From WisPolitics.com/WisBusiness.com …
— UW Health’s newly launched Living Donor Initiative aims to boost the number of donors it serves by 20% within two years.
The health system yesterday announced the program at the UW Health Transplant Center, which had about 100 living liver and kidney donors last year.
It aims to increase community outreach and other education to achieve greater awareness about the need for organ donation, through in-person efforts at “wellness fairs” and other community events in Wisconsin and northern Illinois. The initiative also has a goal of expanding related research UW School of Medicine and Public Health.
The UW Health Transplant Center in Madison has also added a living donor recipient navigator position, meant to inform kidney and liver transplant candidates about living donation and help them find potential donors.
Dr. Dixon Kaufman, the center’s director and a professor of surgery at the UW SMPH, calls living organ donation “the gift of a lifetime.” He notes a kidney from a living donor often lasts longer than one from a deceased donor.
“We see the urgent need for more donors every day, which motivated us to launch this initiative,” Kaufman said in the announcement.
UW Health says more than 90,000 people are on the waiting list for a kidney transplant nationwide, and 11 of those patients die every day waiting for a donated organ. Meanwhile, nearly 9,000 people are waiting for a liver transplant, the release shows.
Meanwhile, the initiative also aims to support research on the long-term health of living donors, according to Dr. Didier Mandelbrot, medical director of the UW Health Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Programs. Mandelbrot’s research focuses on how living kidney donors are evaluated to improve donor safety and transplant effectiveness.
“Living donors give so much; it is our responsibility to ensure we understand how that gift may affect their health, not just in the weeks after surgery, but for years to come,” he said.
See the release below.
— Conservative Supreme Court candidate Maria Lazar committed to upholding the state’s ban on abortion after 20 weeks, while proclaiming that abortion is legal in Wisconsin.
They were part of four “pillars” that Lazar highlighted yesterday as part of her “commitment to judicial restraint and the rule of law.” Along with abortion being legal in Wisconsin, she declared there are exceptions that exist “for medical emergencies throughout the entire pregnancy to prevent the death of the mother, irreversible physical impairment, or significant genetic issues” and that “The life of the woman is always a priority under the law.”
“I will always stand up for women and the law,” Lazar said. “The decision whether to have an abortion is one of the most difficult challenges a woman will ever face. We must provide more support for women before and after birth. As a society, we can and must do better.”
Abortion has factored heavily into the last two state Supreme Court races, both of which the liberal candidate won by double digits. The 2023 race flipped control of the court to liberals for the first time in 15 years, and the new majority in July struck down an 1849 law that had been interpreted as banning all abortions except to save the life of the mother.
That law went back into effect in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a 1973 ruling that had guaranteed the right to an abortion.
In interviews after announcing her bid for the court, Lazar praised that U.S. Supreme Court 2022 ruling, saying it properly put the issue back before the states. She also has said in interviews, “I don’t know that I would have been in the majority” in the July decision striking down Wisconsin’s 1849 law.
Lazar and 4th District Court of Appeals Judge Chris Taylor are the only two announced candidates for Supreme Court.
Taylor campaign manager Ashley Franz said of Lazar, “She recently called the repeal of Roe v. Wade ‘very wise,’ she would have voted to keep the state’s 1849 abortion ban in place, and has earned the support of far-right groups who oppose access to all abortions without exceptions. Judge Taylor is the only candidate who will protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of all Wisconsinites on Court, just as she has done during her entire 30-year legal career.”
Pro-Life Wisconsin and Wisconsin Right to Life both endorsed Lazar in her 2022 campaign for the Waukesha-based 2nd District Court of Appeals. Neither returned messages yesterday from WisPolitics seeking comment on Lazar’s statement.
Ethics rules bar judges from prejudging cases. A Lazar campaign spokesperson said there is a “clear distinction between recognizing settled law and pre-judging future cases” and the candidate “is simply clarifying the current legal landscape in our state.”
“By acknowledging the 20-week ban as the law of the land, she is upholding the directives of the State Supreme Court,” the spokesperson said. “She is not commenting on hypothetical litigation or future legislative actions, as her duty is to apply the law as it exists today while remaining a fair and neutral arbiter for any matters that may come before her in the future.”
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