PKD Discrimination Update, Sell Your Kidney, Dialysis Research, PKD Complications

PKD Discrimination

From JD Supra, by Baker Donelson

EEOC Filed More than 80 Lawsuits this Summer – Why Employers Should Pay Attention

Indeed, the EEOC filed far more than 80 lawsuits during July, August, and September 2017 – the last quarter of its fiscal year. Approximately 50 percent of those lawsuits targeted employers for alleged individual and, more significantly, systemic violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). No doubt, the EEOC is continuing its targeted, systemic focus on ADA violations, and employers should be concerned.

In 2016, the EEOC updated its strategic systemic initiative, which reiterated the EEOC's Strategic Enforcement Plan (SEP) issued on December 17, 2012. In that update, the EEOC highlighted that the SEP emphasizes coordinated strategies across the EEOC to leverage the agency's resources and promote good government and that "an integrated approach promotes broad sharing and consideration of ideas, strategies, and promising practices and furthers collaboration and coordination throughout the agency." This means the EEOC is seeking out employers who maintain policies and/or practices that disparately impact several or large groups of employees – in such cases, the EEOC "leverages" its resources to get the most bang for its buck.

That SEP identified six nationwide priorities for targeted enforcement:

  Eliminating systemic barriers to recruitment and hiring;
  Protecting immigrant, migrant, and other vulnerable workers;
  Addressing emerging issues such as ADA issues, LGBT coverage under Title VII, pregnancy-       related discrimination, and the aging workforce among other issues;
  Enforcing equal pay laws;
  Preserving access to the legal system; and
  Preventing harassment through systemic investigations and litigation and a targeted outreach   campaign to deter harassment in the workplace.

Notably, the EEOC's Compliance Manual describes its selection standard for systemic cases as those cases involving "systemic discrimination" where the "patterns of employment discrimination are the most severe, and where maintenance of a successful 'systemic case' will have a significant positive impact on the employment opportunities available to minorities and women." EEOC Comp. Man. § 16.1.

So, how did that selection standard play out regarding ADA lawsuits filed in the last quarter of the EEOC's 2016-17 fiscal year? For certain, the EEOC has doubled-down on employers who allegedly have failed to comply with the ADA. Failure to accommodate, failure to engage in the interactive process, failure to extend leave beyond FMLA entitlement, and the application of maximum leave and "100 percent healed" policies remain a high priorities for the EEOC and those issues led the way in the suits filed by the EEOC. Here a just a few of ADA suits recently filed by the EEOC:

Failure to Accommodate: The EEOC alleges that a grocery chain denied a reasonable accommodation to a cashier with polycystic kidney disease and then fired her because of her disability. The EEOC alleges that the employee missed work on two occasions because she had been hospitalized and needed to visit the doctor because of her kidney. Although she allegedly informed the company she needed time off due to her kidney impairment, the EEOC alleges that the company terminated her because of her absences and, therefore, failed to accommodate her.

To read more about these suits and more filed by the EEOC, click here. The cases listed above, are just a small sample of the issues raised in suits filed by the EEOC in final quarter of its fiscal year. But, those cases demonstrate that the EEOC is determined to "leverage" its limited resources to send a clear message to employers – the ADA is high on the EEOC's priority list.

Kidney Transplant

From The Guardian, University of California, San Diego, Opinion by Suzanne Golshanara

I’m Not Kidding, Sell Your Kidney

Kidneys toil away on a daily basis regulating everything from blood pressure to pH and excreting one’s bodily wastes and toxins. In spite of all the work that kidneys do, a majority of the population can survive perfectly fine with just one. This should be great news for the over 100,000 people in the United States who are waiting for a kidney transplant.

However, the National Kidney Foundation states that 13 people die everyday waiting for a kidney transplant. A majority of this deficit in kidneys comes from the 1984 National Organ Transplant Act, a well-meaning piece of legislation that established a national organ-matching registry and prohibited the sale of organs. The penalty for any parties caught doing so is a fine that can cost up to $50,000, up to five years of imprisonment, or both.

As a society, we have deemed it perfectly legal for a person to sell their eggs or sperm. Yet when it comes to kidneys, people are expected to donate their vital organs solely out of pure altruism. In fact, in America, donors are expected to shoulder all their travel and caretaker costs and the four to six weeks taken off of work to recover: an unfeasible financial obligation for most. Instead, a regulated market for kidneys needs to be legalized so kidneys can be freely bought and sold.

A year of dialysis costs approximately $88,000, which is about the same cost as a kidney transplant. If Medicare, which covers the costs of dialysis for a patient of any age for an unspecified number of years, simply reallocated its funds from paying for years of dialysis to paying for individual transplants, thousands of lives and large amounts of money would be saved. A government-run system would also prevent the rich from monopolizing the kidney market by simply bidding up prices.

Many people worry that opening kidneys up to the capitalistic system of supply and demand would disproportionately lead the poor to sell their organs. Frankly, it probably would. However, a piece in the New York Times argues that “people, especially poor people, take risks for money all the time” that are statistically far more dangerous than donating a kidney, like “accepting money for being a policeman or miner or soldier.” Of course, the interests of potential living organ donors should be protected through processes such as interviews to make sure that individuals are making completely independent, informed decisions, payment for all medical and nonmedical related expenses, and follow-up health care. Countries, including Saudi Arabia, Israel, Singapore, and the United Kingdom with similar programs have seen a direct correlation between such compensation and a rise in donations.

It’s easy for people to become sentimental over major societal shifts when their own lives are not at stake. For those in the United States who do not have the fortune of getting a living donor, a long and uncertain future of dialysis and deteriorating health often lies ahead. The organ shortage we have is self-inflicted, and thus solvable. Controversial or not, the legalization of kidney sales is a step that needs to be taken in order to save real lives.

Living with PKD

From Active Beat, by Emily Lockhart

7 Complications of Polycystic Kidney Disease (PKD)

Although it’s not a particularly well-known illness, polycystic kidney disease, or PKD, is very serious and in some situations may prove fatal. The disease involves the development of non-cancerous cysts within the kidneys, causing them to grow larger and, in time, become significantly less functional. These cysts, although not cancerous, can become filled with liquid and grow to the point where the kidneys no longer function as they should.

Failure to treat PKD can lead to cysts developing in other parts of the body, such as the liver. However, this isn’t the only serious complication presented by polycystic kidney disease; in fact, there are a number of complications that can lead to health decline and even death. If you or someone you know has developed PKD, it’s important you’re aware of these complications and their consequences.

1. High Blood Pressure

The development of polycystic kidney disease can lead directly to a spike in blood pressure. In time, higher blood pressure could result in the worsening of kidney damage in addition to the emergence of other serious side effects, including heart disease and stroke.
In essence, polycystic kidney disease presents the patient with a wide variety of significant health challenges. Together, these challenges threaten to rob the patient of his or her physical and mental well-being. Should you or someone you know be diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease, it’s critical that the patient be regularly monitored for high blood pressure.


2. Reduced Kidney Functionality

One of the more obvious side effects of polycystic kidney disease, which involves the development of fluid-filled sacs around the kidneys, is significantly reduced kidney functionality. The impact of this reduced functionality depends in large part on the age of the patient — if they’re young, there’s a good change they will face kidney failure by the time they reach their 60s.
Should kidney failure occur, an individual will need to undergo dialysis until a new kidney can be found and transplanted into the patient. This can be a long and stressful wait, particularly if undergoing dialysis — which can last for hours at a time several days a week — presents logistical problems for the patient.


3. Uremia

Uremia occurs when the toxicity of a individual rises to life-threatening levels; it is usually caused by the kidneys suffering from some kind of damage preventing them from functioning as they should. In essence, the onset of polycystic kidney disease can lead to the kidneys failing to prevent the body from becoming toxic and threatening the life of the patient.
For those monitoring patients with polycystic kidney disease, uremia is a strong sign that the kidneys are no longer functioning properly and that they may soon fail altogether. This will result in physicians putting the patient on dialysis until a new kidney can be found for the patient.

[Read more]

Dialysis Research

From Digital Journal, BY TIM SANDLE

New medical technology for kidney dialysis

The company Kibow Biotech has undertaken further validation of Its "Enteric Dialysis®" Technology, and Renadyl™ Product Formulation, designed for maintaining healthy kidney function.

The biotechnology is designed and sold to hospitals and medical centers and it is an example of important developments within the biotech space. Renadyl is the only kidney health supplement formulated to maintain healthy kidney function.

Kibow Biotech began developing genetically engineered probiotics. These are used to address the toxins that build up due to reduced kidney function (such as indoles, phenols and amines). This probiotic forms part of the concept of "Enteric Dialysis®", which was set out in a 1996 research paper titled "Will the Bowel be the Kidney of the Future?" This paper looked at the Gut-Kidney connection and the role of microorganisms.

Kibow moved away from genetically engineered probiotics and began to use three strains of bacteria that serve as probiotics capable of carrying out the same function. These viable organisms were incorporated into the kidney health supplement called Renadyl. The concept behind this is that these intestinal microbiota provide essential functions which the human body, by itself, is unable to supply. The probiotic has the ability to target and help reduce the buildup of uremic toxins in the body, thus helping to maintain healthy kidney function.

The Renadyl supplement was then subjected to assessment, which consisted of SHIME machine in vitro studies; nephrectomized animal studies in rats and retired zoo animals. The test animals had moderate to severe kidney failure. This was then followed by safety dose-escalation clinical trials in humans. Finally, efficacy clinical trials in dialysis patient populations were performed.
The success of Kibow Biotech is within the context of nine out of ten biotech companies failing within the first five years of business. Kibow has now been operating for twenty-years. Tis success rests on remaining innovative.

For further verification, the company has undertaken a series of customer surveys which chows a positive impact upon the user's quality of life. The most recent survey, showed stabilization of kidney function measured by Glomerular Filtration Rate (GFR). GFR is a key metric for assessing kidney function, and is used to classify stages of chronic kidney disease.
A further study will be held. This is the placebo controlled, large-scale clinical trial titled "Hope Study”, designed as a multi-site Health Economics and Outcomes Research (HEOR) clinical trial.