We hope that today’s “Readers Forum” will provoke honest and open dialogue concerning issues that we, as responsible citizens of this community, need to address in a rational and responsible way?

WHATS ON YOUR MIND TODAY?

Todays “Readers Poll” question is: Do you feel that the City should forgive the owners of the McCurdy the $1.5 million dollar in water and sewer payment owned to them?

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Fifth Third will make a significant investment in the renovation of the building space to include an enhanced working environment for employees, and a renovation and redesign of the Financial Center to enrich the customer experience.

Fifth Third is excited to partner with Riverview Investments and will remain a long-term tenant and retain the naming rights to the building.

Expanding tenant lounge, adding multiple shared conference and training rooms, and securing retail and restaurant tenants on the ground floor are all being considered for the renovations.

By EMILY FORMAN, SIDE EFFECTS PUBLIC MEDIA

Posted May 10, 2018

The National Institutes of Health announced Monday the launch of a large-scale clinical trial that will expand efforts to give more HIV positive transplant candidates new kidneys.

The new study will track 160 kidney transplants. Recipients will be monitored after surgery for signs of organ rejection, organ failure, and HIV-related complications.

Half of the people who participate in the trial will receive HIV positive kidneys and half will receive virus free kidneys. This will allow doctors to more accurately predict risk after these transplants, and offer the procedure to more people with HIV on the transplant waiting list.

The trial comes on the heels of a milestone for Indiana and the country. For the first time last month, the Indiana Donor Network (IDN) recovered organs from an HIV positive donor and successfully matched a kidney and a liver to two people who needed them. Historically an HIV positive donor meant organs couldn’t be used.

HIV positive individuals for years couldn’t legally donate organs because the disease was considered devastating. That changed in 2013 when then President Barack Obama signed the HIV Organ Policy Equity (HOPE) Act into law.

It acknowledges that with modern medicine people with HIV can live fairly normal lives. So this act allows HIV positive kidneys and livers to be transplanted into people who have the virus.

Obama, when he signed the HOPE Act, said, “Our country has come a long way in our understanding of HIV and in developing effective treatments.”

Today people who take antiretroviral treatment for HIV can suppress the virus to a point where it’s undetectable. Last September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the first time acknowledged  those who “maintain an undetectable viral load has effectively no risk of sexually transmitting the virus to an HIV-negative partner.”

It took a few years after Obama signed the act for transplants to actually happen between HIV positive people. The National Institutes of Health and Health and Human Services published safeguards and research criteria in 2015 for transplant centers willing to perform these transplants as clinical research.

Now organ procurement organizations, like IDN, can send HIV donor organs to transplant centers.

Doctor Tim Taber, a transplant nephrologist at Indiana University Health, said it’s not hard to meet the requirements to procure HIV positive kidneys and livers because the safety precautions are the same whether or not there’s an infection. His protocol,“treat everybody like they have some infection from the moon that you don’t want to get.”

It’s Brianna Doby’s job to help all 58 organ procurement organizations (OPOs) across the country get on board with the HOPE Act. She’s part of a team at Johns Hopkins University that’s on call for organ recovery teams dealing with their first HIV positive donor. She says stigma still plays a role.

Some OPOs worry their staff will be at risk with a known HIV positive donor even though they are trained to prevent exposure to infectious diseases.

Doby said only 16 OPOs have worked on HIV positive cases since the HOPE Act made it legal. There have been approximately 50 HIV positive kidney and liver transplants performed in the U.S., far fewer than expected.

Researchers expected a dramatic increase in the donor pool after 2013. A study published in the American Journal of Transplantation estimated between 500 and 600 HIV positive donors a year would be available for HIV positive transplant candidates.

So why aren’t there more transplants every year?

IDN’s organ services manager, Rich Amos said for starters, “statistically less than one percent of all deaths happen in a way that allows for donation to take place.” Most eligible donors die from a brain-related injury. The other reason is that transplants are only allowed as clinical research between people with HIV.

Doctor Christine Durand, who leads national research on the HOPE Act with Johns Hopkins University, says there’s a lot of untapped potentials. So far 24 centers meet the criteria to perform transplants between people with HIV.

Among these centers, Durand said there are more than 300 patients with HIV who have agreed to accept an HIV positive organ. “We expect this number to grow significantly,” she said.

IDN doesn’t track the exact number of HIV positive organs eligible for transplant. So, it’s hard to evaluate whether there have been missed opportunities.

For the HOPE Act to fulfill its potential Doby says more donors are needed, “The HOPE Act is not widely known about and many people might just assume they can’t be donors if they are also HIV positive, so they don’t register,” said Doby.

For years, HIV positive recipients have been eligible to receive virus-free organs.

However, Durand said, “Generally HIV transplant candidates have less access to transplant and so they face longer wait times than those who don’t have the virus, even though they have the similar survival and organ function after transplant.”

This is because many transplant centers say they don’t have the expertise or experience to perform these transplants. Although Durand thinks this is changing, “More and more centers are expanding their practice to offer transplants to HIV positive candidates.”

The potential is huge as more people with HIV become donors, more OPOs recover HIV positive organs and more transplant centers list their HIV positive patients.

There are 468,000 Americans receiving dialysis for end-stage renal disease in the U.S. According to Durand’s research, An estimated 1.5 percent live with HIV. Meanwhile about one percent of liver transplant candidates have HIV.

“This means that more than 10,000 HIV positive individuals could benefit from a kidney or liver transplant,” said Durand. She hopes research trials like the one announced nationally Monday  will one day expand to include hundreds of HIV positive people waiting for hearts and lungs

By Abrahm Hurt
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS — The Muncie School Corporation takeover bill, which appeared to die at the end of this year’s legislative session, is one step closer to becoming a law once again.

Lawmakers will meet at the Statehouse on May 14 for a special one-day session to act on bills that legislators failed to pass before the end of the regular session.

Last week, Sen. Tim Lanane, D-Anderson, requested public testimony for the legislation, House Bill 1315. House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, and Senate President Pro Tem David Long, R-Fort Wayne, agreed to allow 90 minutes of public testimony.

On Monday, the legislative council met to discuss and approve the bill to be handled during the special session, which lawmakers have said will last one day.

The four pieces of legislation members discussed were:

1. House Bill 1230 would provide $5 million for school safety that Holcomb had requested during the session. The bill would allow school corporations to obtain funding advances of up to $500,000 for school security equipment and capital purchases, but total advances are not allowed to exceed $35 million. It was approved 13-0.
2. Senate Bill 242–now House Bill 1242 because it will start in the House–is a tax bill which would have exempted trucks, pavers, vehicle parts and fuel purchased by a hot mix asphalt company from Indiana’s 7 percent sales tax. It also passed 13-0.
3. HB 1315 would establish a process to single out struggling schools. It would allow the state to take over the Gary and Muncie community schools, and it authorizes a $12 million loan to the Muncie school corporations. It passed the committee 10-4.
4. House Bill 1316 will update the state’s tax code to comply with recent federal changes and was approved 11-2.

All the proposed bills are substantive as they were on the last night of session except HB 1316, which was updated to add two requests from the Department of Revenue.

Proponents of HB 1315 said the school takeover would allow for unity and assurance within the school corporation, while the opposition said they had concerns about their voices being heard on the school board.

Ball State University President Geoffrey Mearns said the significant challenge for the Muncie district has been on the operating side.

“For the last 11 years, the expenses in the Muncie school district have exceeded revenues in every year but one of those years,” Mearns said. “The total amount of expenditures that exceeded the revenue for that decade is in excess of $36 million.”

Mearns reassured Lanane and other lawmakers that Ball State will be ready if the legislation is passed.

“We’ll be ready. We will appoint a school board if this legislation is passed. The board is prepared to accept its responsibility,” Mearns said. “I can assure you that, as the best that we can. It will be a seamless transition.”

If the bill passes, four of seven of the appointed board members must be from the Muncie school district, but the others three do not. Jason Dinati, a current school board member of Muncie, said all seven members should live in the district.

“That really shouldn’t be too much to ask,” Dinati said. I think representation in our community is important, and I think having all seven members, if they’re going to be appointed, should live in our school district.”

Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson said the bill appears to be an effort to punish the members of the school board.

“This body should not take actions to either punish or exact a pound of flesh because of past misdeeds,” she said. “I would hope that you give us the license to move forward as we have every intention of doing.”

After the regular session, Gov. Eric Holcomb announced the state would loan Muncie schools $12 million. Senate Minority Leader Time Lanane, D-Anderson, said the $12 million loan is a solution, but Bosma said the loan does not fix the issue.

“Giving $12 million to the Muncie school system would be far from resolving the problem,” Bosma said.

Bosma said he has participated in 10 special sessions since becoming a legislator in 1987.

“I am very pleased that in consultation with Sen. Long and the governor, we’ve made this the most transparent,” he said. “Hopefully a model for the future, on how unfortunate a one day special session is being conducted.”

Lanane said he still had concerns about rushing through the process.

“I wouldn’t deem some of these things which are coming before us necessarily within the nature of an emergency for which the constitution would allow us to suspend the other provisions of the constitution,” he said.

FOOTNOTE: Abrahm Hurt is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.