friday, september , tucson, arizona
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Bill strips UA domestic partner’s benefits By Will Ferguson and Hank Dean Stephenson ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT
Gov. Jan Brewer signed a bill into law on Sept. 4 that redefined dependent status for state employees, stripping 170 domestic partners at the UA of their state health care benefits. The bill, H.B. 2013, will prevent state-employed, same-sex domestic partners from claiming state benefits for their partners as well as unmarried heterosexual couples, children of domestic partners, full-
FROM THE COCKPIT
Mike Christy photographer
time students over the age of 22 who are claimed as dependents and disabled adult dependents. Liz Sawyer, spokeswoman for OUTReach, a UA staff group that supports domestic-partner benefits, said 40 of the employees who will lose state benefits are same-sex domestic partners and the remaining 130 are unmarried heterosexual couples. In addition to the bill’s impact on domestic partners, as many as 500 university employees may lose coverage for family members who are
dependents on their current state plan, Sawyer said. Sawyer said she wasn’t surprised when Brewer signed the bill into law. She said, “I have the luxury of being able to have my own insurance. My partner and I didn’t sign up for domestic partner benefits because we didn’t think it would last.” Matt Heinz, Tucson Medical Center physician and Democratic state Representative for downtown and southeast Tucson, called the bill shortsighted and mean.
“It just seems like the absolute wrong time to do this kind of change, it’s the wrong change to make,” Heinz said. “It’s extremely short-sighted, it hurts our public sector, it hurts our universities, it hurts us all across the board. We continue to walk backward. Actually, we’re kind of sprinting backwards.” Eliminating funding for qualified domestic partners is going to hurt UA’s ability to recruit coveted researchers and academics, Heinz said. “(Qualified domestic partner health care coverage) got really high-quality
Marine Corps pilots students to the sky
Daily Wildcat photographer Mike Christy went along for the ride aboard the King Air 200 with several other UA students as part of the free Marine Corps Flight Orientation Program. The program gives college students and faculty the chance to fly a plane. But even though Christy got a chance to take the controls, there was a price to be paid. My adrenaline was pumping when we took off. Here I am riding at 9,500 feet in a twin-prop airplane at 8:30 a.m., hours before classes would start. There are eight people aboard including the reporter and myself. I figured that I would only have to sit through about six turns of students flying before we began the descent back down. Not too bad. But when the first student’s turn at the controls hit the 10-minute mark, I was sheer sweat, like seven-rounds-withMike-Tyson-sweat. Everyone was staring. TheMarine(Corps)pilotturnedaround to look at me at this point and asked me if I was okay. I gave a feeble thumbs-up while simultaneously grabbing a Ziploc bag from behind the seat next to me and turned to hide my shame so I could hack up the breakfast I didn’t eat. Two vomit sessions later; the pilot Mike Christy/Arizona Daily Wildcat asks us if he can do some “dynamic” Capt. Rick Birt, a pilot in the U.S. Marine Corps, prepares for take-off on Thursday morning at the Tucson Jet Center on South Plumer Avenue. Birt took a group of four students up during a training session in which the passengers each took turns controlling the plane during mid-flight. maneuvers. They all looked at me for permission. I the help of a Marine Corps pilot. flight in groups of about six to ensure By Michelle Cohen said to hell with it, just go for it. The nationwide event takes place everyone gets a chance to fly, he said. ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT That’s when the plane’s wings went twice a year, in the beginning of the fall Luevano said 31 percent of officers from a level, non-nausea-inducing posiUA aerospace engineering senior semester and mid-spring semester, and throughout the U.S. Marine Corps are in tion, to nearly straight vertical. Breton Homewood grabbed the yoke is funded by the federal government as aviation and between 55 to 60 percent of Of course, I’m the only one on the of the plane and made a right turn over part of the Marine Corps budget, said U.S. Marine Corp candidates come straight plane having problems. Enter Ziploc the Tucson sky Thursday morning. Marine Corps Capt. Johnny Luevano. from college without military experience. bag number three. “It was great,” he said. “I was a The Tucson program flies out of “The goal is to make people aware But heck, at least I got to fly the plane. little nervous turning but (the pilot) the Tucson Jet Center, 6720 S. Plum- (the Marine Corps) have a flight proguided me pretty well.” er Ave., and is scheduled in sessions, gram and to give them an experience Homewood, who skipped class each lasting about 90 minutes, over as to what flying is like,” said U.S. Mato fly, was one of five passengers, the course of one or two days. Res- rine Corps Capt. Rick Birt, aviation asWe’re on a plane! mostly UA students, aboard the King ervations are taken on a first-come sistant for Officer Procurement. See a slideshow of the Air 200 aircraft as part of the Marine first-serve basis. During a brief introduction, Birt, aviation program at Corp Flight Orientation Program, “I had to turn away about 10 to 15 who currently pilots every flight for which allows college students and people,” Luevano said. dailywildcat.com FLIGHT, page 3 faculty to fly a plane for free with Students are taken on-board the
people to come to the state, to come to the UA,”said Heinz, who completed his residency at UA. The state currently spends $625 million to cover state employees who were not included in the bill. According to the state’s Department of Administration, the bill will save $3 million in coverage costs that previously supported domestic partners who worked for the state. Sen. Jonathan Paton, a Republican PARTNERS, page 5
Swine flu pandemic to worsen ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT UA employees received an email on Thursday stressing new recommendations to limit the spread of the H1N1 virus, which officials say is already spreading through campus. National health experts predict as many as one in four people in the United States will become ill this fall with H1N1, also known as swine flu, the e-mail from Dr. Harry McDermott, executive director of Campus Health Services said. As many as 320 cases of flu have been diagnosed on campus since Aug. 17, which is unusual for this time of year, McDermott said in a separate e-mail to the Daily Wildcat. McDermott stressed the importance of both seasonal flu and H1N1 vaccinations for employees. McDermott told the Daily Wildcat the UA is to receive a supply of H1N1 vaccine as soon as it becomes available. But it’s still too early to say when the UA will receive vaccine shipments, he said. The campus will also have to wait till the federal government releases its first vaccine shipments before officials know how much vaccine will be available to the UA and when it will arrive. The Web site for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the vaccine will be available sometime this fall, but there is no specific date yet. In the meantime, McDermott recommends good hygiene, such as frequent hand washing. Also, McDermott advised sick employees to stay home and asked for leniency from employers in the likely event there is increased absenteeism. Persons who feel they are seriously ill are asked to call their doctor’s office first before going in to limit the virus’ spread.
Surgeons develop revolutionary procedure to save countless lives By Angel Allen ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT A pair of surgeons at the University Medical Center has developed a groundbreaking medical procedure that could save victims of a pancreatic disease from developing severe diabetes. Horacio Rilo, M.D., director of the Center for Cellular Transplantation and Rainer Gruessner, M.D., chairman of the UA Department of Surgery, are the lead developers of the procedure, known as “auto-islet cell transplantation,” for patients with severe chronic pancreatitis, a disease of the pancreas that can lead to cancer. The pain caused by pancreatitis
can be severely debilitating, Gruessner said, adding, “Once you are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, you are pretty much dead.” In the past, the common treatment for pancreatitis is to remove the pancreas completely to alleviate pain and prevent cancer. However, the removal of the organ also removes the islets inside the pancreas that produce insulin. Without these islets, patients develop a severe form of diabetes, known as brittle diabetes, and are dependent on insulin for the rest of their lives. Brittle diabetes is the most extreme type of diabetes and comes with many other problems, Gruessner said, including heart disease, blindness, stroke and early death.
Rilo and Gruessner have developed an operation where the pancreas is removed but islets are transplanted into the liver, making the diabetes less severe. In the bestcase scenario, patients can become independent of insulin. In the worst-case scenario, they need only a small number of units of insulin daily. Only a handful of people in the world can perform this surgery, Gruessner said. He said he was able to procure $1.5 million from UMC to develop state-of-the-art facilities and sign on Rilo to assist in the actual surgery. “Without the recruitment of Dr. Rilo,” SURGERY, page 5
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Dr. Horacio Rilo, professor of surgery and director of cellular transplantation at the UA, and Kevin Greer, a scientific investigator who works closely with Rilo, explain how an islet cell transplantation robot works at the Medical Research building on Thursday. Lisa Beth Earle/ Arizona Daily Wildcat