Scientists are boldly predicting we may soon have to stop complaining that if we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we cure the common cold?
Researchers have cracked the genetic code for all 99 known strains of the human rhinovirus, the virus that accounts for the majority of human cold infections.
The work, published this week in the journal Science, could lead to the first effective treatments for the common cold within five years, researchers say.
It may be possible to use skin cells to create stem cells that can repair damaged hearts, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison report.
In late 2007, UW-Madison researchers showed that skin cells could be turned back into stem cells. In this new study, these induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells were used to create working heart-muscle cells (cardiomyocytes).
The Wisconsin Biotechnology and Medical Device Association is changing its name to BioForward Inc.
The announcement was made Wednesday at the association’s monthly breakfast at the MGE Innovation Center in University Research Park.
n his stirring inauguration speech, President Barack Obama urged Americans to choose hope over fear.
While Obama’s election clearly has given some people a lift, rhetoric alone isn’t comforting those hit hardest by the country’s economic downturn.
As people lose jobs or watch their retirement savings dry up, some local psychiatrists say they are seeing an increasing number of new patients with depression or anxiety, and that the symptoms of some current patients have worsened.
Noted: The attention is different from the past few legislative sessions, when there was little action on the few proposals on drunken driving, said Lisa Maroney. She is spokeswoman for two coalitions: AWARE, made up of nearly 40 health and medical, law enforcement and insurance groups pushing for a stronger response to drunken driving, and UW Health, made up of University of Wisconsin Hospital & Clinics, its physicians and the UW Medical Foundation.
Opponents vowed to keep fighting a University of Wisconsin-affiliated surgery center’s plan to provide second-trimester abortions in Madison, despite its final approval Friday.
The Madison Surgery Center board’s private vote was the last needed for the plan to move forward. It followed earlier votes at UW and Meriter hospitals. The center could begin offering the service in weeks or months, UW Health spokeswoman Lisa Brunette said.
The UW-Madison Hospital and Clinics Authority Boardâ??s vote Wednesday to implement a second-trimester abortion clinic raised mixed emotions among state community members.
University of Wisconsin Chancellor Biddy Martin told The Badger Herald Thursday she stands by her decision to support the proposed second-trimester abortion clinic at Madison Surgery Center.
A year after she got her college degree, Renetta Waupoose learned she had leukemia, a blood cancer.
More bad news came a few months later. Waupoose needed a transplant of blood-forming stem cells, but her brother wasn’t a match. Nor were any adults on the donor registry.
Finally, good news arrived. Doctors said Waupoose could become the first adult patient at UW Hospital to receive a transplant of umbilical-cord blood. It contains stem cells that grow into blood cells.
The list of social networking sites is longer than you could probably imagine. Just to name a few, thereâ??s Webkinz, a site that targets kids as young as six years old. MySpace recently disabled the accounts of 90,000 sex offenders and Facebook, which used to target college students but now is open to the general public. Doctor Megan Moreno says the main problem with kids using sites like these is that theyâ??ve convinced adults theyâ??re harmless. She says sheâ??s not blaming parents, but the New Berlin case shows they have to pay attention.
The University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics Authority Board voted 11-3 Wednesday in support of a proposed abortion clinic at Madison Surgery Center that would perform second-trimester abortions.
The University of Wisconsin Hospital board voted 11-3 Wednesday to support a proposed clinic that would perform second-trimester abortions at the Madison Surgery Center.
The action, at a public meeting, followed nearly three hours of emotional testimony from supporters and opponents.
The final decision on the clinic is up to the surgery center’s board, which is expected to act in a private meeting this week.
Dear Editor:
The Madison Surgery Center seeks to provide essential health care to women in our community. I am appalled at the tactics of anti-choice extremists who are now clamoring to end women’s access to these reproductive health services.
Dear Editor:
I am so thankful that the Madison Surgery Center is stepping up to fill the gap in women’s health care. They are ensuring that women in our community have access to comprehensive care.
As a community, we should be appreciative of the leadership and integrity of health care officials from UW-Madison, Meriter and UWMF. They are demonstrating their commitment to public health and safety by providing the full continuum of affordable, and legal, reproductive health services in a safe setting with qualified providers.
Wednesday, the UW Hospital Board gave overwhelming approval of a plan that would offer late term abortions.
Doctors acknowledged abortion is a personal, contentious issue and there may never be a consensus among people.
Outside the meeting, protesters picketed and shouted. Inside, a war of words. Supporters and opponents of abortion rights argued the ethics of second term abortions.
The governing body of the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics on Wednesday approved a plan to allow certain late-term abortions at an outpatient clinic.
After hearing three hours of emotional testimony from supporters and opponents Wednesday, the board voted 11-3 for the plan to provide abortions on women 19 to 22 weeks pregnant at the Madison Surgery Center.
UW Hospital, the UW Medical Foundation and Meriter Hospital are proposing the plan in the wake of the December retirement of a Madison abortion doctor. In his absence, the Madison area does not have a provider who will perform abortions after 19 weeks.
From fetal defects and womenâ??s health risks to late recognition of pregnancy and lack of money, the reasons for second-trimester abortions vary, say doctors who support a clinic that would perform the procedures in Madison.
Its name is dull but its mission important, and over the past couple of years the Group Health Insurance Program with Wisconsin’s Department of Employee Trust Funds has gotten a lot of national attention for something close to a miracle: containing the costs of health insurance coverage.
That is partly because ETF administers a program with a lot of buying clout. It purchases health plans for nearly 230,000 state employees, including UW staff, and local government workers. That is the biggest pool of employees in Wisconsin.
Dear Editor:
Five University of Wisconsin-Madison student groups — Sex Out Loud, College Democrats of Madison, UW Students for Choice, Medical Students for Choice, and Wisconsin Law Students for Reproductive Justice — commend the UW Hospital and Clinics and the Madison Surgery Center for demonstrating their commitment to women’s health care. We would like to take this opportunity to further urge the UW Hospital and Clinics and the Madison Surgery Center to fully incorporate second-trimester abortion procedures into their health care services.
Just when local anti-abortion groups were wondering how they’d stay relevant with Democrats now in control of the Statehouse and White House, along comes Madison Surgery Center’s proposal to offer second-trimester abortions.
The issue has, pardon the expression, breathed new life into the movement.
The state of Wisconsin will see a drastic increase in nursing shortages if the University of Wisconsin and other nursing programs around the state do not increase their number of graduates, UW nursing officials said Monday.
At the University of Wisconsin Faculty Senate meeting Monday, Chancellor Biddy Martin said as a member of the Authority Board, she will have a vote to decide whether UW Hospitals and Clinics would provide second-term abortions.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison research team has unlocked clues on how to possibly prevent Parkinson’s disease — by boosting a gene that prevents a toxic chemical from destroying neurons in a region of the brain that regulates movement.
UW-Madison pharmacy professor Jeffrey Johnson and colleagues Pei-Chun Chen, Marcelo Vargas and Delinda Johnson studied what effect boosting the Nrf-2 protein would have in blocking MPTP, a chemical that kills neurons in the substantia nigra region of the brain.
A Madison firm has developed a bacteria-fighting skin substitute that should help prevent infection from burns and other severe skin injuries.
Stratatech Corp. announced the innovation Tuesday in an article published online by the journal Molecular Therapy.
The bacteria-fighting skin substitute was developed without using a virus, which is believed to be the first time such an approach has been successful.
When queried about a proposed clinic which would offer second-trimester abortions, University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Carolyn “Biddy” Martin said Monday she has received “a lot of phone calls from people on both sides of the issue.”
Physicians have proposed performing abortions for patients between 13 and 22 weeks pregnant at the Madison Surgery Center, a facility at 1 S. Park St. that is a private, joint venture of the UW Medical Foundation, UW Hospital and Clinics and Meriter Hospital.
The UW Hospital and Clinics Authority Board, of which Martin is a member, is slated to meet Wednesday afternoon to talk about the proposed abortion clinic and to give direction to hospital employees who sit on the board of the surgery center.
The UW Hospital Board will soon decide how to proceed on a proposal to offer late term abortions at its Park Street clinic.
Wednesday’s hearing is the last chance for people — who passionately believe and don’t believe the UW should be doing this procedure — to speak their piece.
The debate spilled into the streets of Madison over the weekend. Hundreds of people expressed either their support or disdain for a proposed late term abortion program.
Hundreds of protestors on both sides of the abortion debate clashed Saturday in a heated dispute over the opening of a second-trimester abortion clinic at the Madison Surgery Center.
University of Wisconsin health officials said profit was not a factor in their recent decision to perform second trimester abortions at UW clinics, though internal communication suggests otherwise.
Anti-abortion and abortion rights supporters rallied in front of the Madison Surgery Center Saturday in preparation for the UW Hospital Authority Board vote this Wednesday regarding the clinicâ??s decision to offer second-trimester abortions.
Dear Editor:
The community should applaud the decision of UW Hospital and Clinics, Meriter Hospital, and the UW Medical Foundation to offer safe second trimester abortion services at their Madison Surgery Center. Second trimester abortion, provided in Madison through the end of last year by a now retired physician, is critical to the health and safety of women in Madison and throughout south-central Wisconsin.
As the final vote by the UW Hospital and Clinic’s Authority Board approaches, anti-choice groups have come to Madison to protest the decision and to disseminate myths about the clinic’s proposal. Our community deserves the facts as we move forward with this critical decision.
Activists from either side of the abortion divide met face-to-face in a noisy, sometimes heated, confrontation Saturday outside the Madison clinic that may soon provide second-trimester abortions.
As many as 800 anti-abortion activists from around Wisconsin marched to the Madison Surgery Center, at 1 S. Park St., from University of Wisconsin-Madison Library Mall. State and national leaders of the anti-abortion movement speaking at Library Mall urged the marchers to hold UW Hospital officials accountable for their decision on whether to permit the procedures.
Nursing programs within the University of Wisconsin System must expand in order to avoid a future nursing shortage, a new report commissioned by the System found.
With Fond du Lac’s smoke-free workplace ordinance set to take effect Monday, Feb. 2, more area smokers than ever will be thinking about quitting.
There are free, state-funded treatment resources available to help.
“Smoke-free laws have a significant effect on the rates at which tobacco users break their addiction,” said Dr. Michael Fiore, director of the UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention. “We expect to see a lot more people in Fond du Lac and surrounding communities electing to quit around the time of the workplace smoke-free ordinance. That’s good news because smoking is the No. 1 cause of preventable death in the nation. It causes more deaths than AIDS, drugs, suicides, murders and motor vehicle accidents combined.”
University of Wisconsin medical officials say they do not plan to make a profit by performing late-term abortions even though an internal document lists increased revenue as one benefit.
Advertisement
University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics, its faculty doctors’ group and Meriter Hospital are proposing a plan to offer second-trimester abortions at the Madison Surgery Center, which the hospitals jointly own.
Quoted: Dr. Joe Cline, director of emergency medicine at University of Wisconsin Hospital, said the I-Stan helps paramedics learn exactly what training mistakes they might have made during training.
“This mannequin logs in high detail everything that happened — everything that was done; everything that happened to it physiologically. We can go back and debrief the point at which the point of no return was reached, and what should have been done at that point that could have turned things around,” Cline said.
Protestors on both sides of the abortion issue clashed on the streets of Madison, days before UW Hospital will discuss offering second-term abortions.
The hospital has been considering opening such a clinic since the only doctor in the area, who offered second trimester abortions, recently retired.
Starting at noon on Saturday, hundreds of pro-life supporters gathered on UW campus to protest that possibility. Melissa Zielski, a registered nurse at the hospital, said staff were informed of the plans by email.
University of Wisconsin medical officials said they don’t expect to make a profit by performing late-term abortions.
UW Hospitals and Clinics and Meriter Hospital are proposing a plan to offer second-trimester abortions at the Madison Surgery Center, which the hospitals jointly own.
UW Health spokeswoman Lisa Brunette said the university does not expect to generate revenue above expenses by performing the procedures.
Dear Editor:
I am writing to applaud the Madison Surgery Center’s decision to fill a gap in health care for women by providing second-trimester abortions in Madison.
As a woman in my 22nd week of a very planned pregnancy, I am grateful beyond words that my baby is doing fine. I don’t know what I would do if faced with the knowledge that something had gone wrong with my pregnancy, and I had nowhere to turn.
Dear Editor:
….If the University of Wisconsin and Meriter hospitals proceed with their plans for an abortion clinic, my wife and I will be looking for another health care provider. I expect that thousands of others who still have a conscience will do likewise.
Last year, the Appleton Education Foundation joined forces with leading experts from the Waisman Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison to offer a speaker series on brain development in early childhood.
This year, the foundation and Waisman continue the partnership with a second community education series, this time zeroing in on the latest research on environmental influences affecting a young childâ??s growth and development.
The environment moms and dads create for young children influences learning more than they might know.
So Appleton Education Foundation is teaming up again with Waisman Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison to share the latest research on why parents and other adults should pay close attention.
Pro-life physicians spoke out against a proposed abortion clinic that would be run by both the UW Hospital and Clinics and Meriter Hospital.
After years of too many lives needlessly lost in alcohol-related crashes, Wisconsin lawmakers finally appear poised to stiffen drunken driving laws.
This move is far overdue. Wisconsin is the only state in the union that doesn’t recognize first-offense drunken driving as a criminal offense, and drivers don’t face a felony charge until the fifth offense. Meanwhile, Wisconsin leads the nation in alcohol-related fatal crashes.
And keep in mind alcohol-related accidents are costly in themselves. Donna Katen-Bahensky, president and CEO of the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics, said that in 2006, alcohol-related hospitalizations totaled nearly $720 million in Wisconsin.
Wisconsin doctors against a proposed Madison abortion clinic are asking Meriter and UW Health to abandon their plans.
William Evans is a heart doctor opposed to allowing second trimester abortions at the Madison Surgery Center. He’s one of more than a dozen doctors who signed an open letter asking Meriter and UW Health to reject plans to do the procedure on patients 13-to-22 weeks pregnant. That letter went to policy makers along with thousands of petitions garnered by Wisconsin Right to Life, Pro Life Wisconsin and other groups. Evans expects a cool reception.
“You’re fine in Madison as long you are on right side of opinion– as soon as you step on other side then you are a fanatic, there’s a problem and you’re not worth listening to. And despite these petitions there are those who will dig in their heels,” he says. (Fourth item.)
President Barack Obama announced in his inaugural address that one of the priorities of his administration will be to “restore science to its rightful place.”
That was an essential statement after eight years of direct assaults on scientific and medical progress by a Bush/Cheney administration that was determined to deny realities for political purposes.
One of those realities is that women have a right to make choices about when and whether to have children — and they have a right to access a full range of reproductive health services.
….Over the past few years, Madison has become one of the Midwest’s leading centers for what the cosmetic industry likes to call the “enhancement” and “rejuvenation” of faces, bodies and, some insist, souls.
“The number of people doing good work here has increased exponentially,” said plastic surgeon John Siebert, recently recruited from New York by the University of Wisconsin-Madison to help staff a sleek new cosmetic surgery clinic called Transformations. “People used to hop on an airplane and travel. Now, it’s right in your backyard.”
Opponents of a proposed abortion clinic that would be jointly run by University of Wisconsin Hospital, its doctor group and Meriter Hospital pledged “serious pushback and opposition” Tuesday, saying fallout likely would include some people boycotting the hospitals and others being referred elsewhere by doctors who oppose the hospitals’ involvement in the procedure.
While they are considering the proposed practice of late-term abortions at the Madison Surgery Center, I want to remind the UW Hospital’s president and board of the bottom line of ethics in the medical world: “Do no harm.”
Abortionist Caryn Dutton and her colleagues apparently find no harm with the practice of late-term abortions as an effort to fulfill a “public health responsibility.” Whose health is the concern of this effort?
Dear Editor:
I would like to applaud the decision of the University of Wisconsin Hospital, the University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation and Meriter Hospital to utilize the Madison Surgery Center for second trimester elective abortions. These are legal procedures, and with the retirement of Dr. Dennis Christiansen there was an apparent gap in the provision of women’s reproductive health care needs in Dane County and the surrounding area. That these physicians and institutions have stepped up to the plate and offered to provide such care is worthy of accolade.
A coalition of pro-life organizations and individuals oppose a controversial late-term abortion plan.
Over 20,000 petitions are delivered to Meriter Hospital showing their adamant opposition to a proposal by Meriter, UW Hospital, and UW Medical Foundation to provide second-trimester abortions at Madison Surgery Center.
UW System President Kevin Reilly and UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin responded to an Iowa senator Monday about conflict-of-interest policies at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health has a relatively strict conflict-of-interest policy, but that hasn’t prevented money from pharmaceutical and medical device companies from pouring into the school, which raises questions about motives.
University of Wisconsin officials say they are launching important initiatives designed to deal with conflict of interest policies at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.
University of Wisconsin System President Kevin Reilly and UW-Madison Chancellor Carolyn “Biddy” Martin made those comments in a letter sent Monday to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.
“A task force was established for this purpose, with the goal of identifying, managing and eliminating conflicts of interest in clinical care,” the letter stated.
Researchers from Wisconsin and Australia have found that climate change could expand the range of disease-spreading insects in coming decades, endangering human health.
Scientists from the UW-Madison and three Australian universities identified key biological and environmental factors affecting a type of mosquito that spreads dengue fever.
In the study, to be published online Jan. 28 in the British Ecological Society’s journal Functional Ecology, they reported that climate changes in Australia during the next 40 years and the insect’s ability to adapt to new conditions may allow the mosquitoes to expand into several populated regions of the continent.
Nonprofit hospitals will have to file a new report next year with the Internal Revenue Service â?? for the first time accounting for the free health care and other benefits they provide to justify their tax breaks. References UW Hospital and Clinics.
References UW Hospital and Clinics.
The conclusions were clear: Women who took hormone therapy drugs were at increased risk for breast cancer, heart disease, stroke and blood clots.
The findings were so strong that researchers stopped a clinical trial in 2002, five years early, because it would have been unethical to continue giving the drugs to women.
But that same year, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Medicine and Public Health began a medical education program for doctors that promoted hormone therapy, touted its benefits and downplayed its risks.
A substance in red wine not only could make for a healthier heart but might also be used to treat a certain cancer affecting babies and children, according to a professor studying the substance at the cancer center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Arthur Polans, professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, has been studying the substance resveratrol for five years in his laboratory at the Paul P. Carbone Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Federal regulators have approved the first experiment testing human embryonic stem cells on people, officials announced Friday.
The Food and Drug Administration authorized the Geron Corp. of Menlo Park, Calif., to test stem cells derived from human embryos on eight to 10 patients with severe spinal cord injuries. The study is aimed primarily at determining the safety of the cells in human subjects, but researchers also will examine the patients for any signs the therapy restored sensation or movement
