Wisconsin's Premier Public Health Surveillance System Produces Large Numbers in Outbreak Reports

The feel-good, holiday video for the ages: Dr. Christopher
Olsen chats about Wisconsin's public health surveillance system
and Zoonotic disease research at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison in 2009. Outgoing Wisconsin
Republicans did not destroy these treasures. This is
cause to celebrate.

Madison, Wisconsin — As humanity contends with the 2018-19 flu season, there is a man-made system that should be hailed: Wisconsin's model public health surveillance program that alerts medical professionals and policymakers to disease threats like Legionnaires’ disease and the flu.

Wisconsin has the best statewide health surveillance, and it's no accident.

The state's public research and public health investments made over generations and spurred on by liberal, secular types at UW-Madison laid the scientific ground to establish a sophisticated public health system, notes Dr. Christopher Olsen, Department of Pathobiological Sciences, at a lecture in Madison in April 2009.

Flooding disasters across the nation this year likely has people here guessing about a causal relationship between recent Legionnaires’ disease cases in Madison and the catastrophic flooding in Madison — a worthy question that generates a reassuring answer.

There is no cause to jump the gun about this hypothetical health problem.

"Legionella bacteria can cause a serious type of pneumonia (lung infection) called Legionnaires’ disease. The bacteria can also cause a less serious illness called Pontiac fever," the CDC notes. "People can get sick when they breathe in mist or accidentally swallow water into the lungs containing Legionella. Most people exposed to Legionella do not get sick. However, people 50 years or older, current or former smokers, and people with a weakened immune system or chronic disease are at increased risk."

The number of Wisconsin's reported cases of disease is always higher than the average state's because our health surveillance systems work better than most.

In June 2009, Wisconsin's H1N1 (Swine Flu) reported cases comprised 19 percent of all confirmed cases of the entire nation. Wisconsin is that good at identifying and reporting public health threats.

Outgoing Gov. Scott Walker (R) and the Republicans have not managed to destroy or degrade Wisconsin's health surveillance system.

But the Republicans did try to remove public service and the search for truth from the University of Wisconsin System mission, a mission that ultimately resulted in today's health surveillance system.

As the state is notified of health news, Wisconsin can be confident scientists and public health professionals work together in a high-minded ethical system to stay on top of health concern.

This state of affairs is an achievement of which Wisconsinites can be proud, no matter the senseless Republican Party's vandalism of the last eight years.

Wisconsin GOP Still Trying to Criminalize Fetal Tissue, Stem Cell Research

Penalty. Any person who violates this section is guilty of a Class H felony, except that, notwithstanding the maximum fine specified in s. 939.50 (3) (h), the person may be fined not more than $50,000.—Republican-authored Substitute Amendment to Assembly Bill 305 criminalizing fetal cell research in Wisconsin, under the Wisconsin Criminal Code.

This is where four years of Republican rule in Wisconsin has brought us.

Cancer, blindness, diabetes, muscular dystrophy, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, immune disorders, paralysis, leukemia, deadly strains of influenza, how toxins affect human systems—do we want a cure? Treatment?

No, let's make research scientists who work on stem cells derived from fetal tissue criminal felons instead.

Families and friends of sufferers want cures and treatments (and even understanding), and a promising young field of research faces obstinate Wisconsin religionists who would not know a stem cell or discarded fetal tissue cell from a beaker of urine.

Wisconsin Republican legislators (and only Republicans) are still trying to shut down and criminalize fetal tissue and stem cell research to which pioneering scientists have dedicated their careers and lives in a quest to understand, treat, and cure the disorders to which the human body is virtually defenseless, as Gov. Scott Walker waits—amassing god's wisdom to see which way the presidential campaign winds blows.
 
Now would be a perfect time for David Koch to chime in as a lifetime champion of science and the quest to cure cancer (Singer, Palm Beach Press): 'Hey, Scott Walker, don't forget who owns you. We're taking over this country, and we really would like to cure cancer, paralysis, leukemia, and blindness in the process, got it? Cultivate stem cell research, don't hinder it.'

Dare to dream.

The fetal tissue and stell cell issue epitomizes the phenomenon of know-nothing state legislators, like State Representative André Jacque (R-De Pere, Wisconsin), assuring the Wisconsin people their religious-inspired expertise in biomedical research surpasses that of Dr. James Thomson and young scientists' for the moment drawn to an innovative and thriving Madison-based research community with the promise of verdant interdisciplinary and innovative lines of stem cell investigation that one day might rival the magnitude of Dr. Salk and the polio virus vaccine.

By the way, Salk and his colleagues (oh, conspirators) relied on cells derived from fetal tissue in developing the polio vaccine.

Can you imagine if Salk had to contend with the laws now being contemplated by Jacque and his band of know-nothings who want to make Dr. James Thomson and his colleagues criminals, felons?

Dr. Jonas Salk a felon? He would be if Republicans' proposed legislation were in effect in the early 1950s and Salk worked in Wisconsin instead of Pittsburgh and New York.

The Wisconsin press, such as the Wisconsin State Journal, in this morning's lead news story continues its slanted, anti-science coverage steeped in ignorance and ahistorical twaddle, disregarding such pioneers as Salk and Thomson in an apparent effort to drive away gifted intellects from Wisconsin.

Wisconsin State Journal and Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

State Journal writer David Wahlberg is either being over-edited to the point of absurdity by the State Journal editors joined at the ideological hip with Wisconsin rural legislators, (even as the editorial page calls for the Wisconsin Republicans to drop its imbecilic bill to criminalize stem cell research using otherwise-discarded fetal tissue), or is engaging in journalistic malpractice in understating the stakes of this Republican absurdity.

Wahlberg hasn't bothered to read up on what Dr. Thomson and his colleagues have written over the years, including the lost decade of the Bush-Cheney years and that administration's strafing of stem cell research.

Wahlberg uses the inflammatory, religion-right's description of fetal cells as "body parts," borrowed by Jacque and State Rep. Joel Kleefisch (R-Oconomowoc), and inserted into their proposed amendment to the Wisconsin criminal code, without attribution.

Wahlberg forgets to highlight that Assembly Bill 305 is in the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. "Criminal justice," as in Class H felony, throwing in this fact in the sixth paragraph.

Of the 12 members of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee, a full six are co-sponsors of the bill, with the substitute amendment scheduled for a vote on Wednesday, September 9.

Jason Stein in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel likewise downplays reference to the crime of Class H felony for research scientists. One wonders if Wahlberg and Stein actually read the bill and proposed substitute amendment that would make felons out of researchers involved in the "acquisition, provision, receipt, or use" of fetal cells.

Wisconsin newspaper owned by Gannett  don't merit a mention.

Lunacy

Wahlberg and Stein might wish to give Drs. Alan I. Leshner and James A. Thomson's December 3, 2007 column a quick read. Here the research scientists write, "Efforts to harness the versatility of embryonic stem cells, and alleviate suffering among people with an array of debilitating disorders, began less than 10 years ago. Since then, scientists have continued to pursue embryonic stem cells because of their ability to transform into blood, bone, skin or any other type of cell. The eventual goal is to replace diseased or dysfunctional cells to help people with spinal cord injuries, neurodegenerative disorders, cancer, diabetes, heart disease and other conditions" (Washington Post). Good Labor Day weekend reading.

An open and nourishing research environment applies today. Cancer is still around.

Limiting and criminalizing stem cell research derived from fetal cells is an act of lunacy.

Any legislator, or to keep it realistic as Wisconsin is the most gerrymandered state in the country, or any state senator who votes for the Republican-authored Substitute Amendment to Assembly Bill 305 should be recalled out of simple decency.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison's administrator and scientists' strategy is to argue for stem cell research in a rational manner. The statement of Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education Marsha Mailick is reproduced below.

RESPONSE TO JACQUE/KLEEFISCH AMENDMENT ON AB350

Statement of Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education Marsha Mailick

9/4/15

-We appreciate legislators recognizing the value of existing cell lines in lifesaving biomedical research on illnesses and conditions such as cancer, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes and many more.

-However, setting a 2015 sunset would close the door on countless treatments and cures and put our scientists and state biomedical industry at tremendous disadvantage. This is because all cell lines have unique properties and existing cell lines are not a substitute for new cell lines created in the future.

-It is impossible to predict what promising scientific tools, including cell lines, may yet be developed and shutting the door is unwise. Our researchers must continue to have access to, and be involved in the discovery of, the tools that can help advance scientific progress and help find cures for patients.

-Fetal cells and tissues are not just used for treatments. They are tools that aid in basic scientific discoveries, such as understanding how cancer cells migrate or learning how the human immune system responds to drug therapies. Researchers use these tools when they are the very best option for these tasks, and often, they are the only option.

-Banning future research with fetal tissue will not reduce abortions.

-All tissue used by university researchers is the result of donations from legal medical procedures. It is donated freely after a woman has decided to terminate her pregnancy and is not sold for profit. Women do not have abortions so they can donate.

-Researchers use tissue from abortions which would otherwise be discarded. It would be unethical not to use such tissue to save lives.

-Our researchers follow current federal laws as well as our own additional strong ethical standards.

Fetal Tissue Bill Puts Wisconsin at a Crossroads

'Research on fetal tissue offers the promise of potential treatment, vaccines and cures for birth defects and diseases ranging from cancer to diabetes, from muscular dystrophy to Parkinson’s disease, and from immune disorders to killer strains of influenza'—Wisconsin Technology Council
---
State Representative André Jacque (R-De Pere, Wisconsin) is another anti-choice, know-nothing hick dominating the rural legislative districts in the gerrymandered Wisconsin legislature. (Miller, Isthmus)

Typical of Jacque's array of dogmas is his crusade to kill fetal tissue research though Jacque cannot offer a coherent, factual argument for his long-held position.

The proposed legislation is Assembly Bill 305.

Science and Public Health Research v. Ignorance and Dogma

Biotechnology research scientists, public health, business and women's group are lobbying hard against Jacque's bill that would ban, among other research, promising lines of investigation involving Pluripotent stem cells. (National Institute of Health)

Jacque postures an expertise in biotechnology research and biomedical ethics bringing him to the conclusion that fetal tissue is "aborted children." (Sommerhauser, Wisconsin State Journal)

Today, the rightwing Wisconsin State Journal ran an editorial deriding Jacque's fact-free zone:

About $76 million in annual research dollars and 1,400 jobs are at stake as the Republican-run Legislature weighs a misguided attack on Wisconsin’s high-tech economy. ...

'The unintended consequences of a unilateral Wisconsin restriction on research would likely be devastating ... to efforts to build a high-tech economy,' a [Wisconsin] Technology Council resolution released Monday reads. ...

Jacque’s proposal also would chase away innovators doing ethical and tightly regulated studies targeting birth defects and diseases such as cancer, diabetes, immune disorders and deadly strains of influenza.

Way to go State Journal, still steeped in Republican land as it runs an editorial entitled "GOP should drop fetal tissue bill." The State Journal and other slanted newspapers helped make the Republican Party, maybe the State Journal should drop the Republican Party.

With current Republican Wisconsin legislators veering into an 18th-century level of scientific understanding, the Wisconsin Technology Council's advice is sorely needed.

The bill is scheduled for a hearing in the Assembly Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety on September 9. The Wisconsin State Assembly does not have a committee on science and technology.

Of the 12 members of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee, a full six are co-sponsors of the bill.

Gov. Scott Walker, another rabid anti-choice Republican, desperate to position himself as more-crazy-than-though in the presidential Republican primary, is considered a wild card—Evangelical and anti-science but open to moneyed interests in the still young field of biotechnology and stem cells.

Pro-science, public health sectors are holding out hope the bill gets dropped or amended.

Crossroads

Wisconsin is at a crossroads: Backward toward fundamentalist-inspired ignorance, or forward to pioneering public health research.

Dr. James A. Thomson is the founder of stem cell science arsing from his pioneering discoveries of primate and human embryonic stem cells, in 1995 and 1998 at UW-Madison. (University of Wisconsin-Madison Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center)

The flight of top researchers from Wisconsin has already begun thanks to the anti-science work of Scott Walker and rural legislative Republicans.

"The word is already out on street that Wisconsin is not the place for science or biomedical research," said Dr. Robert Golden, Dean of the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. "We need to turn that around." (Schneider, Capital Times)

One political party stands in the way of Golden and most of Wisconsin's aspirations: The Republican Party of Wisconsin and Scott Walker.

"Golden told the [legislative committee last month] that the bill, if passed, would shut down life-saving research and poison the climate for investment in biomedical innovation, much of which occurs in Madison," notes the Capital Times' Schneider.

Continues Schneider: "Madison attorney David Walsh, a former member of the UW Board of Regents, isn’t sure conservative members of the committee were interested in much of the testimony against the bill [last month].

"'It is clearly an attack on the university,' said Walsh, whose term ended in May. 'They are trying to criminalize the activities of UW researchers. It’s that simple.'"

Wisconsin Technology Council

Here is the text of the Tech Council's resolution opposing the proposed ban on legal fetal tissue research, a bill that has only Republican co-sponsors.

August 31, 2015

The Wisconsin Technology Council has been on record since 2002 as supporting legislation that encourages high-tech research and company creation, and as opposing restrictions on research that place Wisconsin at a competitive disadvantage. The current debate over fetal tissue research in Wisconsin compels us to reiterate the factors behind our 2002 resolution:

1. Academic researchers who have established an international reputation for their work are driven by a passionate belief that their work will benefit humanity. Many competing institutions are attempting to recruit researchers. If Wisconsin adopts legislation that restricts research, these researchers would likely relocate to an institution in a state or country where no such limitations exist. There will be no net impact on the area of research; it simply will no longer be done in Wisconsin. The adoption of legislation that restricts research will effectively be only symbolic with negative economic and intellectual consequences for the state and its citizens.

2. Technology research in Wisconsin is not conducted in a vacuum. It is performed under the surveillance of ethical and scientific oversight organizations.

3. The unintended consequences of a unilateral Wisconsin restriction on research would likely be devastating to its efforts to build a high-tech economy. Adoption of research restrictions will send a signal that Wisconsin has a hostile regulatory environment for tech-based research. Wisconsin academic institutions and private companies would face new challenges in attracting world-class researchers who might be concerned that their research will be targeted next.

4. Companies and investors will view Wisconsin as having a burdensome regulatory climate and as being a risky place to conduct business. In the process of establishing ineffective regulations, we will undermine one of our greatest strengths, while driving out businesses, including firms that would not have likely been a part of an ethical debate.

Therefore, be it resolved that the Wisconsin Technology Council:

- Opposes the sale of fetal tissue, as currently banned under federal law.
- Supports legal procedures for obtaining fetal tissue from regulated tissue banks.
- Recognizes that researchers across the United States have used fetal tissue since the 1930s to advance medicine. The HEK 293 cell line was derived from a single fetus more than 40 years ago and is still used by researchers everywhere – including nearly 100 labs on the Madison campus.
- Recognizes that such experiments led to development of the polio vaccine, to cite one prominent example. Current studies use fetal tissue to target birth defects and diseases ranging from cancer to diabetes, from muscular dystrophy to Parkinson’s disease, and from immune disorders to killer strains of influenza.
- Recognizes that $76 million in outside research dollars, predominantly from federal sources such as the National Institutes of Health, flow each year to UW-Madison labs that conduct research with fetal tissue. Collectively, those labs employ about 1,400 people.
- Recognizes that poorly drafted legislation related to fetal tissue research would do immediate and long-term damage to Wisconsin’s reputation as a state that welcomes biomedical research.  - Recommends that bills under debate in the Wisconsin Legislature should ensure that legacy cell lines are exempt from additional state oversight.
- Recommends those same bills place oversight burdens on the research institutions themselves, which pay to transport and safely store legally obtained tissue, not individual researchers.
- Recommends those same bills not ban the use or criminalize the use of fetal tissue obtained ethically and according to federal law

Biosciences Scare Tea-Republican Party Shills like Tommy Thompson and Walker

Schematic drawing of an influenza A virus

The Republican Party and its subset, the Tea Party, have become so anti-rational that practically any phenomena—macroeconomics, climate science, epidemiology, public health, evolutionary science, one can go on—that are outside its tiny ideological sphere are off limits.

Ed Fallone asks today, Why Isn’t Scott Walker Touting the Biosciences in Wisconsin?, pointing to the promise of stem cells for example, and the biosciences industry generally, studiously ignored by Scott Walker and actively opposed by Tommy Thompson who thinks he ought to dictate the direction of stem-cell research to pioneering scientists like Alan I. Leshner and James A. Thomson.

Thanks to the work of an extraordinary group of scientists working in the great public research institution, the University of Wisconsin-Madison (in the tradition of the Wisconsin Idea), Wisconsin enjoys a model health surveillance program that alerts medical professionals to emerging disease threats.

Walker and Thompson are not cheerleaders for this achievement either.

Science and public health are anathema to Scott Walker and Tommy Thompson, though Wisconsin can boast that we literally lead the world in research and public health systems because of our public commitment to a rational-scientific worldview.

Wisconsin leads the world in the identification of birds carrying the avian flu and often it seems like there are more illnesses in Wisconsin than elsewhere -- but that is because of the excellence of our health surveillance program.

When H1N1 was first discovered it was tracked extensively by Wisconsin scientists, and now that there has been an outbreak of H3N2, a flu strain to which humans are also susceptible, Wisconsin is ground zero for information on this mutation.

As Wisconsin scientists trace and gather information on diseases, the world benefits from the knowledge gained and the vaccines developed. 

In a very real sense, we can say that the Republican defunding of research such as in stem cells, and ideological distaste are making the world physically sicker, as pathologies go untreated. [Recall the Republican debates in which the prospect of a person (without health insurance) dying was actually applauded by the Republican debate audience.]

Consider the State Lab Mission Statement of the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene (WSLH): "[S]hall develop and provide essential public health laboratory support to communities, agencies and private health providers consistent with the public health goals of the State."

Now, consider Tommy Thompson, Ron Johnson, Scott Walker and the GOP-Tea Party.

These two systems of political forces—one collaborative and scientific; the other ideological, feeding ignorance—do not enjoy a symbiotic relationship.

What drives the Tea Party's worldview onto its radical politics is fear:

Fear of being alive, fear of the other

versus

The joy of discovery and the sharing of our Earth

One hopes this dichotomy—Wisconsin is perfectly situated to use stem cells specifically—becomes a defining political issue.