State must direct science with care

Wisconsin State Journal
Guest Column

Governor Jim created an emotional moment in his recent State of the State address when he recognized a mother and her 9-year-old son who has juvenile diabetes.

This was his way of calling attention to his recent stem-cell research initiative in which he proposed the aim of capturing one-tenth of the stem-cell market for research and medical therapies by 2015.

“As long as I am governor, Wisconsin will never allow politics to stand in the way of curing disease,” the governor declared.

I recalled the fraud, lies and cover-up that ended the career of a prominent South Korean stem-cell scientist, Hwang Woo-suk, along with a collaborating California-based stem-cell scientist. It is clear now that Hwang’s ground breaking discoveries over the last two years were totally fabricated.

Hwang had publicly promised a 10 year-old boy in a wheelchair that he would soon walk.

What has happened in South Korea and California can also happen in Wisconsin. World wide hopes for a quick cure are inflated. These hopes are created and stoked by both scientists and the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. The competition to be first with the most is tremendously intense

Our Governor deserves our support and respect for his wise leadership in this very competitive market. Indeed Wisconsin’s success, stature and leadership in this field as of this time is truly remarkable.

My concern however is that Wisconsin adopts the proper accountability safeguards and standards that will ensure that we do not stumble.

For 30 years I have been in the business of program evaluation and accountability. The precarious stem-cell culture includes the mixing of scientific objectives with potentially huge profits. The line between scientists and entrepreneurs and other stakeholders are being blurred. This seems to me to be fertile soil for creating more fraud, lies and corruption.

What’s needed is strict public financial and management accountability, compliance with intellectual property policy and standards, and an open and transparent organization and management process.

If there was ever a genuine need for an independent and nonpartisan oversight body to act as a watchdog, this is it.

Finally, we need to have agreements in place that will prevent Wisconsin taxpayers from paying twice---once to help finance the stem-cell initiative, and again later, as taxpayers or consumers when they have to pay for the very expensive medical products the initiative produced.

For example, the results of state-funded science, when later converted into commercial therapies, should be sold to the state and to patients, who can’t afford them, at the lowest possible cost. Significant cures resulting from stem-cell research are an eventual certainty, as will be the huge financial profit windfall for the biotech and pharmaceutical industry. Both taxpayers and consumers, through their state legislature, should take control of their future and forthrightly and proudly stake out their claim.

With immediate attention to these issues, Wisconsin can become a shining star in the stem-sell research world for many years to come.