by Brittany Grove, Nathan Madden and Josephine Varnier
There’s an old saying: “Two things you don’t talk about at a bar are religion and politics.”
That social contract was put on hold last night as patrons at Penny Lane Pub downtown watched with thirsty eyes as election results flowed in from the polls like pints from the taps.
Senators Barack Obama and John McCain were nearing the final hours of what will be remembered as one of the most influential presidential races in the history of the United States.
Matty Teasley glanced up from the amber beer in his glass to weigh in on the race for the 44th presidency of the United States.
“As somebody who’s been on the winning end as a volunteer on the Kane campaign, this is probably the most fun I’ve had watching an election and the most fun I’ve had in my life,” Teasley, 25, said.
As the evening hours wore on, the percentages of red and blue jumped back and forth on the televisions screens, jumping from large to small for each state’s closing polls.
And then it happened: The announcement was made over the air-waves that Obama had won Virginia, the first time the commonwealth had elected a democrat in 44 years. Analysts had said all along that Virginia would be a key win for its victor and the prediction proved accurate.
Just minutes later, McCain’s bid for the White House was statistically over and Obama was officially declared the first African-American to be elected to the office of President of the United States.
“This is the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen,” Charles Martin, 38, said. “I never thought I’d see this in my lifetime. [Obama] is the right man for the job.”
Record turnouts at the polls may have been the difference for Obama. A diverse mix of people of different races, religions and backgrounds turned in overwhelming support for Obama, who won the electoral vote 338-155.
Virginia Commonwealth University student Cara Parker woke up early in the day to cast her ballot at Evergreen Elementary School in Chesterfield where she stood in line for an hour and a half. The wait wasn’t so bad the 19-year-old sophomore said.
“For 6 a.m., everyone was happy,” Parker said about her first voting experience.
Although Parker’s vote went to McCain, she said she’s not too disappointed with the outcome because people actually got involved.
Seventy miles northwest of The River City, yellow, orange and red leaves were falling from the trees, releasing the old and embracing the change of winter to come, and the inevitable change that arrives each election year.
Charlottesville resident Amanda Grove, a 24-year-old living with Down Syndrome, cast her vote with the help of her mother, Marcia. A written consent stated that she had help pressing the buttons but was not influenced in her decision.
Grove’s story is a testament to the kind of involvement that this election has encouraged because for many, this was their first time to the polls but not because they couldn’t vote in previous elections. Rather, they finally found someone who pushed all the right buttons.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Transforming Lives Through Transplants
by Josephine Varnier
On a chilly November morning a 70-year-old woman is wheeled into an operation room and set up in the sterile room full of scalpels located on the fifth floor of the east wing in the Main hospital at the Medical Center of Virginia.
Aside from being overweight, the woman appeared otherwise healthy. Doctors probably noticed that she may have never smoked, tended to make good food choices and were a moderate drinker.
“A lot of things go into what gets a patient chosen, and she must have been the next healthiest one on the list,” says Katherine Hopper, nursing student.
Yet, here she was at 7:30 a.m. preparing to undergo a kidney transplant, one of the 18,695 patients who have received an organ transplant this year.
“We don’t choose who get’s a transplant. Everyone is on a national waiting list,” Maureen Bell, kidney transplant coordinator explains.
The United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS, produces a print out for every organ received which includes a list of patients eligible. Age, race and gender are not factors that affect one’s eligibility.
In January 2007 the Hume-Lee Transplant center at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Medical Center had 94,500 patients waiting for organs, 69,000 awaiting a kidney. Of those waiting, 24,000 transplants were completed between the months of January and October.
Getting the kidney, however, isn’t always easy. For example, in the 70-year-old woman’s case, she undergoes anesthesia and is prepped for surgery. However, the anesthesiologists learn that the kidney had yet to be approved.
Kidneys can live without a body on a pump or in a bucket of ice for up to 24-48 hours. The kidney that was arriving had been on a pump for a considerable amount of time and sometimes upon arrival organs are deemed unusable by the surgeons.
The O.R. was in a panic with the news and those who had been setting up were upset, wondering how to wake up a woman and tell her she did not receive the organ she needed to live. That she had been living in the pre-surgery unit, or P.S.U., to just be returned to home and back onto a waiting list.
Would the amount of time she would spend waiting for a donor be longer than her expected lifespan without one?
Bell feels that the chance of not proceeding with surgery would have been next to none.
“I can’t think of a case where the organ arrives and it can’t be used,” Bell states. “We already have a lot of information on the kidney before it arrives. However the surgeons still like to look at it.”
Approximately 30 minutes after the tension erupted, it was subsided with the news that the surgeons had checked the kidney that had just arrived and it was good to go.
But how often is it not? The information that must be passed from operation room, to doctor, to patient is a stream of detrimental facts that serve as the lifeline for the surgery as well as the patient. And once a date is pushed back, does one’s place on the waiting list follow suit?
To learn more go to…
http://www.unos.org/
http://www.ustransplant.org/kars.aspxhttp://www.organdonor.gov/
http://www.optn.org/http://www.ustransplant.org/http://www.ustransplant.org/
On a chilly November morning a 70-year-old woman is wheeled into an operation room and set up in the sterile room full of scalpels located on the fifth floor of the east wing in the Main hospital at the Medical Center of Virginia.
Aside from being overweight, the woman appeared otherwise healthy. Doctors probably noticed that she may have never smoked, tended to make good food choices and were a moderate drinker.
“A lot of things go into what gets a patient chosen, and she must have been the next healthiest one on the list,” says Katherine Hopper, nursing student.
Yet, here she was at 7:30 a.m. preparing to undergo a kidney transplant, one of the 18,695 patients who have received an organ transplant this year.
“We don’t choose who get’s a transplant. Everyone is on a national waiting list,” Maureen Bell, kidney transplant coordinator explains.
The United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS, produces a print out for every organ received which includes a list of patients eligible. Age, race and gender are not factors that affect one’s eligibility.
In January 2007 the Hume-Lee Transplant center at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Medical Center had 94,500 patients waiting for organs, 69,000 awaiting a kidney. Of those waiting, 24,000 transplants were completed between the months of January and October.
Getting the kidney, however, isn’t always easy. For example, in the 70-year-old woman’s case, she undergoes anesthesia and is prepped for surgery. However, the anesthesiologists learn that the kidney had yet to be approved.
Kidneys can live without a body on a pump or in a bucket of ice for up to 24-48 hours. The kidney that was arriving had been on a pump for a considerable amount of time and sometimes upon arrival organs are deemed unusable by the surgeons.
The O.R. was in a panic with the news and those who had been setting up were upset, wondering how to wake up a woman and tell her she did not receive the organ she needed to live. That she had been living in the pre-surgery unit, or P.S.U., to just be returned to home and back onto a waiting list.
Would the amount of time she would spend waiting for a donor be longer than her expected lifespan without one?
Bell feels that the chance of not proceeding with surgery would have been next to none.
“I can’t think of a case where the organ arrives and it can’t be used,” Bell states. “We already have a lot of information on the kidney before it arrives. However the surgeons still like to look at it.”
Approximately 30 minutes after the tension erupted, it was subsided with the news that the surgeons had checked the kidney that had just arrived and it was good to go.
But how often is it not? The information that must be passed from operation room, to doctor, to patient is a stream of detrimental facts that serve as the lifeline for the surgery as well as the patient. And once a date is pushed back, does one’s place on the waiting list follow suit?
To learn more go to…
http://www.unos.org/
http://www.ustransplant.org/kars.aspxhttp://www.organdonor.gov/
http://www.optn.org/http://www.ustransplant.org/http://www.ustransplant.org/
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Tolerance Studies in Rat Organ Transplants
by Josephine Varnier
The Medical College of Virginia, a part of the Virginia Commonwealth of University’s Health System, began its Clinical Transplant Program as one of the first in the nation and continues to be one of the leading Transplant Centers in 1956.
With procedures specializing in the pancreas, liver and kidney that were once considered risky, the Hume-Lee Transplant Center now performs them with a 90% success rate.
New studies, however, are always on the rise and are detrimental in finding new and safer ways to transfer organs from donor to patient.
Dr. Robert A. Fisher is serving as the principal investigator in a study on the tolerance of organ transplants in rats.
The animal model for kidney transplants was created at the HLTC and Fisher has been analyzing functional, kidney histological and cytokine data since 1991.
Cytokines, imperative for cellular communication, have been understood to affect the tolerance of kidney transplants. The levels in the cells of the test rats are measured as a main focus.
“Similar to the way bees communicate via pheromones,” Fisher says, the cytokines deliver a positive or negative response to the stimulus created by the foreign object, or in these cases, the new kidney.
The T-cells mediate a response against the stimulus and are therefore provide the detrimental information needed to compare the studies to the responses made by human patients.
“Of course they are. You can’t make direct comparisons, but you can learn about the physiology and the process,” Fisher says.
The two different rats tested in the study have specific and dissimilar antigens, similar to the different antigens of different human beings. In studying the tolerance of transplanted organs, a kidney is removed from an ACI, or small black rat, and then is planted into a Lewis rat, or a big white rat.
In their separate families the rats serve as perfect clones, but in order to create the study so advancement in human transplantations can occur, organs must be taken from one family to another.
The ACI rats are euthanized after a kidney is removed. The normal life of a rat in a lab is 360 to 370 days.
“Our life spans are increasing and for the rat, it’s the same,” Fisher says, also stating that 60% operated on turn out more physically healed than the other percentage that show scarring or damage.
The amount of physical disfigurement after the transplantation occurs is the main way in which the cytokine communication can be determined.
Other animals had been used in the history of the studies within the HLTC, such as Hanover mini pigs for bell transplantation, dogs, and primates.
“I got too attached to them,” Fisher says of the prior test animals. “We still treat them [the rats] with respect and consider their lives to be respected and valued.”
When asked about the possibility of animal’s rights activists opposing any of the transplantation studies, Fisher replies, “I think that they worry about that. Some places have had whole experiments and labs destroyed. We’ve never had it happen.”
The drugs tested on the animals after their transplants are those already approved for humans, and therefore the need to move to primates after two successful rat trials is unnecessary.
Humans or animals accepting an organ without an immunant suppressant drug afterwards has not yet occurred within the tolerance study.
“We have never achieved it- not yet,” Fisher says of the need for bodies to have a boost at this time. “90 to 110 days is the definite time period where cytokines would decide whether the kidney would act normally.”
The skills needed to even complete a transplant are those only possessed by a few.
“Only two out of ten can complete a kidney transplant,” Fisher says of the students who graduate and complete the surgical courses needed to help in the study. “The less skilled can do transplants easier with bigger animals, but regular PhDs would not be able to do it.”
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