The State of Stem Cell Research

Californians are hoping that stem cell research will do for them what the invention of the car did for Michigan.

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Flocking to California in hopes of striking gold has been the way of the entrepreneur since at least 1849, no matter how speculative the industry. Modern-day prospectors are again looking to the state with wide eyes, but this time the focus is not on nuggets or dot-coms or movie cameras. Today, stem cell research is the center of attention, with the state betting $3 billion of taxpayer money (funded by bonds) that it will fuel the economy. "Every hundred years there are one or two major turning points in science akin to the discovery of penicillin, and stem cells is one of them, " says Hans Keirstead, head of the Reeve-Irvine Research Center at the University of California at Irvine.

Of course, all scientific research is speculative. Stanford biology professor William Hurlbut, who sits on President Bush's Council on Bioethics, cautions that our knowledge of stem cells "is not even in infancy. It's in its embryology stage." But that doesn't necessarily mean that California is taking a risky gamble. The state stands to win big even if the research never results in a paraplegic rising out of his wheelchair, as some, like John Edwards, have suggested.

At the most basic level, stem cells are primitive cells that are undifferentiated and aren't programmed to become a certain type, such as a blood or brain cell. In theory, scientists will coax stem cells into adapting to whatever they need to replace damaged or diseased cells in humans.

Of course, this is not without controversy. Scientists get cells from blastocysts that have been discarded from fertility clinics. Critics contend that this is tantamount to the taking of a human life. In 2001, President Bush signed an executive order banning research on embryonic stem cells except for those that were already in use.

That's when California began to chart its own course. Advocates of stem cell research put together a ballot initiative -- Proposition 71 -- that will provide an average of $295 million a year over the next decade to fund research at California's universities and labs. In November, Prop 71 passed, 59% to 41%.

The campaign was an interesting one. In addition to celebrities such as Michael J. Fox, Brad Pitt, and the late Christopher Reeve, many members of California's business community backed Prop 71. One of the largest financial supporters was a Fresno home developer whose son has juvenile diabetes. Some venture capitalists and Hollywood moguls also donated heavily in hopes of stimulating medical breakthroughs.

But other business leaders supported Prop 71 because they believed that stem cell research was, economically speaking, sure to pay off. Plowing billions into research and development simply has to stimulate the state's economy, they argue, especially given that California will have something of a monopoly, unless Bush's directive is rescinded. "All research is good for the future," explains Tim Draper, of the highly regarded Menlo Park venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. "I'd like it if they would research cloning and everything else, but stem cells at the least."

UC-Irvine's Keirstead joins Draper in believing that the ballot measure could provide the state with a windfall. Of course, it's in his enlightened self-interest to drum up support because his lab stands to be one of the beneficiaries of Prop 71 grant money.

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