Demand payback on biotech strategy

Wisconsin State Journal

Steven Clark’s recent guest column in the State Journal, “State needs biotech investment strategy” should make every taxpayer in Wisconsin --- and particularly families with chronic stem cell-based diseases --- sit up, take notice and act now. Clark found that Wisconsin’s biotech initiative has no clear overarching focus.

I was surprised to learn that Wisconsin has not placed its miraculous human embryonic stem cell (hESC) discoveries upper most in its strategic biotech initiative.

Wisconsin has already sold an inclusive license to one of the largest biotech companies in the world, which clearly cut taxpayers out of any special payback or affordable access to these products. Wisconsin families with stem cell-based diseases need to demand a full accounting of why this has happened now before any more of our intellectual property is compromised and squandered.

It also appears that the Madison biotech flagship needs to be expanded to include all the public and private biotech resources – both research and business - from throughout the state.

This is not the case. Wisconsin taxpayers and health care consumers ultimately will pay the price for our shortsightedness. As Clark notes, if research is not translated into businesses, it does nothing for the people or the economy.

Also, unlike in Wisconsin, the California taxpayers and stem-cell based consumers have been promised by state statute that they will receive a payback for any successful stem cell-derived commercial product.

That is, the state will receive a certain percentage of any revenue derived from the state-funded research, and low income and the uninsured residents will have equal access to the miracle health products that follow.

In Wisconsin, the home of embryonic stem cell research, there is little evidence thus far that any overall plan or policy exists to ensure that Wisconsin taxpayers will receive a similar payback and public access to affordable stem cell therapies when they appear in your local drugstore.

The bottom line: the Wisconsin biotech flagship is adrift without a rudder. Wisconsin lacks a clear mission and policy platform that would help guide it through what is projected as a $500 billion dollar industry in 2020 or sooner.

In a practical sense, this means that when your governor or the Wisconsin Department of Commerce awards a biotech company or scientist or entrepreneur a grant, you will not find any mission-driven clause or revenue- earned payback requirement in that contract.

I urge all taxpayers, especially those who are working for health care reform and families with stem cell-based diseases, to call your legislators and ask them what they are doing to make sure that Wisconsin’s investment in human embryonic stem cell research is protected from any further unraveling of this enormously lucrative “home-grown” resource.

Benedict lives in Madison.