Dear Editor: In his July 29 column, Joel McNally used a lot of ink to lambaste Mark Green over stem cell research. But he missed one key point.
The bills Green voted against had to do with embryonic stem cell research. There is a difference between embryonic and adult stem cells.
The first interim director of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery will be Marsha Malick Seltzer, the director of the Waisman Center, the University of Wisconsin-Madison announced today.
The institutes, planned for the 1300 block of University Ave., will be a $150 million interdisciplinary research center funded with public and private funds.
Seltzer is an expert researcher on people with developmental disabilities. She will continue as director of the Waisman Center, where scientists conduct basic and clinical biomedical and behavioral research.
A doctor who complained in January she was being harassed by a fellow physician at the university fertility clinic where they both work has brought a new complaint against the UW School of Medicine and Public Health alleging continued discrimination, in part because of her first complaint.
Dr. Elizabeth Pritts said Dr. Steven Lindheim has roughly scrutinized her work since she filed the sexual harassment complaint against him, turned staff against her and confronted a patient who had transferred to Pritts’ care, leaving the patient “red-faced and tearful.”
UW-Madison does its best to fend off academic poachers who try to lure away prized professors to other institutions.
And every so often, UW pulls an academic star back home – hopefully to stay.
That happened last year when stem cell researcher Gabriela Cezar returned to UW-Madison.
In his July 29 column, Joel McNally used a lot of ink to lambaste Mark Green over stem cell research. But he missed one key point. The bills Green voted against had to do with embryonic stem cell research.
There is a difference between embryonic and adult stem cells. Green supports stem cell research when the cells are derived from adult stem cells or even umbilical cord cells.
Twenty-six days after he was hired as head coach of Northwestern’s football team, Pat Fitzgerald mentioned one factor that would drive him away from his dream job.
“If I start to feel stress in this job, I’m out,” he said. “I’ll resign.”
(UW athletic director Barry Alvarez and new Badger head coach Bret Bielema are also quoted in this story.)
Gov. Jim Doyle, speaking today in Washington, D.C., said states cannot be expected to make up for federal inaction on human embryonic stem cell research.
He said states are losing time and wasting money struggling with the situation left by President Bush’s veto of the bill that would have lifted the 5-year-old federal ban on funding new human embryonic stem cell lines.
Doyle appeared this morning with U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, upon the release of the center’s report on stem cell research.
Brenda Muth, an acute care nurse practitioner in transplant nephrology at UW Hospital, is featured.
Forum: Was President Bush right to veto legislation that would have expanded federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research?
In Wisconsin, we know a thing or two about snowflakes. We also know a really lame snow job when we see one.
Whether you are the president of the United States or a candidate for governor of Wisconsin, when you take a political position contrary to the interests and wishes of more than 70 percent of the American people, you have to do some pretty fast talking to try to explain it away.
The dishonest public statements put out by both George W. Bush and Congressman Mark Green to try to justify their opposition to embryonic stem cell research didn’t even come close.
Dear Editor: After reading the latest list of animal protection regulations that have been violated at the UW-Madison, I can’t help but wonder why the government allows this research facility to continue operating. Any sensible person can see that it’s managed by people who do not have any regard for animal welfare.
Moreover, I’m shocked that the university would agree to pay a fine, but doesn’t have to admit to doing anything wrong.
Once it was the reason for an attempt to remove him from office, but Madison’s smoking ban now appears to be rewarding Mayor Dave Cieslewicz’s campaign for re-election.
According to the latest filings, contributions from the medical community have amounted to about 13 percent of the money that Friends of Dave Cieslewicz has raised this year.
MedFlight had to land unexpectedly in the town of Rutland Friday after an equipment warning light appeared during a hospital-to-hospital patient transfer.
Two patients have died in recent years following medical errors that resulted in citations against Meriter Hospital and UW Hospital. The possibility of dangerous errors became a local concern after a 16-year-old died July 5 at St. Mary’s Hospital Medical Center after medication was given incorrectly during childbirth.
University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics was cited by the state in 2000 because “failure to properly document medication and infusion administrations created an incomplete and inaccurate medication record.” The error was a contributing factor in the patient’s subsequent neurological deterioration and death, a state report says.
Q: On July 4, Takeru Ko bayashi ate 53.75 hot dogs in 12 minutes at a Coney Island contest. How do competitive eaters such as Kobayashi avoid damaging their health?
A: Counting the hot dogs and each bun half, Kobayashi consumed 161 items of food – “which is literally more than gross,” said Dale Schoeller, a UW-Madison professor of nutritional sciences.
Vitamin D is poised to strike again for Madison.
Harry Steenbock’s groundbreaking discoveries at UW-Madison early last century laid a foundation that led to vitamin D becoming by far the biggest moneymaker for the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
MADISON, Wis. — University of Wisconsin officials released a report that said that they have “grave concerns” about alleged behavior that’s been reported at the UW fertility clinic.
Anybody know a good attorney? We’re looking for one.
At Wisconsin Public Television, we’re putting the proposed marriage amendment to the state constitution on trial. Courtroom dramas have always been popular prime time programs. We’re taking the color and excitement of the genre and turning it into a serious exercise in public policy.
Unlike the dramatic TV shows, our courtroom will be populated with real people; Wisconsinites with points of view and personal stakes in the outcome of the November marriage ballot.
A new report says a sex toy, sexually charged jokes and questionable touching created what officials call a “disturbing environment” at the UW-Madison fertility clinic, which was nearly shut down this spring because of tensions among its three doctors.
A UW-Madison investigative report, released Monday, discusses back rubs, dimmed lights and the touching of patients’ legs.
The atmosphere at the clinic was so tense, medical students no longer work there, officials said.
As organizational picnics go, the event staged Sunday in Elver Park by the UW Children’s Hospital was pretty uneventful.
Some 1,500 of the hospital’s patients, former patients and their family members attended. They played games, ate brats served by volunteers from the Russ Darrow automotive group, which co-sponsored the picnic, and tried to dunk hospital nurses – all pretty uneventful stuff.
MADISON, Wis. — It was a celebration of life at Elver Park Sunday as the UW Children’s Hospital held its sixth annual picnic in the park.
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) – Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Thursday announced he was diverting $5 million from the state budget for stem cell research, despite repeated objections from legislators.
The move came a day after President Bush vetoed federal legislation that would have expanded funding for embryonic stem cell research.
Predictably, Congress couldn’t overturn President Bush’s veto of legislation that would have expanded federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
That is unfortunate for all of the reasons that have been stated in the long debate over whether the United States will ever get serious about identifying the viable treatments for Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, spinal cord injuries, diabetes, strokes and burns that might well be found on the stem cell frontier.
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush cast the first veto of his 5 1/2-year presidency Wednesday, rejecting legislation to ease limits on federal funding for research on stem cells obtained from embryos.
“This bill would support the taking of innocent human life of the hope of finding medical benefits for others. It crosses a moral boundary that our society needs to respect, so I vetoed it,” Bush said at a White House event where he was surrounded by 18 families who “adopted” frozen embryos that were not used by other couples, and then used those leftover embryos to have children.
A California-based consumer group has filed legal challenges to three stem cell patents owned by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. The foundation owns the patents to discoveries made by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The foundation says WARF’s use of the patents restricts scientific research.
Demand for a new meningitis vaccine has created a shortage, and health officials say doctors should give priority to older teens and hold off on giving the shots to pre-teens.
One of Madison’s high-tech success stories continues to power ahead.
TomoTherapy Inc. today unveiled its new 66,000 square-foot operations center at 1209 Deming Way, across from the company’s headquarters in the Old Sauk Trails Office Park.
Reasonable voices in Congress from the left, middle and right agree on the need to encourage life-saving stem cell research.
Unfortunately, President George Bush still doesn’t get it.
The president appears ready and more than willing to veto a bill that’s expected to clear the U.S. Senate as early as today.
Research led by University of Wisconsin-Madison flu expert Yoshihiro Kawaoka has shown that it will be extremely difficult to transmit the H5N1 virus between humans because the virus binds only to cells buried deep in the recesses of the human lower respiratory tract. The virus doesn’t stick in the upper respiratory tract, where human flus are carried.
A Michigan company that is developing a psoriasis treatment based on licensed technology developed by UW-Madison Professor Hector DeLuca announced that it won’t be going public due to the current weak stock market conditions.
Quoted: Douglas Jorenby of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
Last month, St. Mary’s and Dean Health Care opened a $2.2 million sleep center in Fitchburg, moving the center from the hospital. Meriter Hospital and UW Hospital are discussing expanding their sleep centers by opening a joint center.
It was supposed to be a short stay – several weeks at most.
Heck, the day after Terry Hampton entered UW Hospital in mid-May to wait for a liver transplant, he and his family celebrated his 59th birthday in his room. And several days after that, his son Kevin’s graduation from Edgewood High School.
Dear Editor: Although the state of Wisconsin’s State Employee Group Health Program and its local government program may be setting new records for cost savings, it also stands out as one that practices government-sanctioned discrimination.
While the private sector, as well as two of Madison’s three hospitals, has adopted employee health insurance programs that include domestic partners of their employees, the state has dug in its heels.
FOND DU LAC — An abandoned railroad bed cuts through the rural, wooded acreage that Dr. Darold Treffert calls home. The tracks were to connect the area with the Mississippi River in the 1860s, but resources were exhausted before the project got that far.
A more complex and global web of connections has long thrived indoors, where the psychiatrist’s lifetime study of one rare condition has brought together patients, caregivers, researchers, media and filmmakers from as far away as Indonesia and Israel.
Treffert, clinical professor in the UW psychiatry department and a former Wisconsin Medical Society president, is trying to decide which institute of higher education should house the materials of his home office work. He also would like a center for excellence established, to encourage multidisciplinary research and be a clearinghouse for public information.
DES MOINES, Iowa – The pork industry says hogs have been on a “diet” for more than a decade, and new government research shows that Americans are getting a much leaner product because of it.
The National Pork Board announced Monday that feeding and breeding techniques over the past 15 years have led to cuts of pork that rival skinless chicken breasts – often revered as the leanest of meats.
For David Watkins, the search for an HIV vaccine has as much to do with Darwin as disease.
Watkins heads up UW- Madison’s HIV vaccine research team. With a new lab, expanded research funding and encouraging new results from a study in monkeys, the team is gaining prominence in the field.
The co-chairwoman of a state Senate panel on health care reform says the insurance system that serves 230,000 state and local government employees, retirees and their beneficiaries is blazing a path toward more efficient and less costly health care.
“Wisconsin has a shining example” to offer, said Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills. “The state changed to a three-tier insurance system and developed a prescription initiative that is very strong. This is the best in the country, and other states are looking at it.”
University of Wisconsin researchers have linked high levels of cadmium in the body to a higher risk of breast cancer.
The findings show that the toxic heavy metal may be a factor, but more study is necessary, said Jane McElroy, Ph.D., lead author of the study at the UW Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The study did not prove that cadmium causes breast cancer, she said, but it did show that women with the top 25 percent of cadmium levels had twice the breast cancer risk of women in the lowest 25 percent of cadmium levels.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison virologist is now the university’s highest-paid professor.
Yoshihiro Kawaoka, whose research is focused on avian influenza, saw his salary more than triple after the university successfully worked to stave off an attempt to lure him away.
….For years, farmers have implicated poor power quality (dirty electricity) as a source of their problems, some of it carried by utility lines and some generated on-site. The supposed experts at the university and the Public Service Commission have refused to study it (preferring to study “stray voltage”), even though industry spends billions every year correcting the problem in industrial settings lest it damage equipment.
Levels of dirty electricity are often very high in urban environments. The utilities, government agencies and the university have adamantly refused to assess how these phenomena affect human health.
A tobacco research center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will be testing an experimental vaccine aimed at treating tobacco addiction.
The vaccine is designed to reduce the amount of nicotine that gets into the brain, which researchers suggest can make cigarettes less addictive.
The Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention is recruiting about 40 volunteers for the study. The volunteers should be current smokers who are at least 18 years old and in good health.
A UW Health family medicine clinic on Madison’s west side will be moving to Verona in early November.
The clinic, currently at 621 Science Drive, within the UW Research Park, has four doctors and two physician assistants with about 15 employees overall, many of whom work part-time. The practice serves 3,500 patients.
Smokers who have tried to quit with a patch, pill, lozenge, inhaler, spray or gum may be interested in a University of Wisconsin-Madison study of a new approach: A vaccine.
A study of NicVAX, an experimental vaccine designed to block nicotine from reaching the brain, is under way at the university’s Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention.
Ronald Laessig, the longtime director of the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene, is retiring.
In an interview this morning, Laessig said he told University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor John Wiley in September that he would retire when his replacement takes over. Laessig said a search committee began looking for a new director three or four months ago. The university announced three finalists on Monday.
An 8-year-old Madison boy has a new lease on life thanks to a donation from his dad. It is more common than you would think: parents donating organs to save their young child’s lives.
A showdown over stem cells is taking shape between Wisconsin and California, and the weapons the players are wielding are patents, lawsuits and billions of dollars.
The impact of the outcome isn’t limited to the two states, parties involved say. The confrontation could greatly influence the global development of stem-cell therapies, which might someday benefit millions of patients.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and licensee Natural ASA have filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Arkopharma, a French maker of nutritional supplements, and its U.S. subsidiary, Health from the Sun.
The lawsuit alleges infringement upon patents related to the uses of conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA, for purposes of creating “a sculpted, athletic looking body.”
Quoted: Dr. Timothy Wassenaar of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Gov. Jim Doyle called on Congress to lift the ban on federal funding for research on new stem-cell lines.
As Dane County’s population grows more diverse, hospitals and other health care providers have ever greater need for language interpreters.
In fact, area health organizations banded together in 1997 to develop a test for prospective interpreters in their knowledge of Spanish and medical terms. The collaborative program, which has been recognized nationally by the National Health Law Program and others, has since added a test for Hmong interpreters.
http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060609/GPG0101/606090720/1207/GPGnews
As diabetes patient David Strom shares his story and his support for stem-cell research, he becomes part of an issue that Democrats in various states nationwide are claiming as their own this election year because of its ability to resonate with families yet divide Republicans on moral grounds.
To emphasize his commitment to such research, Gov. Jim Doyle has arranged for the mother of a diabetic child to introduce him before his keynote address at the convention tonight.
The debate over stem cell research could define November’s Governor’s race.
Jim Doyle is making stem cell research a major part of his re-election campaign. One Verona family says it will be a pivotal factor when they take to the polls.
The infamous Pail and Shovel Party’s flamingo prank on Bascom Hill, several UW-Madison alumni, and genetics professor David Schwartz are mentioned in this Doug Moe column.
A fledgling biotech company based on UW-Madison research is the grand prize winner of the 2006 Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Contest.
MatriLab, which is developing a new method to reduce infection and improve healing in the treatment of wounds, will collect prizes of at least $50,000 for winning the contest, which drew about 200 entries.
WAUNAKEE – Micaela Horning, known as “Butterfly” to friends and family, has emerged again from her cocoon after beating back acute lymphocytic leukemia for the second time.
Micaela, 8, happily returned for the last nine days of classes at Prairie Elementary School before summer vacation. She had to miss most of second and third grades due to treatment for leukemia, said her mother, Trish.
Gov. Jim Doyle will use his speech at the state Democratic Party convention tonight to underscore his support for embryonic stem cell research and to highlight his differences on the issue with his Republican challenger, U.S. Rep. Mark Green.
Doyle’s campaign said he will tell fellow Democrats tonight, “Stem cell means so much to me and my family. It means hope. And that’s what it means for so many families in Wisconsin, who are struggling with the illness of a loved one.
“I will not let partisan politics slam the door on hope for these families. For as long as I am governor, Wisconsin will lead the nation in stem cell research.”
Only moments after Dane County triggers its tornado alert, UW Health triggers theirs.
“Unfortunately we’ve been activating it more the last few years,” says Tracy Buchman, Safety Director for UW Health.
The UW Hospital on Monday unveiled yet a new addition that’s been five years in the making: it’s upgraded its Emergency Department.
At a cost of more than $15 million, UW’s new state-of-the-art ER is expected to pave the way for a new era in emergency medicine.
Quoted: Erik Wait, an obstetrician and gynecologist with the University of Wisconsin Medical School in Madison and Meriter Hospital.
