Posts Tagged ‘UW-Madison’

UW-Madison to host euthanasia symposium

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

UW-Madison’s list of pro-life offenses is certainly not on the short side. UW-Madison receives $5 million in taxpayer funds annually to engage in embryonic stem cell research, proposes using aborted baby parts for research, attempts to partner with Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin to provide late-term abortions, and as an upcoming event indicates, is now pushing physician-assisted suicide on the state of Wisconsin. All of this on the taxpayer’s dime, mind you.

Review the list of speakers and topics (click here to view the event on UW’s website.) You will notice the discussion is no longer, “Is euthanasia morally wrong?” but is instead, “Helping Patients Die Who Are Not Terminally Ill.”

The Hippocratic Oath flew the coop a long time ago, when the reference to abortion was removed, but how can doctors who euthanize patients promise to keep them alive?

Wisconsin has a law which specifically prohibits assisted suicide — Wis. Stat. §940.12. In addition, euthanasia is prohibited in Wisconsin under the general homicide laws. In 2001, a woman caregiver was found guilty under Wisconsin’s law prohibiting assisted suicide for smothering her patient. The ruling was upheld by a state court of appeals. State v. Trautman,  2003 WI 100 (click here for court files).

Why Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin is on the run

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

Background: On Dec. 28, MTV aired a half-hour special, “No Easy Decision,” telling the stories of teenagers who had abortions. Watching the show, you can see how abortion continues to affect these women. Read an article by Jill Stanek about her observations here. You can watch the show here on MTV’s website if you haven’t seen it yet.

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin is hosting screenings of the MTV abortion special, “No Easy Decision,” throughout the state. One of the women featured on No Easy Decision, Natalia, is from Milwaukee. PPWI promoted the screenings with the message that Natalia would be in attendance to discuss the MTV show and her decision to have an abortion. PPWI held a screening on the UW-Milwaukee campus on Wednesday, February 16, and this week Wednesday, February 23 on the UW-Madison campus. Read an article from the UW-Milwaukee Post on the screening here.

Pro-Life Wisconsin attended the Madison screening. There were 30 other people in attendance, including the PPWI staff, several UW-Madison staff members, and approximately 20 students.

So how did it go?

To kick things off, PPWI gave a short presentation about how wonderful they are, and reaffirmed how important providing abortion is (at $750 for a first-trimester abortion, no wonder abortion is one of their core services.) Natalia, the woman from Milwaukee on the MTV show, complained about MTV’s editing; essentially, she claimed the editing made the show not pro-abortion enough. Ostensibly for privacy reasons, PPWI stated that audio or video recording or photography was not permitted (on taxpayer funded university grounds.) If, as PPWI claimed throughout the event, abortion is “no big deal” and “nothing to be ashamed of,” who cares?

After the No Easy Decision screening, PPWI realized Pro-Life Wisconsin was in attendance (reading a newspaper in the back) and kicked the person out (again, note this was in a public university, where a taxpayer has as much rights as an organization pushing its agenda on college kids).

What is fascinating about this exchange?

PPWI has millions and millions more money than Pro-Life Wisconsin. You will never see a newspaper editorial board wish Pro-Life Wisconsin a “Happy 75th Birthday,” as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel did this past summer. And yet, PPWI is so threatened, and unsure of its footing, that it cannot stand to have a pro-lifer sitting in a discussion about abortion with 20 college students. Obviously, PPWI is not going to reveal top-secret, board-room level information to a group of wide-eyed college kids eating popcorn and candy. This discussion did not even incorporate the true sense of choice.

Jill Stanek has written on the Paranoia at Planned Parenthood of California, and it appears this is a nationwide trend. Who knew Wisconsin pro-lifers’ names were on a hit list, complete with photos? But when your $12 million in yearly state taxpayer funding is in peril, perhaps nothing is too overboard…

Executive education with UW-Madison and former president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

For $2,495, you could hear Faye Wattleton, former President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, speak at a University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business “Executive Education” summit on October 1. View the entire schedule here (Wattleton’s presentation is second-to-last, at the bottom of the page).

The mission of the University of Wisconsin’s School of Business Executive Education program is to, “Help companies improve their business performance through practical education and applied knowledge.”

The UW School of Business Executive Education program consistently receives high marks from the London-based Financial Times, which ranks business school program all over the world. The UW School of Business is ranked at #67 in the world by the Financial Times.

University of Wisconsin School of Business graduates do well in the world – in 2005, UW joined Harvard as the most common university attended by S&P 500 CEOs. More than 1,050 UW-Madison alumni serve as CEO of a company and nearly 16,000 hold an executive management position, according to the UW School of Business website.

With all of this hard-earned prestige, is throwing Planned Parenthood of America into the mix a good idea?

None of these 1,050 alumni CEOs were available?

As Wattleton’s autobiography on her website indicates, she did not attend nor receive a degree from UW-Madison.

While Wattleton’s resumé may be impressive, why is it more impressive than any of the 16,000 UW graduates in executive management positions?

UW-Madison’s entanglement and fascination with the abortion industry is well-documented. You can read more here and here and here.

It is unfortunate that potential alumni speakers were passed over in favor of an affiliation with Planned Parenthood, an organization that has killed so many future Badgers.

UW-Madison, the “birthplace” of embryonic stem cell research, has big money riding on recent court decision

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010

A little background: On August 23 a District of Columbia federal district court judge blocked rules promulgated by the Obama administration that expand embryo-destructive research. President Obama’s March 2009 executive order permitted federal funding of new embryonic stem cell lines derived from the destruction of new human embryos “donated” from in vitro fertilization clinics.

In his August 23 decision, Judge Royce Lamberth [which the Obama administration appealed yesterday] concluded that the new National Institutes of Health (NIH) guidelines clearly violate a 1995 federal law (known as the Dickey-Wicker amendment) that prohibits federal funding of scientific research in which human embryos “are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death.” Because embryonic stem cell research necessarily depends upon the destruction of the human embryo, Judge Lamberth ruled that the NIH guidelines violate the “plain language of the statute.” The New York Times has an article that clearly articulates the nuances of this issue. Read it here.

Pro-Life Wisconsin legislative director Matt Sande debated the issue on Wisconsin Public Radio’s (WPR) Joy Cardin show last week. To hear the show on WPR Audio Archives, click here. Then scroll down to Wednesday, August 25, 7 a.m.

How does this all relate back to UW-Madison?

UW is making money from embryonic stem cell research in two ways.

First, by way of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation [WARF], the designated patent management organization of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. WARF has at least 35 licensing agreements whereby WARF is paid for the worldwide distribution of embryonic stem cells. Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is the largest licensee named publicly to date.

According to its website, in 2007-08 WARF, “Gave $83 million to  UW-Madison to support research, signed 68 new license and option agreements, took equity in 2 new UW-Madison spin-off companies…” It should be noted WARF’s patent income is not derived solely from embryonic stem cell distribution.

Second, UW brings in $5 million annually in federal tax payer dollars to fund embryonic stem cell research at the university. That amounts to 75 scientists who work solely on embryonic stem cell research, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.

From an August 25 Wall Street Journal article: The University of Wisconsin has 34 approved projects involving human embryonic cells, of which 21 are paid for by the federal government, supporting the work of 18 scientists from cardiologists to chemists. Total federal funding for human-embryo research at the university is about $5 million annually.

Dr. Kamp, for example, is a cardiologist trying to understand heart function by studying the electrical properties in heart cells. Since it can be hard to obtain human cardiac cells, he is deriving heart cells from embryos, a project funded by the NIH.

So it’s not a surprise when UW welcomes Obama’s effort to restore embryonic stem cell research funding.

Timeline of embryonic stem cell research at UW, via the Wall Street Journal:

  • Mid-1990s James Thomson, a University of Wisconsin biologist, begins trying to grow human embryonic stem cells.
  • Nov. 1998 Dr. Thomson announces that he has successfully grown the cells.
  • Jan. 1999 Tommy Thompson, then-governor of Wisconsin, praises Dr. Thomson’s work in his state-of-the-state address, prompting outrage among pro-life groups.
  • Oct. 1999 The university-related Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation creates a private subsidiary, the WiCell Research Institute, to handle stem-cell distribution and oversee the lab. Dr. Thomson is the scientific director.
  • Feb. 2000 Some Wisconsin Republicans launch the first of several attempts to block the research.
  • Aug. 2001 President Bush decides to allow federal funding for research on existing human stem-cell lines. WARF officials expect researchers working with those lines will no longer have to work from private labs.
  • March 2009 President Obama signed an executive order federally funding embryonic stem cell research. The order removed President Bush’s August 2001 federal funding restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research.
  • August 2010 A federal judge blocks the expansion of funding embryonic stem cell research.
  • Two UW-Madison professors on the board of the abortion-financing Women’s Fund

    Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

    An article in Sunday’s Wisconsin State Journal focused on the Madison-based Women’s Fund. The sole purpose of the Women’s Fund is to pay for poor women to have abortions. The fund has paid for 18,986 abortions at the time the article was written.

    The Women’s Fund 2008 tax forms (click here to view the PDF) reveal there are two UW-Madison professors on the board of the Women’s Fund – Prof. Robert West and Prof. Robert Kimbrough.

    UW-Madison’s entanglement with the abortion industry should come as a surprise to no one.

    Just how linked to the abortion industry is UW-Madison, the “flagship” of the UW System?
    - UW promotes Planned Parenthood (including abortion services);
    - Alta Charo, a professor of law and bioethics at the UW Law and Medical Schools, is on the Planned Parenthood Federation of America board and the Alan Guttmacher board;
    - Doug Laube, professor and former chair of the UW Ob/Gyn Medical School, is openly “working in collaboration with Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin;”
    - Faye Wattleton, former director of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, will be a guest panelist for a UW School of Business summit;
    - Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin is paying UW School of Medicine faculty to perform abortions. UW doctors Laurel Rice, Sabine Droste, Barbara O’Connell, Maria Sandgren and Doug Laube are also employed by Planned Parenthood. Caryn Dutton, another UW abortionist who has now fled to ply her trade at Harvard, previously performed abortions at PPWI as well.

    The Wisconsin State Journal article covered many horrific aspects of the  Women’s Fund – how women just want help; how abortions performed on teenagers are celebrated and used as a means of fundraising; and how parents coerce their teenage daughters into abortions.

    For those who like to connect the dots, many interesting aspects of the Women’s Fund were found in its 2008 tax forms.

    The tax forms show the Women’s Fund provides “loans” for women to obtain abortions. Women then have to repay the loan. From 2004-2008, a total of $12,925 was repaid by these women.

    The mission statement of the Women’s Fund is to, “Assist poor women in paying for abortions.” And apparently hound them for blood money afterwards. The Women’s Fund merely provides a funnel for rich donors to finance the abortions of poor women.

    Read below for excerpts from the Wisconsin State Journal or click here to read the article in its entirety.

    From the Wisconsin State Journal [emphasis added]:
    At all hours, strangers phone Anne Nicol Gaylor’s Madison home, always desperate.

    The caller one recent morning was a middle-aged woman with a 14-year-old pregnant daughter.

    After the call, Gaylor opened a checkbook for the Women’s Medical Fund, a Madison nonprofit that has helped pay for abortions for 34 years. Gaylor has written every check for every abortion.

    This was No. 18,986.

    The fund’s sole purpose is to pay for abortions. Last year, it paid out $162,202, about 75 percent of which came from individual donors, the rest from foundations.

    “Of the 632 women the fund has helped so far this year, 147 were teenagers,” Gaylor wrote to donors last Thanksgiving. “Of these, nine were only 13 years old, and one, not yet a teen, was just 12!”

    “It’s a stark example of misguided compassion that serves as discrimination of the worst kind,” said Peggy Hamill, state director of Pro-Life Wisconsin. “To finance extermination of pre-born children because those children would have been brought up poor is deplorable.”