer and there've been many scientific advances in treatment since then. Now I am 44 years old I am healthy I'm very happy, and most thankfully I am *** free. (applause) I heard that this illness, in some ways even inspire your career? When we would be waiting in hospital waiting rooms to find out what was happening with him from a head injury, I became a comic relief. It kinda shaped who I am, my role in being able to laugh about things and creates um something positive out of something negative. Through your commitment to awareness and the commitment of scientists around the world, even though we don't have a cure yet there have been treatment advances and there's work that's going on right now, their clinical trials ongoing. If you want more information on hemophilia you can get it on Get Healthy Stay Healthy dot com. And before we go any cool projects? Yes! Um of course I'm still on Family Guy (uses character voice) (audience laughs) and I'm doing a show for HBO called Getting On. Oh how fun! Yeah! Yeah it's great and we actually, I play a nurse.So...full circle. (applause) We are excited to check that out. Yeah season two will be on in the fall, on HBO. Thanks for being here, Evan thank you as well, Doctor Freda Lewis-Hall. Thank you, we'll be right back.