Why can’t our political leaders work together?

--> December 12, 2012

Brookville Democrat

Did you know that your genes help to determine whether you are a Democrat or a Republican? In a new book, “The Righteous Mind – Why People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.”  Jonathan Haidt identifies two important genes that predispose (but not predetermine) human political ideology, Haidt, a moral psychologist, reviews six major moral foundations which reside in our unconscious mind and from which we intuitively create our own personal and innate political narratives.

Briefly these moral foundations include Care/harm, Fairness/cheating, Liberty/oppression, Loyalty/betrayal, Authority/subversion, Sanctity/degradation. Liberals tend toward Care and Fairness foundations and while the conservatives also include these, they are likely to give greater emphasis to the remaining four foundations – Liberty, Loyalty, Authority and Sanctity.

Haidt says each of these foundations act to both bind and blind us. Each foundation confirms our own particular moral foundations and makes it difficult for others to convince us that we are wrong. Liberals often have difficulty of seeing how Liberty, Loyalty, Authority and Sanctity moral foundations have anything to do with morality.

People whose DNA causes them to get special pleasure from novelty and variety while simultaneously being less sensitive to signs of threat are more inclined toward a liberal point of view. Conversely, if your genes incline you to be uncomfortable with new experiences and sensitive to threat from unknown danger, you are more likely to be a conservative.

In the midst of the continuing political gridlock in our country I was delighted to read that the author’s analysis concluded that these two political perspectives were like yin and yang. Quoting John Stuart Mill he notes that liberals are experts in care; they are better able to see the victims in existing social arrangements, and continually push us to update these arrangements and invent better ones. Haidt believes that liberals should continue to restrain corporations, and that some big problems really can be solved with regulation. Conversely he believes that conservatives provide a crucial counterweight to liberal reform movements. He believes that conservatives’ support and faith in the market is indispensable. Working together they can check and balance each other.

 

For many years I have wondered why some people are liberals and others conservative. Now I have some clarity. I no longer think that liberals by themselves have the total answer. We need the best of both parties. The author notes that these six distinct moral foundations have evolved over the past five hundred thousand years. They have allowed us as a species to adapt and survive.

Perhaps Haidt’s greatest contribution is in humbling us by destroying the myth that humans operate mainly from their conscious and rational minds. Haidt does this by using a metaphor of an elephant and a rider. The elephant is used to represent the ninety percent of our unconscious mind while the conscious and rational part of our mind, the conscious rider, is a puny ten percent. Haidt’s research should help us replace self-righteousness and intolerance with greater tolerance and humility when discussing politics.

John Adam observed that Thomas Jefferson rarely gave public speeches and instead took copious notes for legislative committee meetings. Adams, speculating about this peculiar Jefferson trait, was known to say, that like Jefferson, he knew of no instance of a legislator readily changing his opinion simply after listening to a colleague’s contrary opinion. This suggest that a person’s political persuasions are hard wired at the unconscious level and very rarely given up. Has this not been your experience?

Just as your genes help to predispose your moral foundations, developmental and other significant environmental experiences also contribute. After reading this book, for example, it was clear that my genes were such that at birth I was constitutionally a conservative. By nature even today new experiences make me anxious and I am often sensitive and quite frightened of danger and the unknown. Thus my DNA is that of conservative.

Why then have I never felt any thing else but a liberal? At my birth in 1935 the Great Depression was just ending. I learned early from my working class parents that  President, Herbert Hoover was to blame for all the suffering my family had gone through the past several years. During the depression my parents migrated/hitchhiked to Texas to find employment but found no work there. My family returned to Indiana and my dad and other World War I Veterans marched to Washington DC to try and get their bonus early. Instead President Hoover ordered General McArthur to destroy their tent city and drove them out of Washington with tanks and the calvary.

My family story also involved President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who after his election soon created the Civilian Conservation Corp and Works Progress Administration. Only then did my dad get job. Soon afterwards Roosevelt created the Fair Deal including unemployment compensation and Social Security.

Few evenings at our dinner table did I not hear how thankful my parents were for the Democrats and for AFL/CIO labor unions which together had helped my parents to get out of poverty and find a secure job and a happy life. While my conservative personality and temperament has still not changed, I now know it has been my familial and environmental history that has most influenced and shaped my politics. My DNA and life experiences has shaped my moral foundations, and made me believe what I believe. 

             

The moral psychology research also supports the view that when engaged in a political discussion we rely predominately on our subconscious and our intuition. After all, it is in the subconscious mind that our sacred moral foundations are found. Strategic reasoning always comes after our intuitive response and usually takes the form of providing more evidence to support and justify our political argument. Recent research suggests that our conscious rider response is always intended to support and keep safe our moral reputation.

Perhaps the best way for Americans citizens to help break this partisan gridlock would be for each of us to read this book and familiarize ourselves with our own political genes and how we characteristically use our innate foundational narratives to make our case. Insights gained from this book can also help us to listen for and hear the others moral arguments. You will find that once you have been introduced to the true nature of your political genes and moral foundations they will become immediately recognizable --- both for you and the other. I predict that if you do, both of you will appreciate and respect each other more.

William R. Benedict blogs at: danecountyalmanac.blogspot.com

Countering the effects of early childhood trauma

The Capital Times - Guest Column - October 20, 2012

Conservative columnist David Brooks, in his most recent 9/7/12 editorial in the New York Times discusses how early childhood traumas and risk factors sew the seeds of later physical and behavioral problems in adults. His solution was for much greater coordination and cooperation of all those who serve our youngest children.

To continue this early neglect of our youngest citizens that ultimately results each year in billions of dollars being spent in treating our most chronically ill adults is perhaps the number one reason for our country’s ever growing health care crisis.  

Fortunately for American taxpayer, Obama’s administration, his Department of Health and Human Services, and its Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration have already recognized this health and economic reality and have a sound and comprehensive solution to this ballooning health care crisis.

Called Project Launch, simply stated, the health and future prosperity of our country requires a greater investment in the physical and emotional health of our youngest children. The project presently consists of 35 communities who are pioneering new ways to promote and sustain young child wellness. The project’s target is children from birth through 8. The goal is for all children to reach their physical, social, emotional, behavioral, and cognitive milestones.

Project Launch has five prevention and promotional strategies. These strategies should be upper most in the mind of every taxpayer who goes to the polls in November. If you are a citizen and taxpayer and concerned about the ever spiraling costs of health care and your increasing health insurance costs, support the present Administration. Your vote will mean that your supporting the continuation of  the following actions to end our health care crisis:

1. Health screening and assessments for every child birth through 8.
2. Integrate behavioral health care into primary health care settings.
3. Mental health consultation in all early child care and education settings.
4. Increasing focus on social and emotional well being.
5. Expand use of culturally-relevant evidenced-based prevention and wellness practices.

See you at the polls!

Benedict is a mental health reform advocate and blogs at danecountyalmanac.blogspot.com

New union will strengthen mental health services

The Capital Times

The shock waves caused by Wisconsin’s history-making citizen protests are becoming increasingly evident. It clearly acted as a tipping point for the mental health employees at Journey Mental Health Center (formerly the Mental Health Center of Dane County) when both clinical and support staff reached a breaking point with management, and decided that they needed greater empowerment and a louder voice.

After a ten month Journey campaign the National Labor Relations Board in Milwaukee, who conducted the election, recently reported that seventy-two percent of the professional staff and 54% of support staff at Journey voting, supported unionization with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

While recognizing management’s commitment to serving increasing numbers of underserved clients, there was disagreement in how best to do this. Many Journey employees believed that management seemed content to define the therapists’ professional autonomy and best practice expertise too narrowly. Staff complained that management often ignored broad clinician input before initiating new client access and case management practices, such as higher caseloads and related quality care issues.

Staff pushback to confront ever increasing job add-ons and productivity pressures were also ignored. Bread and butter issues such as salary and benefit increases, however, were far down the list of concerns expressed. Paramount was staff’s demand to be heard and to be seen as important collaborators with specialized knowledge and skills to share. “We have the right and responsibility to express our opinions,” one staffer emphasized in a recent radio interview.

 Newsletters helped inform all 300+ staff about the pros and cons of the union. This information prompted discussions and debate at the agency’s nine separate workplaces. Gradually unions were viewed by most staff as an effective means of addressing their concerns.

Without a union presence top down management structures in organizations are common. It’s increasingly clear that a union can help bring up everybody in the organization. Every employee has a voice and can make a contribution.

 Every organization has both an instrumental and expressive side. The former is concerned largely with the financial resources of the agency while the expressive or social side requires more diverse staff knowledge and skill sets, including both relationship and solidarity building skills. Owing to their professional training, these interactive and community-building skills can often best be found within the clinical staff. An agency or program manager who glibly dismisses this powerful resource does so at his/her own peril. Union/management committees can help insure that all staff resources are used in the most balanced, effective and efficient manner.

After learning of the election results, those who led this effort expressed hope that their success will be an inspiration to other mental health professionals and service agencies.

The Journey Mental Health Center has a stellar and nationally recognized mental health program. It has established a brilliant record of serving the serious mentally ill while at the same time has demonstrated the capacity to serve a broad and diverse clientele. It continues to pioneer new and innovative regimens of care and treatment strategies.

As a mental health professional and program evaluator for over thirty years, I am convinced that unionization at Journey will only serve to strengthen an already outstanding mental health program.

William R. Benedict
Mental Health Advocate
Danecountyalmanac.blogspot.com

New Mental Health Paradigm is Good News

Capital Times, Saturday, June 18, 2011

There is a new intellectual framework recently arrived within the psychiatric profession that will dramatically affect the way we will think about mental health in the decades ahead. It’s called “Interpersonal Neurobiology.”

In this new mental health science our mind is seen as being derived from the interaction of the brain and interpersonal processes, especially in our early development. Because this new science is more broadly based on both biological and social science research, it becomes a much more integrated medical discipline. The present molecular or psycho-pharmacological emphasis alone is no longer sufficient.

Perhaps the most significant and salient finding from recent neural science research is best expressed by the principal architect, Dr. Daniel J. Siegel, in Mindsight – The New Science of Personal Transformation. Siegel states:

“Interactions with the environment, especially relationships with other people, directly shape the development of the brain’s structure and function. There is no need to choose between brain or mind, biology or experience, nature or nurture. These divisions are unhelpful and inhibit clear thinking about an important and complex subject: the developing brain.”

While our genes remain an important component of our mental functioning, developmental factors are also significant and continue throughout the life span. For example, recent neural research shows that learning produces alterations in gene expression and in our synapses. Thus human interaction both shapes and is shaped by an ever-changing and dynamic brain throughout life.

The corollary is that heredity alone does not necessarily need to be perceived as a permanent condition and that human experience throughout the life span has the potential to modify, neutralize and repair constitutional determinants. Such life-long brain plasticity findings can bring hope to millions who are seeking healing and daily transformation.

These latest neural findings have long-term policy and funding implications for long-term mental health care of persons with serious chronic mental diseases. With modern brain scanning technology and ever-growing neural evidence that supports an ever-changing brain -- whether psycho-pharmacological and/or psycho therapeutically induced -- it now becomes morally necessary to consider scheduling major periodic psychiatric and/or neurological exams for persons suffering from “chronic” mental illness.

Persons suffering from “chronic” mental disorders should not be stuck with old dead-end and long-term diagnoses but regularly and comprehensively reviewed in the light of these latest neural science findings.

These findings presented in readily readable form, will be welcome news to those who daily suffer from mental disorders and their families, and for mental health practitioners who are in search of a more open and holistic and balanced therapy strategy.

Readers can learn more at Mindgains.org and MindsightInstitute.com.

Benedict is a family mental health reform advocate.

Institutes’ hoopla ignores chronically ill

Capital Times - Sunday, December 19, 2010

As a patient advocate for stem cell research I was privileged to attend the Grand Opening of Wisconsin’s Institutes of Discovery (WID). WID is a spacious and remarkably attractive building. A richly deserved sense of accomplishment was in evidence at the event.

We were introduced to the key actors in the building’s initial concept and innovative design. Much time was spent discussing, who actually first had the dream of WID. Was it Governor Doyle or John and Tashia Morgridge? No, well then how about the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation’s Carl Gulbrandson or the interim director of the public side of WID, John Wiley? Each speaker who went to the podium modestly and graciously attributed WID’s initial idea to one or more others. Lastly, each of the UW scientists who were selected to locate their lab at WID was introduced and their lab’s specialty celebrated with loud applause from the crowd.

The grand opening of WID was most certainly a UW-Wisconsin signature event and properly celebrated in every way, with one exception: There was no mention of those so loudly touted as one of the chief reasons for WID’s creation back in 2004---those who suffer daily from catastrophic and chronic diseases.

It was in 2004 that Gov. Doyle first hailed what was to become WID “as the creation of a world class stem cell research center.” This appellation of WID given by Doyle now six years ago is in stark contrast with this year’s speeches and media accounts surrounding WID’s dedication.

This glaring omission of those suffering from chronic diseases could certainly not go unnoticed by anyone reading the extensive news articles heralding WID’s celebration or those in attendance at the Grand Opening. If there was ever an example of radically re-writing Wisconsin history, this will have to stand alone.

In news articles beginning in late November of this year and during the Grand Opening ceremonies on December 2nd many reasons for WID’s construction were cited. One speaker referred to WID as an engine for creativity.

Other speakers and writers referred to WID as the heart of collaboration and the interdisciplinary community; a boost to Wisconsin’s economy and job creation; a center for community out-reach and education for the young and seniors; a space to inspire generations to come; and a space for every constituency to gather; the center of medical science and technology, and a trading center of ideas.

Apparently stem cell research committed to curing chronic disease is no longer the Wisconsin Institutes of Discovery’s paramount reason for being. UW indeed will be challenged to win back the trust of those suffering from chronic diseases in Wisconsin.

William R. Benedict is a patient advocate for stem cell research.

William R. Benedict: New model will speed treatment of chronic diseases

Click here to read my guest column in the Capital Times.

Ask the candidates about state funding for stem cell research

Capital Times – Guest Column

Did you know that the State of Wisconsin has a “hands off” policy from discussing state funding of embryonic stem cell research? It can be compared to our government’s military policy of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT) Essentially it says that all Wisconsin citizens who hold a “state funding” policy perspective or orientation in Wisconsin’s stem cell funding debate should maintain a DADT attitude or position.

While of course no such formal policy in fact exists in Wisconsin, it’s a DADT-like solution that our state officials and legislators from both parties have informally adopted, and unfortunately, as has our public media here in Wisconsin. If you have any doubt about this I would like to point your attention to five exhibits of evidence from taken from various media sources following last week’s very controversial federal court decision to block federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.(An appeals court on Sept. 9 temporarily stayed the decision; the legal battles are far from over.)

Exhibit A: 8/25/10 By WSJ science reporter David Wahlberg. While first providing some historical background going back to 1998 for the reader, Wahlberg makes no mention whatever that state funding remains non-existent in Wisconsin. One would think that such information would be very relevant for the reader to know in an article dealing with a research funding crisis affecting thousands of Wisconsin citizens who suffer daily from cell-based chronic illnesses, and for Wisconsin future high tech job market.

Exhibit B: 8/3110 In the WSJ Our Opinion entitled, “Don’t stem promising research,” It refers to “this recurring hurdle… to promising medical research.” It then goes on to weigh the likelihood that Congress will intervene to address this obstruction, but nevertheless has absolutely nothing to say about what other funding alternatives Wisconsin itself has at its disposal to help alleviate this episodic federal financial shortfall. --- such as some form of on-going state legislative funding.

Exhibit C: 9/1/10 WSJ Letter to the Editor, entitled “Why does source of funding matter?” The writer notes that “If the National Institutes of Health cannot invest in such research, it falls to the private sector.” How about our own state government?.

Three other letters to the editor this past week shared their views on this federal funding decision. None however mention any state financing alternatives.

Exhibit D: 9/1-7/10 By The CapTimes reporter, Todd Finkemeyers. His article entitled “Stem cells back in the spotlight, A setback for UW research could boost gov candidate Barrett.”

Unlike the science piece in Exhibit A, this was certainly a political piece and beautifully framed so as not violate Wisconsin’s DADT rule. Finkemeyer quotes Democratic candidate, Tom Barrett: “As governor, I will fight for essential stem cell research, and I will make sure scientists and researchers – not politicians – drive our research and technology agenda.” In this statement Barrett has adopted Gov. Doyle’s code words. Translated it means Barrett is telling the Wisconsin voters that he also will not support “state funding of stem cell research” but will support the use of federal dollars alone for Wisconsin’s stem cell research.

If indeed Barrett truly believes that embryonic stem cell research is essential and our best hope for a cure for thousands of Wisconsin citizens with serious chronic diseases, and that such research will be critical in Wisconsin’s economy far into the future, then why doesn’t he want to consider every means possible to ensure the continuity and financial support necessary to make Wisconsin’s stem cell research program truly one of the best in the world? Especially since the tepid federal support continues to threaten the health and safety of millions of citizens who suffer daily from catastrophic diseases?

I believe that this issue --- state stem cell funding ---is too important to continue a day longer to allow the present DADT rule to continue in Wisconsin’s political commons. This wily subterfuge must be seen for what it is. Cover for political leadership that doesn’t have enough trust and faith in the Wisconsin taxpayer to allow them the opportunity at the polls to decide this issue once and for all. Without such an opportunity for the people to be heard, Wisconsin’s stem cell research program will move further and further into mediocrity.

Ask your political candidates now running for office and your present political leaders why they continue not to lead on an issue so important to so many?


Benedict is a patient advocate who tweets at: twitter.com/stemcellbill

New book changes the conversation on mental illness

Capital Times - Opinion

Have you ever wondered what is really involved in protecting you from taking an unsafe or ineffective medication? And, did you know that over 1100 adults and children with mental illness are placed on the government’s disability list each day ---250 of which are children!

There is a new book just out called Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker who brings some fresh light on this subject, and for the first time, looks beyond the drug approval and marketing process and looks squarely at the long-term follow-up effects of the drug industry’s impact on our mental health service system.

Whitaker examines the long-term outcome effectiveness studies of drug-based treatment and compares their effectiveness with non-medication psychosocial treatment, including family counseling, education and various forms of group treatment.

This literature review shows that psychiatric medications have proven their effectiveness for reducing certain serious psychotic symptoms such as anxiety, depression, hallucinations, paranoia and other thought disturbances especially for the serious mentally ill. While these drugs play a critical role in stabilizing patients in the community, Whitaker asks “why then is it that thousands more adults and children are added to the government’s disability rolls each year?”

In addition to the dramatic increase in our disabled population, the studies examined, used a variety of other long-term outcome measures such as length of treatment, and hospital discharge and relapse rates. Finally, drug-based treatment versus non-medication with psychosocial treatment methods, were also compared. Surprisingly, these non-drug therapies were found consistently to produce better long-term results and much less likely to cause chronicity or physical health related problems, than long-term drug-based treatment.

These results are very different than what the pharmaceutical industry and are public media would have us believe. Disability rates for mental illness in 1987 were 1.25 million people (1 in every 184 Americans) receiving disability payments, and by 2007 this figure more than doubled to 3.97 million (now 1 in every 76 Americans). In spite of Prozac and a host of other second generation “miracle” drugs, our serious mentally ill disabled population has soared.

As a former program evaluator for over 30 years and now a patient advocate I would like to recommend that our federal and/or state government mandate and conduct public funded long-term follow-up outcome mental health research studies every decade. This would assist state and local mental health planning groups to operate free from the drug marketers and better avoid the control and influence of special interests groups.

Meanwhile, until this happens, Robert Whitaker’s book, and the extensive long-term outcome study findings contained therein should be at the top of every mental health supporter’s priority reading list. This book will be this century’s definitive source whenever mental health researchers and other stakeholders gather to discuss, and compare, long-term outcome evaluation mental health findings.

Meanwhile planning councils like our own Wisconsin Council on Mental Health need to carefully consider these findings, and reconcile their own future planning and policy recommendation with these new research findings.

(Disclaimer – This writer strongly recommends that any questions that might arise from this article relating to your own particular medical situation be discussed between you and your physician.)

Benedict is a patient advocate.

Ownership of human tissue a big issue in curbing health costs

Capital Times - Guest Column

Wisconsin taxpayers and health care groups who are following the recent public interest challenges to UW Wisconsin’s human embryonic stem (ES) cell line patents may not be fully aware of the much larger and more fundamental issues that are at stake.

Should human body parts or tissues be patented and then bought and sold to the highest bidder in the marketplace? Human tissue samples are taken from blood tests, biopsies or during surgeries. As citizens how many of us really know how many tissue samples we have given away or how they were used? Are signed informed consent agreements now used in the donation process legally binding? Lastly, should patients be compensated for allowing another to use her or his human tissue samples?

Answers to these and related questions are rarely simple to grasp or answer and often remain confusing. Therefore, as a retired social worker and regular patient advocate for state funding of stem cell research, I was delighted to read Rebecca Skloot’s award winning book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” While this book reads like a gripping novel it is non-fiction and contains both easily understood scientific information and a cogent narrative about the way science and our health care system interacts with the public.

The 1980 Byah/Dole (intellectual property) Act supports the present practice of using public tax dollars and our citizens’ raw materials – cells and genes - for scientific innovations and then transforms them into private property and the market place. Such a patent system takes away public control, decision-making and accountability and gives it to scientists whose salaries are paid for by you and me.

The result is that both the state of Wisconsin and individual citizens having to pay twice for their health care: First, to provide the university labs and salaries before a bio miracle invention occurs. And again, when they have to pay for subsequent exorbitantly priced commercial medications. Presently there is no direct monetary or in-kind payback either to the state or to the individual taxpayer or health care consumer.

With respect to giving human sample tissue to doctors, hospitals or universities, Skloot found that indeed only a few of us presently know when and how often we have given away our human tissue or know how it was used.

This is so for at least two reasons: First, written and signed informed consent agreements and National Institute of Health bioethical guidelines are not legally binding or based upon statute. Instead the human tissue donation process is administered and carried out at the local level and in an inconsistent fashion. The selling of tissue samples are presently prohibited or discouraged based largely on the belief that payments or royalties directly to patients would act to exploit the poor and would also unnecessarily complicate and stifle communication between scientists.

Both reasons are false but largely assumed or accepted by the public based upon the perspective of the scientists and private investors alone. In fact increasingly even the research community is beginning to advocate for fewer patents particularly when dealing with biological or natural occurring materials such as stem cells and genes. Many believe that patenting of such natural products versus research tools or processes are the real culprits for delaying research and preventing open communication among their peers.

I believe it is only a short time period before a more complimentary balance between health care research and health care delivery systems become more integrated and mutually supporting. Policy makers will have to become more fully engaged, however, rather than sitting on the sidelines and allowing only scientists and free market investors to manage this increasingly large piece of our public health care dollar. This more aggressive role for our state government will happen only when more and more taxpayers begin to look upstream and carefully consider what is causing ever increasing higher health care prices. I believe reading Rebecca Skloot’s stellar book would greatly facilitate beginning such a public examination.

Finally, I believe citizens will soon also assume a larger role in how their human tissue will be used in the lab or the marketplace and demand a fair price. The present practice of exploiting a citizen’s body parts or tissue for mere profit which is a business involving billions of dollars each year, will be no more.

Benedict is a retired social worker and blogs at danecountyalmanac.blogspot.com.

STEM CELL NEWS ALERT – Coming Soon - 2010 Annual Stem Cell Summit

Attention: All stem cell advocates: Mark your calendar for October 4-6, 2010

The Genetics Policy Institute will hold its annual World Stem Cell Summit in Detroit, Michigan on October 4-6, 2010. This is the number one stem cell conference held each year and stem cell advocates like you will not want to miss it.

I was indeed privileged to attend and cover the 2008 Summit held here in Madison, WI. Click on the year 2008 and you can read: “Consider fairness in stem-cell push.” Your comments will be appreciated.

As advocates once again we will have the opportunity to unite with stem cell scientists, policy makers, funding sources and other stem cell stakeholders from throughout the world.

For more information visit the Genetics Policy Institute website or Google: World Stem Cell Summit. I look forward to seeing you in Detroit.

William R. Benedict

Obama's Tax Proposal

Wisconsin taxpayers and health care consumers in Wisconsin may soon be given some relief from ever increasing and exorbitant drug costs. This is so with the President’s recent tax proposal to place a tax on certain “patents and other intangible assets parked in overseas tax heavens by American companies.” This bad news, especially for the pharma industry, immediately follows the now likely demise of the Administration’s health care bill and the quid pro quo agreements between big pharma and Obama Administration.

With the end of health care reform for at least the short term, there exists the distinct possibility at least that along with proposed pharma tax, government Medicare drug negotiations, the importation of much cheaper Canadian drugs, and the closing of off-shore corporate tax havens, are all popular reforms that can now be put back on the table. Presently under the guise of promising increased jobs and a more competitive drug industry, some of the excesses of big pharma may now finally be addressed. Such actions if taken now would also act to significantly, I believe, improve the President’s popularity as we prepare to enter the congressional elections this fall.

If any corporations are in need of reform it is certainly the pharmaceutical industry. In 1980 our government passed the Bayh-Dole Act which gave away the people’s right to the intellectual property created by federally funded research and innovation. Since then intellectual property rights have been given freely, with few enforced constraints, to the inventor and university-based patent custodians who sell licenses to the highest bidders and for the greatest profit.

Presently the Wisconsin taxpayers pay first to create potentially life saving scientific breakthroughs at UW’s life sciences department only to have them snatched up by big pharma which transformed them into the most commercially profitable drug versus choosing one for development with the highest common good or need. Unfortunately in most instances prices are set beyond what many can reasonably pay. This is true not just in third world nations but also for many working Americans right here in Wisconsin.

If there was ever a time for disgruntled Democrats, independents and working class Americans to call or write their congressional representatives and our President, it is now. Tell them that if its now impossible to have universal health care then lets do the next best thing. Reform the financial system, reform individual components of the health care system to the extent possible, including the enforcement provisions of the Bayh-Dole Act, pass the right for the federal government to negotiate Medicare drug costs, pass the importation of cheaper Canadian drugs, and begin to enforce reasonable drug pricing for all.

Benedict is an advocate for state funding of stem cell research and blogs at: danecountyalmanac.blogspot.com.

Cures For Chronic Diseases Will Shake Up System

The Capital Times :: OPINION :: WEB

May is mental health month, and it's a time once again when mental health and other chronic disease advocacy and education groups should consider anew their journey and hopes for the future. As a father of a son with mental illness, I ask all Wisconsin citizens to consider the following questions.

Does your organization's strategic planning extend to the day when medical therapeutics do more than mitigate chronic disease symptoms but actually cure the disease? Can your organization envision a not-too-distant time when your service recipients will suddenly ask, "Why didn't you inform us that our illness might someday be cured through stem cell-based medications and therapies?" "What actions did your organization take to ensure that our cell-based medical needs and health care rights were protected during the early developmental phase of this research?"

If there is indeed a possibility of a cure -- and the scientific community now clearly believes there is -- it is now ethically and morally incumbent on all of us to begin to educate ourselves about such research and begin now to educate our membership about its revolutionary healing potential. No reputable physician or stem cell research scientist today would any longer consider such miracle therapy a fantasy. Today all leading university research and medical centers and increasingly the large pharma industry have established their very own cell-based regenerative medicine and research centers.

Chronically ill members need real hope of a better future for themselves and their families, especially when there is now empirical research evidence on which to base this hope. We have now reached the point when it's not if but only when such miraculous therapies will exist.

Presently patient-specific stem cells are being used to diagnose the onset of chronic diseases and for testing cell-based drugs for human toxicity and immune reactions. Stem cell research-centered biotech companies and treatment providers are growing by leaps and bounds. Worldwide, hundreds of stem cell clinical trials are now in place. (To protect the consumer from unsafe and unproven stem cell treatment, see the International Society of Stem Cell Research's "Patient Handbook on Stem Cell Therapies.") In Madison, long before there was any scientific consensus about the etiology of mental illness, that which is now called the National Alliance on Mental Illness pioneered what it believed was the genetic and neurological cell-based origin of this disease. From that point on the blaming of the patient and/or the patient's family for this disease stopped. Now is a similar moment in Wisconsin's mental health history when change is on the horizon.

To prepare for this not-too-distant future, perhaps the first step would be to establish a goal of becoming more informed about stem cell research, and its potential application to your particular disease group. A second goal might be collaborating with your university regenerative medicine center and/or the stem cell-centered biotech company in your area.

Often the elixir for strategic planning and a breakthrough is hope. Like the people we advocate for, we are often left stunted and frustrated without this positive emotional impulse.

For more information about what action your organization can take right now, visit my blog: danecountyalmanac.blogspot.com.

William R. Benedict of Madison advocates for stem cell research funding.

Protect Wisconsin’s cutting edge science

Wisconsin State Journal – Opinion

A Wisconsin Technology Council study reports a 25-year slide toward weaker public support for higher education in Wisconsin. It reported a steady erosion of the infrastructure that supports academic research in Wisconsin, much of which lies in UW-Madison’s life sciences department. This downward spiral can be seen in the steady decrease in faculty, academic staff, course selections and laboratory sessions.

This erosion now threatens Wisconsin’s research and development foundation, best seen in the mediocre state funding of our greatest potential treasure --- stem cell research.

This situation threatens to weaken UW-Madison’s ability to compete for merit-based federal research grants, jeopardizing the receipt of millions of federal National Institutes of Health research dollars in the coming decade. The report states that Wisconsin’s total academic R&D spending at $805.8 million in federal, state and private sources, with the latter contributing a mere $109 million.

This statistic alone suggest to me that that Wisconsin investment in such research is not giving a sufficient and fair payback to the taxpayers, and until it does, Wisconsin’s investment in such research will continue to decrease.

To turn this situation around and re-establish Wisconsin’s position in academic research and development, I urge our governor and the Legislature to develop intellectual property laws that will protect and grow the Wisconsin taxpayers’ investment in academic research and development.

Such legislation exists in California, where millions of dollars raised through state bonds have already leveraged more in grants and loans into stem cell research and development.

Bill Benedict, Madison

Decline in state’s mental health programs unconscionable

The Capital Times

As the father of a son with serious mental illness, I was saddened to see how my state’s mental health program scored in a recent national study. It received a fair-to-poor grade, a score of C.

In 2006 our state had received a B and since no state had earned an A, this performance went largely unnoticed, in part because Wisconsin is the birthplace of a pre-eminent national mental health advocacy organization ---the National Alliance on Mental Illness. NAMI has led the nation both in mental health advocacy and in the creation of the most innovative and effective community-based service program model in the nation.

In 2006 NAMI National conducted and published its first Grading the States Report: “Grading the States 2006: A Report on America’s Health Care System for Serious Mental Illness. Recently NAMI released its Grade the States 2009 report. In it they used the 2006 findings for baseline comparisons. This report measures each state’s progress ---or lack of progress in many cases ---in providing evidence-based, cost-effective recovery- oriented services for children and adults living with serious mental illness.

In NAMI’s 2006 progress report the nation’s grade was D and Wisconsin scored a B. In this more recently released report the nation again scored a D while Wisconsin’s grade slipped downward from a B to C. Wisconsin was one of twelve states who fell back while 23 states stayed the same. Wisconsin has over 188,000 residents with serious mental illness.

Measures evaluated by NAMI had to do with the extent that the state mental health program had a workforce development plan, state mental health insurance parity laws and mental health coverage in programs for the uninsured. Other significant measures included the state’s ability to provide accurate data on a variety of services, including evidenced-based practices, service outcomes, and demographic data. Such measures undergird NAMI’s fundamental assertion that public funding for mental health treatment services must be tied to outcome performance measures.

Financing and core service measures also included Wisconsin’s 79 Community Support Programs (CSPs). These programs were found to fall far short of national fidelity standards. Funded in part by state Medicaid funds but heavily dependent on local county tax dollars, CBS produces a wide range of service quality and performance outcomes throughout the state.

The Division of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (DMHSAS) is the state mental health agency that works directly with county mental health agencies. While DMHSAS 2008 -09 program plans were found to be well intended, they failed to address these critical deficiencies.

Ironically, this conclusion was also supported in an August 2007 Wisconsin Council on Mental Health letter. Members of the council expressed concern “about the bluntness and ineffectiveness of the DMHSAS State Plan indicators as measures of state progress toward meeting important mental health goals and objectives.”

This state planning and review public watchdog agency also expressed its “concern about the quality and sources of data collected.” Its concern was particularly acute with respect to reports of services by counties who were delegated much of the responsibility for the plan’s implementation.

Let me quote the council: “Both the DMHSAS indicators and Department of Human and Family Services data are critical for the State and council to identify and support appropriate funding recommendations and decisions. Our recommendations are unfortunately undercut by inadequacies in both.“

So what has caused Wisconsin’s once innovative and dynamic mental health program to sink into mediocrity? This report suggests limited access and availability of services; insufficient funding; inequities of the state’s decentralized funding system and a still- broken information system that cripples the state’s ability to effectively plan, evaluate and account for its spending and service-delivery decisions.

If this isn’t a call to action what is? Won’t you join with NAMI and with our mentally ill sister and brothers and their families and as concerned taxpayers simply say, “We are not going to take this anymore!”

Consider fairness in stem-cell push

Wisconsin State Journal/Guest Column

Each person attending the World Stem Cell Summit held in Madison this past week left this conference with a great sense of urgency and personal responsibility to help speed up stem cell research. As a patient advocate who strongly supports state funding of stem cell research I wish to share with you my most important concerns.

Because Wisconsin’s stem cell research program has such extraordinary potential for advancing scientific knowledge that may result in therapies and cures for a wide range of chronic diseases and injuries it becomes an extremely important social justice and fairness issue.

It raises a host of moral, stewardship and health care issues along with critical questions of priority.

Should we prohibit or refuse to fund certain types of stem cell research? Which therapeutic stem cell applications should we choose for development? Will we invest in medical cures for the many or for elitist medical enhancements and longevity for the few? Will the novel therapies be fairly distributed and affordable? And most important, who is to decide?

For more than 100 million afflicted Americans and their families, stem cell research is much more than a health, economic and political issue. It is their No. 1 concern. It’s a matter of whether they have enough hope and energy to suffer through another day and whether real help will ever come.

It is heartbreaking when one discovers that clinical trials to bring this research into the clinic are happening all over the world while the work here lags far behind.

Resident and patient organizations will remain disengaged as long as our governor continues to counsel Wisconsin citizens to simply continue to sit back and leave these life-and-death decisions in the hands of the scientists.

A consensus on social justice and fairness issues should be attained through vigorous public engagement at every stage of the stem cell research process--- from the business and research design to product development and distribution.

All research operates in the context of a particular human being, institution, state and budget. It would be an injustice if all stem cell research objectives were framed only for their potential applicability and profitability.

A host of other issues should be brought to the table as well, such as the severity of the illness to be targeted, present gaps in existing therapies, public health needs and the needs of our most vulnerable citizens?

In publicly supported educational and research centers like our own UW-Madison, citizen groups must determine the best balance between direct potential clinical applications versus the longer term search for knowledge itself.

Too much emphasis on direct application alone will act to undercut the otherwise serendipitous nature of discovery and impose an authoritarian structure that is alien to the scientific culture.

When public funding dollars are involved, a social justice focus helps mediate an otherwise often greedy market-centered research enterprise.

Public engagement and consideration of these potentially contentious social justice issues can help mitigate further delay in the development of these cell-based therapies.

If Wisconsin’s stem cell research initiative is to succeed Wisconsin taxpayers must begin now to wrestle with these issues in a thoughtful and prudent manner.

Demand payback on biotech strategy

Wisconsin State Journal

Steven Clark’s recent guest column in the State Journal, “State needs biotech investment strategy” should make every taxpayer in Wisconsin --- and particularly families with chronic stem cell-based diseases --- sit up, take notice and act now. Clark found that Wisconsin’s biotech initiative has no clear overarching focus.

I was surprised to learn that Wisconsin has not placed its miraculous human embryonic stem cell (hESC) discoveries upper most in its strategic biotech initiative.

Wisconsin has already sold an inclusive license to one of the largest biotech companies in the world, which clearly cut taxpayers out of any special payback or affordable access to these products. Wisconsin families with stem cell-based diseases need to demand a full accounting of why this has happened now before any more of our intellectual property is compromised and squandered.

It also appears that the Madison biotech flagship needs to be expanded to include all the public and private biotech resources – both research and business - from throughout the state.

This is not the case. Wisconsin taxpayers and health care consumers ultimately will pay the price for our shortsightedness. As Clark notes, if research is not translated into businesses, it does nothing for the people or the economy.

Also, unlike in Wisconsin, the California taxpayers and stem-cell based consumers have been promised by state statute that they will receive a payback for any successful stem cell-derived commercial product.

That is, the state will receive a certain percentage of any revenue derived from the state-funded research, and low income and the uninsured residents will have equal access to the miracle health products that follow.

In Wisconsin, the home of embryonic stem cell research, there is little evidence thus far that any overall plan or policy exists to ensure that Wisconsin taxpayers will receive a similar payback and public access to affordable stem cell therapies when they appear in your local drugstore.

The bottom line: the Wisconsin biotech flagship is adrift without a rudder. Wisconsin lacks a clear mission and policy platform that would help guide it through what is projected as a $500 billion dollar industry in 2020 or sooner.

In a practical sense, this means that when your governor or the Wisconsin Department of Commerce awards a biotech company or scientist or entrepreneur a grant, you will not find any mission-driven clause or revenue- earned payback requirement in that contract.

I urge all taxpayers, especially those who are working for health care reform and families with stem cell-based diseases, to call your legislators and ask them what they are doing to make sure that Wisconsin’s investment in human embryonic stem cell research is protected from any further unraveling of this enormously lucrative “home-grown” resource.

Benedict lives in Madison.

State must protect investment in stem cell research

The Capital Times/Opinion, Madison, WI

As a Wisconsin taxpayer I am grateful and proud of Dr. James Thomson and UW-Madison’s bioscience community for their human embryonic stem cell (hESC) discovers. But as I study the funding issues relating to Wisconsin’s stem cell enterprise I have become increasingly concerned with how our state is managing the intellectual property associated with these potential lucrative discoveries.

One of my questions has to do with why Wisconsin agreed to give exclusive rights to the Geron Corp. in Menlo Park, Calif., for using Wisconsin-patented stem cells to treat heart, diabetes and neurological disorders? My concerns have to do with both the nature of the diseases chosen and the potential economic and health care implications involved.

I am also concerned with the potential conflict of interest involved and exactly by who and why this decision was made and whose interests are best being served?

After all, the potential financial returns to the state of Wisconsin in terms of future health care costs are enormous, not to mention who it is who will ultimately control and most benefit from any cell-based cures in these three major disease areas.

As users of heart drugs and other therapies, I and many other Wisconsin citizens are very dependent upon medications. As both a taxpayer and patient I am concerned about how Wisconsin-funded cell-based discoveries are being managed. Are they being managed in a way that can best ensure Wisconsin families more effective and affordable heart disease, diabetes and neurological care?

Or, will my grandchildren also have to travel to Minnesota for their heart medications? Will nearly half of Wisconsin citizens still have to go without full access to medications and more affordable health care in 2020?

I urge all Wisconsin citizens, but especially those who are working for health care reform here, to begin to connect the dots between our basic biomedical research and development decisions and our existing health care crisis before it is too late.

The central question is: how can we move from our state funding policy of providing a blank check to biotech and pharmaceutical companies and scientists/entrepreneurs to routinely attaching health care payback safeguard to all our innovation grants and other tax incentives?

Perhaps the place to begin is with better and more accurate information about who really is paying for this research. We can begin by eliminating two major myths: that university funding for science discoveries is generally paid for by the private sector, and that public revenue sharing would discourage scientific research.

Wisconsin citizens need to consider who owns the university, who really pays for the laboratories, equipment, supplies, the buildings, utilities and the salaries of scientists and staff who work there? Who supports and sustains the gigantic and robust interdisciplinary and collaborative resources deposited there? It is the taxpayers, the students and alumni (you and me) who support and sustain this marvelous and successful research enterprise.

Ultimately Wisconsin taxpayers’ ability to deal with the above concerns successfully will depend in large part on how we as a statewide community make these value-based decisions in the full light of public scrutiny. Presently these decisions are being made in board rooms and by CEOs sitting on university-based patent-making non-profit foundations. What are called for at this juncture are less government and media assurances and much more public discussion based on much better information and transparency.

Check legislators’ record before voting

Capital Times - Readers View

Thanks to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign all you need to do now is click on www.wisdc.org/pr042908.php and see objectively how your state senator and Assembly representatives voted on six major clean government bills during this past year.

I worked as a program evaluator for over thirty years. How refreshing it was to see that our state legislators are finally going to have to stand on their voting record instead of how much money they have to spend on their campaign.

The representatives, based on their votes, were divided into one of four categories based not on their promises, good looks or how big their smile is but strictly on their voting record for clean government.

Before voting this fall, you only need to know one thing about your legislator. What clean government category did he or she earn? The four include democracy defender, public ally, bystander and public enemy?

Wisconsin voters will know their votes really did count this time to help clean up the sordid mess in their state capital. You can take control of your government if you act now.

Let’s follow California’s lead on health care costs

Guest Column - The Capital Times
April 2, 2008

By now we know that solving Wisconsin’s ever-growing home health care costs is a multifaceted problem and will not be solved by any single solution. And while there are many comprehensive solutions being proposed, none of them go directly to the core issue---monolithic and predatory health care pharmaceutical pricing practices.

In 2005 my partner and I were vacationing in San Diego California. While reading the San Diego Tribune I just happened to read about California’s 3 billion dollar stem cell research program and about the many health care stakeholder groups who all were fighting for something they were calling a “public benefit.”

I continued to read and soon learned what they meant by the words, “public benefit.” They wanted to make sure that medical breakthroughs and medicines developed through stem cell research, and funded by their tax dollars, would be available and affordable to every citizen in California.

When we weigh the billions and billions of dollars to be both made and saved through miracle cures of our worse most debilitating diseases and by such life enhancements as restored memory, increased mobility, regenerated body parts, and most of all, increased longevity, only then can we begin to appreciate the real scope and importance of the health care policy issue now before us.

Californians have learned their lessons well from our nation’s health care problems and have decided to go directly to the root of our health care pricing crisis. They are no longer going to pay twice for their health care: Once for the research and once again for the exorbitantly priced medications and therapies.

Wisconsin citizens should follow California’s lead and pass legislation now that supports federal and state funding of stem cell research in Wisconsin along with public health care benefit safeguards.

“Public health care benefit safeguards” can mean anything from requiring a successful grantee to return 25 percent of their profit back on their billion-dollar stem cell-based drug discovery to the state of Wisconsin to be put in a special patient health care fund.

Or a successful grantee would simply be required to submit a plan to ensure affordable prices for all Wisconsin citizens, especially the medium-and-low income and underserved populations.

The bottom line is that you and I as Wisconsin citizens can prove to ourselves and our grandchildren, and future generations, that we have learned our lesson from exorbitant health care pricing. We have learned not to give our money to people without first asking who they are, why they need it, and how they plan on using it. This new policy of asking the public-funded grantee to meet certain expectations and provide some return on our investment is better than writing a blank check and continuing with health care in Wisconsin as we now know it.

Governor’s speech misses mark on stem-cell innovation

Wisconsin State Journal
Op-Ed – Guest Column

As a senior citizen of the state of Wisconsin whose family suffers from three serious cell-based diseases and who has been working with both private and public officials in support of public funding for stem cell research in Wisconsin, I was deeply disappointed when my governor in his State of the State address looked our legislators and the citizens of Wisconsin in the eye and boasted that Wisconsin has stayed at the forefront of stem-cell innovation “because we kept politicians out of it.”

I have to assume that the “we” was referring to you and I the citizens of Wisconsin. Or did the “we” refer to his Administration? In either case, I predict that there will be a time in the not too distant future when the taxpayers and the health consumers of this state will deeply regret that the people and their representatives acquiesced and remained disengaged while the most critical health policy issues were left unaddressed.

How can the citizens of this state and our policy makers remain disengaged around a human health concern having to do with the essence of life itself?

If not us – the citizens through our legislature - then who will decide? While I support our free market place and the critical role that private enterprise including venture capitalists and foundations will and must play if Wisconsin’s stem cell programs is to succeed, as a citizen I am not about to support anyone who advocates that citizens and their policy makers withdraw from the public square on this or any other vital public issue.

As much as I admire Dr. James Thomson and his team of talented and dedicated scientists, neither they nor UW research community nor the biotech/pharmaceutical industry can be left to mind the people’s business relating to how best to fund stem cell research and to ensure that the taxpayers and future health consumers of this state’s needs and interests are fairly represented.

The media are trying to distract us from this issue by framing it primarily an economic answer to all our problems. They would prefer that the citizen see the chief public benefit for their investment in terms of the trickle down effect and the promise of future job creation.

While this benefit is worthy, it is far too narrow and short-sighted.

Further allocation of public tax incentives and innovation grants must be accompanied with accountability and public benefit requirements, including intellectual property rights (ownership rules), public disclosure and conflict of interest safeguards.

To continue to focus primarily around job creation outcomes and ignore the State’s present health care crisis is short sighted and irresponsible.

Now is the time for our policymakers to decide whether the miracle cures promised will be made accessible and affordable to Wisconsin families with cell-based diseases.

The answer to this question must be reflected in the language of the state’s financial and tax research innovation incentives now being proposed?

Asking the grantees to do the right thing after giving away the farm is like asking the fox to cough up the chickens after giving him the key to the hen house.

If Wisconsin truly is to remain at the forefront in its stem cell initiative, like California and many other states, we will set about immediately to fill the policy gaps referred to above.

Without legislative leadership we should not expect that cell-based therapies and drugs derived from this research will eventually benefit all of us as health consumers and taxpayers?

I hope a year from now when our governor again gives his State of the State address he will be able to thank your legislators and mine for building a policy platform that will match the genius of our science and insure that Wisconsin’s stem cell program remains at the forefront of both stem cell and health care policy innovation.