Burnt Orange Report

Will Texas Lose its Biomedical Research Talent to Blue States?

By Byron LaMasters

It's very possible. Seeing the success of the California initiative on stem cell research, other states are making proposals to attract biomedical research talent to their states as the federal government is highly unlikely to move forward on the issue.

Blue states New Jersey, Wisconsin and Illinois appear to be the first to act:

California's embrace of stem cell science has triggered strong reactions elsewhere:

• New Jersey, Wisconsin and Illinois are budgeting taxpayer dollars or proposing California-style initiatives to try to prevent a brain drain of biomedical researchers to the West Coast. (Advanced Cell Technologies, a Worcester, Mass., company, is shopping for land in Northern California to build a branch facility.)

Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes, a Democrat, will ask the Legislature next year to place on the ballot a proposal to grant researchers $1 billion. The money would be raised by a new tax on Botox injections, liposuction and other "vanity" treatments.

In Texas, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (news, bio, voting record) has asked Gov. Rick Perry, a fellow Republican, to do what it takes to prevent California from stealing scientific luminaries from medical research centers in Houston. Pro-research bills are likely to be considered next year by legislatures in Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire and Washington state.

• Social conservatives in several other states are fighting embryonic stem cell research. Eight states - Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Virginia - now ban or limit such research. All but one, Michigan, were "red states" that backed Bush in this year's elections. South Dakota passed the most recent ban, in February.

Next year, legislators in Missouri, Kansas and Louisiana will consider barring at least some types of embryonic stem cell research.

• In Congress, both sides in the stem cell debate are gearing up for battles next year.

I think it's possible that Texas move forward on stem cell research in the next few years, but clearly, that will probably require a new governor. On the other hand, Texas Republicans could join Republicans in Missouri, and elsewhere in taking an anti-science, anti-jobs stand.

More after the jump.

In Kansas City, Mo., business leaders are hoping that the privately endowed Stowers Institute for Medical Research, which opened in 2000, will be the seedbed for thousands of jobs. But proposals by two Republican state lawmakers to criminalize embryonic stem cell research could change that. Stowers trustees say they'll build a 600-job facility elsewhere if Missouri outlaws somatic cell nuclear transfer.

On the other hand, California will be spending ten times what the federal government is spending on stem cell research - an amount that puts California on equal footing with most other countries pursuing such research:

In California, the ballot initiative known as Proposition 71 was spearheaded by wealthy parents of children with life-threatening diseases and was backed by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. It passed with a 59% majority. The state will sell bonds and give out $300 million a year in research grants for 10 years.

It's a sum that dwarfs the $24.8 million that the National Institutes of Health spent on human embryonic stem cell studies this year.

"It puts California on equal footing with whole nations that have made stem cell research one of their national priorities - nations like South Korea, Singapore, Israel, Sweden," Daniel Perry says.

I'll keep a lookout to see what happens here in Texas, but if blue states start pouring money into stem cell research, and Texas does nothing, we will surely see our top biomedical research talent go elsewhere.

George W. Bush and Rick Perry: Building a bridge to the 19th century.

Via MyDD.