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Guaranteed to Cure What Ails You
Why California's Stem Cell Proposition is a Bad Idea
By Senator
Tom McClintock
[email protected].
A century ago, a common sight in small towns was the
itinerant peddler offering an amazing new elixir guaranteed to “cure whatever
ails ya.”
The peddler would make a small fortune, get out of town on the next
stagecoach, and the gullible victims would be left with nothing to show for it
but a lighter purse and a hangover.
Today, supporters of Proposition 71 are making exactly the
same claim: that for the low, low price of just $3 billion,
they can cure everything from diabetes to cancer.
Prop. 71 requires California taxpayers to borrow $3 billion
for stem cell research – an amount almost twice what has been spent on all of
the University of California’s research facilities over the last 25 years.
These billions will then be doled out to “deserving” applicants as
determined by a commission of political appointees and advocacy groups
(ironically called the “Independent” Citizen’s Oversight Committee).
Stem cell research is a promising and exciting new field
that might someday open an array of new medical advances.
But how did it become the responsibility of the most debt-ridden state in
the country to fund medical research for the rest of the world?
California
taxpayers are legally required to repay every penny of this money – which
averages, with principal and interest, to well over $600 for every family in the
state. That’s on top of the
burdens they already must shoulder as
California
digs its way out from under a staggering mountain of bills.
California
has the lowest credit rating in the country, with debt growing at an
unprecedented pace. On May 1, the
state’s general fund owed $33 billion. By
June 30th, it is expected to owe nearly $51 billion – a 54 percent
increase in just 14 months. Prop.
71 will add $3 billion of principal and an additional $3 billion of interest to
the state's – and therefore to taxpayers’ -
financial woes.
Adv:
What
does the government know about you?
Its supporters assure us that our money will produce
staggering breakthroughs in medical science.
But if this were likely, private capital would be rushing in to finance
it. And in this era of brazenly
fraudulent state grants, who will be looking over the shoulders of these
political appointees as they hand out $3 billion of our money?
Not the public. The
commission’s deliberations are exempt from
California
’s Open Meetings Act whenever it discusses “matters involving confidential
intellectual property” or “confidential scientific research or data.”
Considering that its entire purpose is to make grants based upon research
requests, everything on the agenda after the Pledge of Allegiance will be behind
closed doors.
Not the press. The
commission’s deliberations are also exempt from the California Public Records
Act, under the same terms. Want to
find out what your $3 billion has bought? Sorry,
that’s confidential.
Not the law. The
working groups that will score and recommend projects for funding are completely
exempt from the state’s conflict of interest laws.
Pharmaceutical lobbyists, for example, are free to serve on working
groups that are recommending millions of dollars of gifts to their companies.
Great work if you can find it.
Not surprisingly, the folks who stand to gain $3 billion
from this measure have already contributed over $13 million to its passage (a
23,000 percent return on investment), proving once again that there are still
attractive investment opportunities in today’s economy.
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But the real tragedy is that
they are preying on the suffering of those many families who are watching
helplessly as a loved one struggles with a disease or disorder that stem cell
research might someday alleviate or cure. My
father, suffering from advanced dementia, is one of them.
And I think that’s what I resent the most: using a worthy cause like
stem cell research in such a tawdry and obviously self-interested grab at
billions of dollars of money borrowed by a state that is literally sinking in
debt.
Senator
Tom McClintock represents the 19th Senate District in the California
Legislature. His website address is www.sen.ca.gov/mcclintock.
His email address is [email protected].
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