Staying sexually healthy on a college campus can be pricey. The average cost for birth control pills is $20 to $35 per month, and boxes of condoms can cost between $9 to $15. But thanks to University Health Services and programs like Sex Out Loud, UW-Madison students are keeping their bodies and their wallets healthy.
Let me confess at the outset that before the 1988 film “Rain Man” – about an autistic savant named Raymond Babbitt – I knew virtually nothing about autism.
Like most people, I’d never known anyone with the disorder or even heard anyone talk about it. Which is hardly surprising, says Maureen Durkin, a University of Wisconsin-Madison epidemiologist, because before the 1990s, autism was considered an extremely rare developmental disorder, affecting about 1 in every 2,500 children in this country.
The 112,300-square-foot Laird Center for Medical Research, to be completed at the Marshfield Clinic in early 2008, will house 200 physicians and scientific investigators looking at everything from genetics and personalized medicine to emerging infectious disease and biomedical informatics.
Marshfield researchers also will work closely with scientists and physicians at the Medical College of Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
WASHINGTON – A federal government decision on supervisory employees could hurt efforts by University of Wisconsin-Madison professors, graduate students and staff to join unions.
A number of labor experts agree that a recent National Labor Relations Board ruling barring union participation by workers with supervisory duties, such as registered nurses, could affect university employees as well.
Gary Mitchell, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 2412, which organizes administrative workers, worries that the NLRB has limited which workers can unionize.
UW-Madison’s stem-cell enterprises have lost another leading figure to the lucrative, for-profit biotech industry, as Beth Donley resigned this week as executive director of the WiCell Research Institute.
Following a settlement Tuesday regarding a controversy involving three UW Health fertility clinic doctors, two have decided to resign from their positions Oct. 31 and open their own private practice in Madison.
MADISON, Wis. — After a controversy involving the University of Wisconsin fertility clinic, two of the clinic’s doctors agreed to resign their positions as part of a settlement with the UW.
Dr. David Olive and Dr. Elizabeth Pritts have decided to open a private practice after leaving the UW on Oct. 31.
Two of the three doctors at UW-Madison’s tension-filled fertility clinic have resigned, and they plan to open their own clinic in Madison early next year.
Seventy-seven percent of University of Wisconsin System faculty used no sick leave last year, allowing them to convert the time into valuable health insurance credits, according to a state audit released today.
“Most employees can be expected to report using at least some sick leave over a three-year period, but 6,772 unclassified (non-union) staff reported using none from 2003 through 2005,” according to the audit, which recommends that the university adopt better reporting practices.
Wisconsin received $387.7 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health in 2005, down almost 1 percent from the $391.9 million the state received in 2004.
As part of his plan to provide $5 million to stem-cell research companies, Gov. Jim Doyle presented $1 million Tuesday to a new company aiming to generate blood products from human embryonic stem cells.
Doyle presented the financial package to founders of Stem Cell Products Inc., started by research pioneer and University of Wisconsin biology professor James Thomson, who isolated the first embryonic stem-cell line.
Gov. Jim Doyle announced another pledge for stem cell research Tuesday, giving $1 million to a stem cell start-up company founded by three UW-Madison researchers including James Thomson, the professor who pioneered stem cell research and isolated the first embryonic stem cell.
Stem Cell Products, Inc., run by Thomson and fellow UW-Madison researchers Igor Slukvin and Dong Chen, will begin research on a process that derives red blood cells and platelets from embryonic stem cells. According to Doyle, platelets are in short supply and the U.S. military frequently flies wounded soldiers to Germany in order to perform blood transfusions.
UW-Madison stem-cell pioneer James Thomson and his colleagues have discovered a way to use human embryonic stem cells to create components of human blood – products, they say, that are safe and can eventually be used to help a range of patients, from those with anemia caused by chemotherapy to soldiers wounded in battle.
When Jennifer Eddy first saw an ulcer on the left foot of her patient, an elderly diabetic man, it was pink and quarter-sized. Fourteen months later, drug-resistant bacteria had made it an unrecognizable black mess.
Doctors tried everything they knew — and failed. After five hospitalizations, four surgeries and regimens of antibiotics, the man had lost two toes. Doctors wanted to remove his entire foot.
“He preferred death to amputation, and everybody agreed he was going to die if he didn’t get an amputation,” said Eddy, a professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Gov. Jim Doyle today gave $1 million in state funding to a Madison-based firm headed by UW-Madison stem cell researcher James Thomson.
Doyle announced the combination of state grants and loans to Stem Cell Products, Inc., the second start-up firm headed by Thomson, at a news conference this morning.
The firm is developing the use of embryonic stem cells in producing components of human blood cells, such as platelets that assist in blood clotting.
WASHINGTON – Hundreds of miles from the fierce gubernatorial debate over stem cells, leading scientists who work in public policy vented their frustration Monday with a federal government they believe fundamentally misunderstands the issue of embryonic stem cell research.
“I always thought members of Congress should pass a scientific literacy test before they take office,” said Donna Shalala, former UW-Madison chancellor and current president of the University of Miami at Florida.
A year ago, bird flu was in the news nearly every day. The drumbeat of a pandemic threat was growing louder. Health officials hurried preparation plans.
Today, bird flu seems more like the punchline of a joke.
But experts say it remains just as dangerous – and just as able to cause a worldwide outbreak of flu like none seen since 1918, when as many as 50 million people died.
“The reality is this virus is continuing to spread,” said Christopher Olsen, a virologist at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. “It’s continuing to infect birds. It’s continuing to kill human beings.”
Incumbent Gov. Jim Doyle and his Republican challenger U.S. Rep. Mark Green, butted heads for a second time Friday night in Milwaukee, debating a wide range of social issues including stem cell research, abortion, the death penalty and education.
Stem cell research proved to be the hot topic of the debate, with Doyle saying, “There is no issue on which we differ [more] fundamentally.”
In an intriguing finding, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have unveiled a critical protein that prevents influenza viruses from entering cells, a mechanism that could spark production of anti-viral medications to fight multiple flu strains, including the deadly strain of bird flu that’s circulating globally.
A substance that could block the deadly bird flu virus exists right in your body.
It’s a peptide – a very small piece of a protein. But it has managed to block several strains of influenza in tests with cell cultures and mice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
University of Wisconsin researchers have discovered a new drug that could help protect people against the avian flu virus.
Madison’s fertility clinic tensions are about to evolve into a battle among fertility clinics that could include skirmishes over success rates.
A clinic in Rockford, Ill., plans to move its in-vitro fertilization lab to Madison by January, said Dr. Jacek Graczykowski, one of the clinic’s two doctors.
NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin and Madison Alder Zach Brandon, District 7, introduced a proposed emergency contraception ordinance Monday aiming to improve emergency contraception access for women in Madison who need the morning-after pill.
The Epstein-Barr virus, the most common culprit of mono, infects most people and is linked to cancer later in life. Researchers at the UW-Madison McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research and the German National Research Center for Environmental Health have discovered information about the virus�s lifecycle which could lead to virus-specific, targeted treatments for certain cancers.
Quoted: Hans Sollinger, head of the University of Wisconsin-Madison organ transplant program.
Companies sponsoring stem- cell research exclusively in Wisconsin will no longer have to buy a costly license to use the technology under an agreement announced by Gov. Jim Doyle on Thursday.
Doyle said the agreement between his administration and Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, which holds patents covering embryonic stem- cell research, will give the state a significant advantage in attracting biotechnology companies and research dollars.
WASHINGTON – Federal legislation likely to pass before Congress recesses Friday outlines the future of the National Institutes of Health, the primary source of money for UW-Madison biomedical research. But the real fight for money may come after the Nov. 7 elections.
The Doyle administration has reached an agreement with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation that will give Wisconsin stem cell researchers a considerable competitive advantage over those in other states.
Gov. Jim Doyle announced today that WARF, which holds patents and royalty rights on some of the world’s most promising stem cell lines, has agreed that companies conducting research in partnership with nonprofit and academic institutions in Wisconsin will receive a free research license under the stem cell patents held by WARF.
Cancer is a devastating diagnosis to receive.
But it can also become a community rallying point for empowerment and entertainment, as advocates for breast cancer awareness and support have proven in recent years with a variety of community, athletic and artistic events.
This Friday night, men will take their cue from women and turn to the topic of prostate cancer.
About 500 people are expected at the Overture Center tonight for the formal renaming of the University of Wisconsin Comprehensive Cancer Center after the late Paul Carbone, a researcher who will also be honored this week at a new hospice care facility.
The former cancer center director came to UW in 1976 and led the center for 18 years. He was known for innovations in research and patient care, including developing a chemotherapy treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma. That helped him win the Lasker Award in Medicine, considered this country’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
Accidental discovery cuts research times
Drug research takes a lot of time. The process of creating a new drug candidate takes up to six months of tedious chemistry, and most candidates produced end up without therapeutic effects. But a recent discovery in UW-Madison�s pharmacy department may change all that.
WAUSAU (AP) – A Wausau man has become the first patient in the University of Wisconsin transplant program to accept a transplanted kidney from a donor with a different blood type and to overcome antibodies that make organ rejection likely.
The transplant between Chad Stockinger and his wife, Kristin Calhoun Stockinger, was made possible by desensitization, a process that removed those antibodies from Chad’s blood and kept them away with medication.
The UW transplant center is one of about five in the nation to perform the procedure.
As voters select a governor this November, architects will be drafting plans for the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, a $150 million research complex at UW-Madison.
The public-private complex, to expand research on stem cells and related fields, will be built whether or not Republican Mark Green defeats Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, organizers say. It is to open in late 2009 in the 1300 block of University Avenue.
American women have waited long enough for a cervical cancer vaccine. Now that it’s available, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should quickly issue permanent guidelines.
While UW-Madison’s University Health Services started offering the vaccine this month, many Madison-area clinics aren’t providing this breakthrough health product.
Injections prevent HPV-induced cervical cancer
A new vaccine used to stop an infection that causes genital warts became available Wednesday at University Health Services. UHS is one of few clinics in the Madison area that is distributing the vaccine.
An official with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta has been named director of the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene, where he started his career almost 30 years ago.
Charles Brokopp has been director of the Division of Select Agents and Toxins at the CDC since 2004. In that post, he directed the registration of about 400 academic, governmental and private entities that possess, use or transfer biological agents.
How prepared is your organization or business if a pandemic strikes Madison? Unlike a natural disaster, a pandemic, or worldwide outbreak of disease, affects “human capital,” by toppling people instead of the bricks and mortar destroyed by tornadoes or other disasters.
Concerns about the avian flu have grabbed headlines worldwide, but local organizers say it’s not the sole inspiration for a one-day forum, “Surviving the Pandemic,” at the Alliant Energy Center Exhibition Hall Oct. 12.
(Several UW-Madison experts are among the featured speakers.)
Ah, the start of a new semesterââ?¬â?the awkward classroom introductions, the reading and rereading of the syllabi and of course, the dreaded sign-up sheet for classroom presentations. While you may not be nervous about that day right now, as the weeks and days before your debut slip away, chances are you will be.
Higher costs at the hospital If you think hospital bills are rising, you’re right.
Figures from the Wisconsin Hospital Association show that rates have risen sharply at Madison-area hospitals, between 5.8 and 9.9 percent this year, while the state average was a 5.8 percent jump for this year and the same in 2005.
And further health insurance cost increases probably aren’t far behind.
UW-Madison’s University Health Services started carrying the vaccine this month, said executive director Kathleen Poi. Several students have paid $122 per dose to receive it, she said.
Jo-Anne Lazarus was washing her hair when she noticed something odd: Her right hand was moving in circles but her left hand wasn’t. Later, she had trouble getting keys out of her left pocket. She saw a doctor and got a diagnosis: Parkinson’s disease. The condition gradually slows movement, makes muscles rigid and causes tremors, usually leading to severe disability.Unlike most of the 500,000 to 1 million Americans with Parkinson’s, Lazarus didn’t need to read up on the disease. A UW-Madison associate professor of kinesiology, the study of movement, she had been researching Parkinson’s long before she learned she had it.
Quoted: Michael Pariza, director of the Food Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
One of the most terrifying things the parents of a newborn can hear is that a screening test has detected an abnormality in their child.
In Wisconsin, which screens newborns for more inherited disorders than many other states, such news can be devastating to parents. To the relief of many, treatment options are clear and can help a host of disorders.
However, now the concern is that with better screening technology, more conditions are detected – and researchers don’t know if those genetic defects will lead to health problems for kids.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and their colleagues are trying to deal with one recently discovered condition.
Researchers are exploring whether vitamin D might prevent pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest malignancies.
Mentioned: Halcyon Skinner, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health
An overwhelming majority of first-year medical residents continue to ignore a well-known ethics code, according to a study released earlier this month.
Stanford University Medical Center will prohibit its physicians from accepting even small gifts like pens and mugs from pharmaceutical sales representatives under a new policy intended to limit industry influence on patient care and doctor education.
Compounds that block chemical signals used by bacteria to communicate may help fight germs from spreading and causing infections, U.S. scientists report.
Quoted: Mark Sager, director of the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute and a professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In their 1965 yearbook graduating seniors at a Chicago girls high school listed career choices under their pictures. Their top categories? Nurse, teacher, secretary and wife.
Times have changed, and today’s graduates can choose from a cornucopia of careers, including specialties within nursing itself, such as nurse-anesthetist. That’s one of the reasons countries from New Zealand to Northern Ireland have a nursing shortage now. But another reason is job dissatisfaction.
Gubernatorial candidate U.S. Rep. Mark Green, R-Wis., announced a plan Tuesday to directly invest $25 million into new stem-cell research that does not destroy the embryo.
After fighting for the formula their son Tyler needed to survive, and then fighting for his life, Jeff and Kristin Tracy are engaged in another challenge: raising $200,000 for a sibling care center that will grace the lobby of the new UW Children’s Hospital in memory of their 17-month-old son, who died in 2003.
Quoted: Dr. Mary Schroth, a pediatric pulmonologist at the University of Wisconsin Children’s Hospital who treats SMA patients
When it comes to ailing dogs and cats, Oregon Veterinary Clinic can handle just about anything, from surgical repair of cruciate ligaments to cancer treatment. But there are some cases that prompt the clinic to refer clients to specialists.
Co-owner Dr. Jim Stevenson said the clinic sometimes refers clients to the UW School of Veterinary Medicine or to traveling specialists, but the preference is Veterinary Specialty Options (VSO) of Madison.
….Dr. Dave Edinger started the business in 1999 as Surgical Options, working as a traveling specialist after he completed his residency at UW.
Dr. Walter Kao is talking about heart failure … a complication he says can affect anyone, any age, but often goes undetected.
That’s why the UW hospital brought in the “Heart FXpod” on Monday.
The “pod” puts people through an amusement park-like ride that simulates the fear and pain of suffering from heart failure.
Confidence – it’s one of the many things that Jame Winn says she gained by being in UW Hospital School at Work (SAW) program.
SAW is designed to help employees working in entry-level positions at UW Hospital develop skills to further their healthcare careers.
It is one of the programs offered through UW Hospital’s Academy, which provides employees with training in leadership, management and career and personal development.
Primorigen Biosciences LLC, a fledgling Madison-based company that is developing laboratory tools for analysis of cellular reprogramming and differentiation, has raised $2.45 million in funding, the Wisconsin Technology Network reported.
(The company is located in the MG&E Innovation Center in University Research Park.)
In Madison, important research is looking at the impact of nicotine on adolescent rats, which may show why some young human smokers become addicted quickly.
Also funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, studies by Charles Landry, an assistant professor in psychiatry at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, have shown that brains of young rats show a dramatic response to an injection of nicotine equivalent to two or three cigarettes. Adult rats do not show the same response.
Hospitals across south-central Wisconsin are expanding like never before, thanks to improved technology and greater patient demand. In fact, some experts say it’s a trend that will impact disease diagnosis and health-care economics for years to come.
Nearly a dozen hospitals in cities like Watertown, Baraboo and Reedsburg have taken on extensive expansion or renovation projects and added the latest diagnostic tools like MRI machines and CT scanners.
In Madison, all three major hospitals – St. Mary’s, UW Hospital and Meriter – are remodeling and reconfiguring their space.
Quoted: Molly Carnes, a professor in the department of medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the women veterans health program at the William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital in Madison.
Monday’s announcement by the Medical College of Wisconsin that it is ramping up its graduate studies in public and community health in conjunction with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee bodes well for everyone in Wisconsin.
