Lingering fallout from bird flu. “The spread of avian flu in central Minnesota seems to have slowed a bit. But producers and poultry workers in Stearns County say their livelihoods will take a while to recover from the virus that has killed over 8.4 million birds on 104 Minnesota farms,” writes MPR’s Peter Cox. “… ‘I think the main concern for people is what happens next,’ said Erin Hausauer, Stearns County emergency manager. ‘We’ve had a lot of response and a lot of things happening throughout the last couple of months. And really, the uncertainty of how much longer this is going to last and what might be happening next week or a month from now.’ ”
A St. Paul skateboarder was killed after colliding with a truck last night. The Star Tribune’s Paul Walsh reports: “ A man on a skateboard zipped out of an alley around sunset near a busy intersection in St. Paul, struck a passing pickup truck and was killed, authorities said Wednesday. … The incident occurred about 8:40 p.m. Tuesday near Grand and Fairview Avenues, police said. … The man, identified by police as Soren Hallberg, 35, died early Wednesday at Regions Hospital.”
Mayo jumps into the drug business. The Rochester Post Bulletin’s Paul John Scott reports, “Mayo Clinic has agreed to partner with a leading pharmaceutical manufacturer and the biotech arm of a venture capital firm to create a new company called Vitesse Biologics, the clinic announced Monday. … The new company will attempt to move cancer, hematology and auto-immune illness drugs onto market in a shorter time. The partnership will place Mayo in the role of conducting early stage clinical trials for patients benefiting from emerging treatments. The work will be designed by Mayo but managed by an investment firm and stocked by a drug maker in anticipation of eventual ownership and future sales.”
Minnesota’s infamous Obama hate-tweeter has been officially canned. MPR’s Jon Collins has the story: “Jeff Gullickson of Plymouth was among the most vitriolic of the tweeters when he wrote, ‘hope to see you hang soon you treasonous fraud.’ He followed that up with an image of Obama with a noose around his neck and the caption, ‘we need “ROPE FOR CHANGE” we still hang for treason don’t we?’ … In an email on Tuesday, Gullickson said he’d been fired from his job at Lexus of Wayzata.”
In other news…
Own a piece of Minnesota history: “Jesse Ventura’s former Maple Grove house for sale” [Pioneer Press]
Your daily Walker: Guess what Wisconsin’s governor thinks of the EPA. [Think Progress]
Speaking of Wisconsin: “Arrests follow cockfighting bust in western Wisconsin” [MPR]
Mmm, pie: Minnesota pastry blogger Kristin “Rosenau is a finalist for Saveur’s 2015 Blog Awards in the Best Baking and Desserts category” [Duluth News Tribune]
Note: probably not a good field-trip option for your sex-ed class. “Rubber Doll World Rendezvous Invades Bloomington This Weekend” [City Pages]
New goal for the summer: borrow the #gnarlyRide bike [Secrets of the City]
Summer is here and we’re thinking hockey. “Gopher Men’s Hockey Announces 2015-16 Big Ten Schedule” [WCCO]
Pedal Pubbers are people too. “Cyclists, pedal pubbers team up for duckling rescue” [MPR’s NewsCut]
Mr. Gullickson got a lesson about at-will employment
Also about the first amendment.
I have to admit
a bit of schadenfreude whenever someone gets clipped for posting vile things about others on social media, but I’m not proud of it. I just can’t grasp the fact that people think they’re immune from the consequences when the inevitable fallout hits them. There are individuals who do seem to reside in a world where they’re convinced everyone thinks like they do, and they’re always baffled and shocked when reality hits them in the face.
Mayo
Greed is ugly, even when it has the name “Mayo Clinic” attached to it – maybe *especially* because it has that name attached to it.
Mayo Clinic…
is a marketing company with a hospital attached. Something tells me that “emerging treatments” is another name for marijuana.
Don’t be cynical about MN’s gem- Mayo Clinic
[from the Rochester newspaper article]
“The announcement comes the same week the FDA approved Keytruda, a type of drug among those expected to be developed by Vitesse and the first of a celebrated new class of drugs enabling the immune system to attack certain cancers. It also arrives during a week when the keynote speaker at the nation’s largest meeting of cancer doctors surprised his audience by decrying the high cost of these very same drugs. (While early results are promising, the new cancer therapies cost $150,000 a year.)”
Mayo is designing the studies that will both accelerate the testing time to FDA approval and hopefully reduce the runaway costs for these lifesaving drugs.
By using the investment partners to fund the extraordinary costs of these ventures, and the work of Bayer, who already provides important drugs to fight these disorders, the chances of success are greatly improved.
Earlier treatments save lives, better testing procedures speed up the process, and partners that can provide the experimental drugs and financing can reduce the cost of the new drugs or change the way drugs are sold.