Have you ever considered donating your body to science? I’m not talking about specific organs for transplant. Many of us have signed our intent to do this on the back of our driver’s license and this is an extremely valuable gift.
The excitement of Super Bowl XLI is now behind us. In case you missed it, yesterday, the battle for all of the NFLââ?¬â?¢s glory was played out by two great states of the Midwest. As millions gathered together on couches across the country to cheer on their favorite team and to watch the multi-million dollar advertisements, they also likely indulged in the traditional Super Bowl treatsââ?¬â?a smorgasbord of buffalo wings, pizza, chips and beer. While far from our thoughts, and not nearly as entertaining, an internal battle was also raging yesterdayââ?¬â?Americaââ?¬â?¢s fight against high cholesterol.
Quoted: Dr. Diane Heatley, an associate professor of otolaryngology at UW-Madison who performed the three-hour operations on the boys.
Quoted: Dr. Diane Heatley, who works in pediatric Otolaryngology at University of Wisconsin-Madison Health.
An animal disease expert with 12 years of experience in dealing with the implications of livestock diseases nationally and internationally has been chosen to head the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory.
Thomas McKenna is director of the Foreign Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory in Plum Island, N.Y., where he has worked since 1995.
As a physician and researcher who specializes in alcohol problems, I’d like to inject some science and logic into the discussion on the downtown alcohol density plan.
It’s a fact that most downtown crime, violence and disturbances involve alcohol. It’s a fact that numerous scientific studies show that neighborhoods with high alcohol outlet density have higher rates of crime, violence and disturbances than those with low density.
….Let’s opt for some medicine now while our disease is treatable. Let’s not wait till downtown hits bottom, when urban fright, flight and blight become a vicious circle.
Richard L. Brown, M.D., associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Declaring that the political debate is over, Gov. Jim Doyle is calling on Congress to pass legislation expanding government-financed embryonic stem cell research, despite President Bush’s promise to veto it.
“I think the president’s position is becoming more and more untenable,” Doyle said Wednesday after meeting with Senate Democrats on the issue. “The political debate on this is over.”
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Aurora Health Care and the City of Milwaukee are discussing Aurora Sinai Medical Center in downtown Milwaukee as the site for a school of public health.
Gov. Jim Doyle is putting $30 million in his budget to help get all health care providers in the state to switch from paper to electronic medical record keeping systems.
The initiative would “reduce the cost and improve the quality of health care in Wisconsin,” Doyle said at a news conference this morning at Dean Health System’s East Clinic.
Doyle said health information now is often incomplete and filled with errors, which compromises patient health. He cited statistics from the U.S. Institute of Medicine that found that up to 98,000 people in the United States die annually from medical errors.
Opponents of stem cell patent and licensing practices by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation praised changes in procedures announced by WARF on Monday, but said that more review and change is needed.
WARF, which holds the basic patents on UW scientist’s James Thomson’s method of isolating and defining human embryonic stem cells, said it was changing policies to increase access and make it easier to move technology forward. But a legal challenge and much criticism preceded the changes.
The new policies will enable companies to sponsor research at an academic or nonprofit institution without a license, regardless of location and regardless of intellectual property rights passing from the research institution to the company.
Licenses and fees of up to $400,000 will be waived for non-commercial stem-cell research, UW-Madison’s tech transfer organization said Monday in a move welcomed by researchers who had complained the cost impeded their work.
In Madison, doctors say the issue hasn’t come up because stem-cell research at UW- Madison has relied on leftover embryos from fertility clinics.
Teams of faculty and staff at UW-Madison are participating in Lighten Up Wisconsin, a four-month challenge that supports teams in making “small, realistic and permanent changes” in lifestyles to encourage healthier living.
“We’re going to try exercising together during lunch,” said Ann Hebl, a team leader in the Office of Admissions, one of numerous departments that will participate. “Our teams are hoping to become healthier by changing our eating habits and increasing how often we exercise.”
The deadly 1918 flu virus harms monkeys the same way today’s bird flu strikes some people, says a new study led by a UW-Madison researcher.
Both viruses inflict an unusual immune response that kills instead of protects, the study found.
Since the Spanish flu swept across the globe in 1918, killing millions of healthy, young adults, researchers have wondered what it was about this particular strain of flu that made it so lethal.
They might finally have an answer.
According to an international team of researchers, including Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, it might have been – paradoxically – their health that contributed to their death.
In 2006, Gov. Jim Doyle helped authorize $50 million in state funding for the University of Wisconsin’s planned Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. This funding by our state taxpayers was in part to further jump-start Wisconsin’s still fledgling stem cell research and development initiative.
During this same period Doyle also funded a $5 million plan to recruit and retain stem cell companies. Some $3 million has gone into Dr. James Thomson’s two companies Cellular Dynamics Inc. and Stem Cell Products Inc.
Steps were also taken to waive the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation’s royalty fees for companies that conduct stem cell research in Wisconsin.
All of this funding, mind you, without establishing any terms whatsoever for obtaining any returns on the taxpayers’ investment…..
A major showdown is looming over stem cell research in the state Legislature.
Sen. Mark Miller, D-Madison, is circulating a bill that would affirm in state statute that stem cell research is legal in Wisconsin.
“There has been legislation introduced to restrict the ability of Wisconsin researchers to conduct stem cell research, and it seems to me it’s time to make a very clear statement that we support stem cell research in Wisconsin,” Miller said this morning.
WALLY INGRAM (’84) has often been in the right place at the right time….Thursday morning (he) was in the right place again, the right place for this time in his life. Ingram was in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
“I’m getting an injection as we speak,” Ingram was saying by cellular phone. “And then I am going to get my very last radiation treatment.”
Also in this column: Badger football star Joe Thomas on his decision to finish his college career before turning pro.
UW-Madison researchers are disputing the Public Citizen Health Research Group’s claims that Wisconsin may be endangering patients by failing to adequately discipline doctors.
A study by University of Wisconsin Medical School professors and other researchers found that Public Citizen’s state rankings of disciplinary actions did not correlate with published rankings of Medicare quality and adverse reports in the National Practitioners Data Bank.
The U.S. House of Representatives should give hope Thursday to thousands of suffering Americans by voting to ease federal funding restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research.
Stem cell researchers reacted with enthusiasm and reservations to a report that scientists have found stem cells in amniotic fluid, a discovery that would allow them to sidestep the controversy over destroying embryos for research.
Researchers at Wake Forest University and Harvard University reported Sunday that the stem cells they drew from amniotic fluid donated by pregnant women hold much the same promise as embryonic stem cells.
….Andrew Cohn, a spokesman for the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, said the discovery is an exciting step forward, but that it represents a continuum of all types of research, including studies of adult and embryonic stem cells, all of which must continue.
If you think senior centers are places where elderly folks go to eat lunch and play bingo, you’re pretty old-fashioned.
Increasingly, these centers offer a broad range of classes, speakers and electronic activities aimed at keeping people’s minds and bodies healthy.
Gov. Jim Doyle spent much of his first term lowering expectations, and this newspaper frequently criticized the Democratic executive for the narrowness of his vision.
As Doyle begins his second term, however, he is raising expectations. And we celebrate him for that.
….He spoke of making Wisconsin a global leader in the search for cures and treatments for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, juvenile diabetes and other devastating diseases and conditions, promising that “we’ll invest in stem cell research that could one day bring cures – and save millions of lives around the world.”
DENVER – University of Wisconsin captain Andrew Joudrey is one of 13 nominees for the Hockey Humanitarian Award, the annual honor given to college hockey’s finest citizen.
Joudrey, a senior, was singled out for his visits to UW Children’s Hospital and working with youth hockey teams.
He also was part of the August charity golf outing that raised over $41,000 for the John Dowell Fund, a collection for UW senior Jake Dowell’s father, who is battling Huntington’s Disease.
Like a lot of other people, Bill Rock of Madison wonders why his prescription drugs are so expensive. He suspects itââ?¬â?¢s due in large part to ââ?¬Å?huge mark-upsââ?¬Â; this, he reasons, would account for wide disparities in cost and the fact that providers like Wal-Mart can fill many common prescriptions for as little as $4.
Paul Montague nominated Dr. David Allen for our people making a difference segment. He says Dr. Allen… “Practices what he preaches and rides a bicycle to work on most days even in winter.”
20 years ago, Madison was rooting for him as a runner. Today, he is trying save children from a disease that could catch up with them later in life. So, David along with a couple other Pediatrics Physicians came up with a fitness initiative to try and measure how fit children really are.
As Gov. Jim Doyle and state lawmakers push health care reform to the top of this year’s legislative agenda, University of Wisconsin-Madison scholars are also getting into the act.
Under the auspices of a new partnership among the Wisconsin Joint Legislative Council, the UW School of Medicine and Public Health’s Population Health Institute and the La Follette School of Public Affairs, lawmakers will be able to formally tap into scholarly research and, it is hoped, make more informed policy decisions as a result.
More than a third of disadvantaged 3-year-olds in Chicago and other major U.S. cities are overweight or obese, according to a new study that supports the notion that the struggle with obesity often begins in early childhood.
By the time they reach the age of 3, more than one-third of low-income urban children are already overweight or obese, according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison study released yesterday that provides alarming evidence that the nation’s battle of the bulge begins when toddlers are barely out of diapers.
To examine the use and impact of health resources on the Web, researchers in Wisconsin created a whole new site. Although their study is ongoing, one finding is clear: the discussion boards are the best-used section.
The Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support System provides interactive education – message boards, detailed medical information, decision-making tools – for patients and their families. It began in 1987 as a long-term controlled study of how consumers use computers for health care; Internet access to the program was added later and quickly became dominant.
“People in the thousands have used it since its inception,” says Fiona McTavish, a deputy director of the program, a collaboration of the departments of industrial engineering and preventive medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In a new finding, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have documented changes in the brain’s emotional center that may explain the social impairment seen in children with autism.
Far too many kids are fat by preschool, and Hispanic youngsters are most at risk, says new research that’s among the first to focus on children growing up in poverty.
The study couldn’t explain the disparity: White, black and Hispanic youngsters alike watched a lot of TV, and researchers spotted no other huge differences between the families.
But one important predictor of a pudgy preschooler was whether the child was still using a bottle at the stunning age of 3, concluded the study being published online Thursday by the American Journal of Public Health.
“These children are already disadvantaged because their families are poor, and by age 3 they are on track for a lifetime of health problems related to obesity,” said lead researcher Rachel Kimbro of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Rollerskates, a stick shift – and hair long enough to be curled.
Those are the pleasures of life for Gabby Mahan, who had brain surgery at UW Hospital this year that cured her tremors but required her head to be shaved.
Researchers at the University of Utah School of Medicine and the University of Wisconsin have won a $1.45 million grant to expand a study of risk factors for carpal tunnel syndrome, tennis elbow and shoulder tendinitis.
A UW-Madison program that has helped Wisconsin apple growers reduce pesticide use without sacrificing fruit quality has a new name and a broader mission.
The project recently received a $125,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to expand into more apple growing regions and to set up a similar program for Wisconsin berry growers. Therefore, the project that began in 2003 as the Eco-Apple project has been renamed the Eco-Fruit project.
Pomegranates could help in the fight against lung cancer, according to new research.
In a study at the US University of Wisconsin-Madison, pomegranate fruit extract was shown to help stop the growth of new lung cancer.
Concerned about potential harm to patients from long working hours, the Wisconsin Nursing Coalition will meet in January to discuss whether work hours should be limited.
Preventing medical errors has become a major focus of hospitals nationwide in recent years, but the issue of nurses’ hours came to the fore locally after Julie Thao was charged with a felony when a patient of hers died while giving birth at St. Mary’s Hospital in July.
A Norwegian stem cell company will open a Madison location, Gov. Jim Doyle announced today.
After conducting an extensive international search, CellCura Inc. chose Madison for its overall quality of life, access to world class stem cell scientists at UW-Madison, and its proximity to WiCell, according to a press release from Doyle’s office.
Mentiosn that pioneering research on vitamin D was done in the 1920s at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation holds patents on uses for vitamin D in treating kidney disease and osteoporosis, and UW researchers are working with vitamin D to develop treatments for cancer and psoriasis, said Andy Cohn, a spokesman for the foundation.
STEVENS POINT (AP) – Officials at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point are considering making the campus – indoors and outdoors – smoke-free.
The Environmental Health and Safety committee of the Faculty Senate is looking at the proposal. The discussion is in the early stages, said Chris Sadler, chairman of the Faculty Senate.
The week after a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee student was diagnosed with tuberculosis, scientists at the Madison campus have discovered a protein that could aid in the development of a new medication to fight the human TB infection.
A website launched by the governor�s office Tuesday seeks to educate Wisconsinites about the global threats stemming from a pandemic flu breakout.
The former head of UW- Madison’s stem-cell patenting arm has teamed up with a stem-cell scientist on campus to launch a company using stem cells to develop tests for diseases.
A University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee student was formally diagnosed with tuberculosis Wednesday after symptoms indicated the presence of the disease last week.
References drug disposal programs at UW Hospital and Clinics.
Quoted: Norm Fost, UW medical ethics professor.
MADISON, Wis. — Strep throat is what’s going around these days, according to Madison arean doctors and health care professionals.
Pediatricians at University of Wisconsin Hospital said that they’re seeing a lot of cases lately, WISC-TV reported.
In the midst of transitioning into a new era, University Health Services solidified a key leadership position Thursday, naming Dr. Sarah Van Orman as its new director of clinical services.
Milwaukee health officials are investigating a confirmed case of tuberculosis involving a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee student.
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee came one step closer to creating a School of Public Health when a committee of the UW System Board of Regents gave the university the green light Thursday to continue planning for such a school.
Officials at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the City of Milwaukee got an important and well-deserved vote of confidence Thursday from the Education Committee of the UW Board of Regents in their goal of developing a freestanding, accredited school of public health at UWM.
University of Wisconsin researchers have discovered a new way to make glass that could result in better prescription drugs.
The discovery, to be published Friday in the journal Science, may allow pharmaceutical companies to explore previously unusable drug compounds, the scientists say.
“Many newly discovered drugs are poorly soluble, in water or in fluids in the body,” explained Lian Yu, an associate professor in the School of Pharmacy who co-authored the report in Science.
At its meeting today, the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents will hear a report recommending that UW-Milwaukee develop a school of public health.
The University of Wisconsin System already has a school of public health. It is in Madison.
For that reason, the UW Board of Regents should reject a proposal to begin a years-long, multi- million-dollar effort to build a school of public health in Milwaukee.
MADISON, Wis. — A new report from the Wisconsin Hospital Association said its members are struggling to fill a variety of positions, including hospital-based pharmacists.
The association’s report said the demand is rising for pharmacists, while the number entering the profession is dropping.
Admissions at Wisconsin’s only pharmacy school, University of Wisconsin-Madison, have remained flat for five years. Some hospitals spend as much as a year recruiting nationwide before filling pharmacy vacancies.
With New York officials voting Tuesday to become the first major city in the nation to ban the use of artery-clogging artificial trans fat in restaurants, can Madison be far behind?
Despite the city’s reputation in the business community for interventionism, the answer may be “No way.”
(Dr. Pat Remington, director of the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, is quoted.)
Catholic Bishop William Morlino found an ally in academia as he argued during a forum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that human embryonic stem cells should be saved from research that destroys them.
William Hurlbut, a professor in the Neuroscience Institute at Stanford University, told an audience at Union South on Tuesday that human embryos are, by their very nature, living beings, and he argued that scientific stem cell extraction procedures that destroy these embryos are immoral. He attacked notions that embryos that have only developed for a short time period are simply “clumps of cells.”
(CBS)Ã? Ever wonder why we seem to crave most the food that’s worst for us? Could it be that we literally can’t resist it?
That’s what neuroscientist Ann Kelley has been studying for more than a decade in her lab at the University of Wisconsin, CBS News correspondent Trish Regan reports.
“In a way, food is like a drug,” Kelly says.
As second-year medical students at the Medical College of Wisconsin, we speak on behalf of many other medical students in support of the college’s circulatory control laboratory using dogs. An opinion column by three medical students.
(UNDATED) As use of prescription drugs continues to rise and Wisconsin�s population ages, there�s concern there won�t be enough pharmacists in Wisconsin to handle demand.
Some say a perfect storm caused by a changing society is to blame for a shortage of pharmacists. Jeanette Roberts is Dean of the state�s only pharmacy school, located on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. She says there are so many more drugs for so many more things and it�s become a part of their normal management. The Hospital Association�s Warmuth says there�s a good reason for that. She says it�s so much better for patients if they can be treated with pharmacological intervention so that is the first approach that�s always taken.
