Make sure taxpayers get payback from funding stem cell research
By William R. Benedict
The Capital Times Op-Ed
January 17, 2007
In 2006 Doyle helped authorize $50 million in state funding for the University’s planned Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. This funding by our Wisconsin taxpayers was in part to further jump-start Wisconsin’s still fledgling stem cell research and development initiative.
During this same period Doyle also funded a $5 million plan to recruit and retain stem cell companies; $3 million has gone into Dr. James Thomson’s two companies---Cellular Dynamics, Inc. and Stem Cell Products, Inc.
Steps were also taken to waive Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation’s (WARF) royalty fees for companies that conduct stem cell research in Wisconsin.
All of this funding, mind you, without establishing any terms whatsoever for obtaining any returns on the tax payers’ investment.
Such blatant generosity has been hailed by Jim Haney, executive director, of the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, as contributing to “a critical mass” that can only be compared to Silicon Valley.
Such hyped-up support has also caused Tom Still, president of the Wisconsin Technology Council, to tout Dr. James Thomson as a possible candidate for the Nobel Prize.
All of this suggests to me that state funding for for-profit stem cell entities in Wisconsin will increase dramatically in the immediate years ahead.
What is most surprising and disheartening is the fact that neither our public servants nor the media have yet shown any willingness whatsoever to assure accountability to the taxpayer for such public funding.
If Wisconsin taxpayers are paying for this research they have the right to expect a reasonable share of the commercial profits and other benefits.
Present promises about the trickle down effect of such state funding is not acceptable. Wisconsin taxpayers have a right to expect both jobs and more affordable health care from their investment.
An example of such deserved fiscal accountability would be: For every publicly funded for-profit stem cell entity that reports yearly revenue of a certain sum or more, i.e. $500,000, there should also be a sum certain payback of some pre-established amount to the tax payer.
Larger and more robust for-profit stem cell entities that report yearly earnings of $500 million or more would pay back the public investor through pre-established royalties.
In addition to these financial returns, for-profit entities that receive public funding can reasonably be expected to make their stem cell therapy products available to uninsured Wisconsin residents consistent with industry standards.
They should also be expected to provide discounted prices to publicly fund health care plans, and to grant Wisconsin residents preference if their stem cell therapies are in short supply.
Wisconsin middle class taxpayers, the uninsured working poor and the sick should not continue to acquiesce and do nothing out of fear and trumped up accusations that such ethically sound taxpayer-centered accountability practices will somehow squash private competition and send our local scientist-entrepreneurs and in-state jobs packing.
Neither should we acquiesce and continue to hold false assurances that best practice standards, intellectual property rights, National Academy of Science policies and ethics, or existing drug pricing controls will somehow now protect the taxpayers’ investment in stem-cell research and the commercial products that will surely follow.
None of these above “safe-guards” have proven effective in the recent past in curbing the flagrant and arrogant abuse of the commercial profit-driven med-tech and pharmaceutical industry.
I am certain that progressive Wisconsin will step up to the plate and meet this responsibility to the taxpayers and to future generations who may have family members who are suffering from cell-based diseases and will be the beneficiary of Wisconsin’s premiere stem cell research and development program.
Now is the time to address and resolve these taxpayer inequities and assure more affordable health care to all of us.
