The Unspoken Debate on Stem Cells: "E Pluribus Plurum"

by emptypockets

Last week, New Jersey decided to spend $270 million on stem cell research, with an eye on a total of a half-billion dollars next year. It joins California, Maryland, Connecticut, and Illinois in establishing state-level funding for stem cell research. Might research funding become another case where the new federalism (if that's the right word) moves reponsibilities that have been abdicated by the US government to the level of the states?

Let me say up front that I'm ambivalent about asking the states to assume more of the burden of research funding, and this post is my way of working through the pros and cons of it. And, to be clear, I don't think the states will take up the full $30 billion per year output of the NIH -- but they may, increasingly, be responsible for growth above that level and for funding in areas like stem cell research. Would a "California Institutes of Health," a "New Jersey Institutes of Health," be good for those states? For the country? For science?

The answers, I think, are yes, maybe, and sometimes. It will fuel growth in the states that do it; it may come at the cost of increasing the disparity between high-research and low-research states; and it will decentralize funding which may weaken the quality of the science but will protect it from the harmful hands of anti-research Presidents.

For New Jerseyans, and citizens of other states starting to fund their own research initiatives, the benefits are large. By giving science in their state a leg up, their researchers will bring home more federal dollars and attract more private investment in the area. Only a few areas have successfully built the critical mass needed for a really vibrant research center -- the San Francisco bay area is one; Boston is another; New York City is trying; San Diego is getting there. Local investment in these research parks helps build new lab spaces and fund young investigators, who in turn compete for federal grants; their graduate students and post-docs provide a steady stream of well-trained personnel for biotech ventures in the area, who put money back into the community in jobs and taxes.

As these local centers gain strength, they inevitably pull resources from the rest of the country. If more top labs are in San Francisco, fewer are in Chicago, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, or Dallas. The regional disparity in research is already remarkable (to some degree it can't be helped when you have an enterprise as small and clubby as science going on in a country as big as ours). But I think there is value in keeping healthy research going on across the country -- partly because different regions bring different perspectives, partly just because I think having research going on locally makes people there more open to science and perhaps better informed about it. Curiously, when it comes to biology it's not necessarily the top-tier states that are the ones making the first moves to fund it, so at least for now state-level funding may just as likely help to even out regional disparities as to heighten them.

Finally, for science generally this trend will cut two ways. First, it seems likely to increase bureaucracy, particularly if there are restrictions on how the federal and state grants mix. It will likely lead to investigators writing more grants for smaller amounts each, and spending more time on study sections reviewing others' grants -- in short, by cutting the funding more finely, scientists will spend more time doing administrative work and less time doing science. But, second, it may protect science against rapid changes in politics. I wrote recently of my concerns about just how much the operations of NIH run at the discretion of the President. The President doesn't need Congress to block stem cells or any other research that goes against the political wind. I also wrote about how concerned I am that NIH budgets may continue to undergo boom-and-bust cycles for political expedience, rather than the slow steady investment that's needed. Having state-level funding is one mechanism to protect against keeping all our eggs in a single federal basket.

What puzzles me most about the New Jersey decision is its timing: as I've written before, I think the federal restrictions on stem cell research may be lifted next year and I think they will not survive past 2009. So, investing in something as narrowly defined as stem cell research right now seems, to me, to miss the point.

What states like New Jersey, California, and others have really discovered is a way to build local research in the long term. These programs should remain focused, on breast cancer, on stem cells, on diabetes, whatever is best suited to the needs of their states and to current shortcomings in NIH funding -- for that reason, they should also be flexible. They should be built to minimize administrative burdens on scientists, using a grants process as close to that of NIH as possible (perhaps even piggybacking on the grant scores assigned by NIH review).

Is this a retreat away from the New Deal and back again to New Federalism? (I have a feeling someone may correct me on that choice of terms.) Until better walls are established to depoliticize science at the NIH, perhaps that is what's needed.

Comments

[DemFromCT]

it's also a way to fight over political and cultural issues, a la Missouri and the stem cell initiative in 2006. That's not necessarily a good thing. One more referendum and MO may lose any desirability as a 'stable' state where investment in intellectual or dollar terms pays off.

Great post.

[texas dem]

I'm inclined to wonder why it's that important for research to be distributed across the country. More than one or two locations, yes, because groupthink within a local research culture seems very possible, and having four or five separate islands of research seems like a good corrective to that. But, for instance, why any of those islands need to be in red states isn't totally obvious to me, a blue-state partisan.

On one hand, they do help blue out those red states a little. More importantly, a few research centers in Republican territory would help insulate the research community from GOP hostility. In the same way that the defense industry seems to have deliberately dispersed itself for maximum political effect, the research community could deliberately make sure it exists in GOP territory too, so that the GOP wouldn't be so inclined to cut the funding of its own constituents. If this dispersal helped insulate research funding from constantly shifting political winds, that would be a really important result.

For instance, my impression is that Talent had to essentially go neutral on stem cells in large part because Washington University wanted the money. No Wash U in St Louis, and you get a Missouri GOP much more aggressive about stem cells.

Hard red territory would actually be a very very difficult place to build research communities (Mississippi? Oklahoma? Wyoming?), but there's plenty of Republican states that the researchers could build in. Ohio, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, and even Idaho are all red states that also have metro areas that could support research communities.

Sucks to have to be this political, and honestly I think the need is passing. The GOP has to keep the religious voters, so I'm sure they'll stick with certain of the social issues, but the anti-intellectual stuff (Darwin and stem cells) is costing them too much too quickly for them to keep it up. It looks from the cheap seats like NIH funding ought to be safer and less political going forward anyway.

[emptypockets]

The Missouri amendment was cited favorably by absurdist-bordering-on-surreal op-ed in the LA Times by someone from the Cato Institute arguing that states should not fund stem cell research it but should legally protect it to attract private investment (which is how it works in MO).

The "reasoning" is that taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for things they don't unanimously approve of, which is a nice idea -- there would be no George Bush presidency, let alone an Iraq War -- albeit sporadically applied.

(Just to pick at a pet peeve, the op-ed's "reasoning" also said that private groups are best suited to fund research because California's $3 billion stem cell initiative has been hung up in court and progress has come from private groups that loaned the state $14 million. I think looking at the number of dollars in that sentence is enough to debunk the argument.)

What Missouri did was good, and more states should do it -- it will also attract more investment in the state -- but one needs to be alert to the amount of money involved. Jim Stowers bankrolled the MO Amendment for the benefit of his Stowers Institute, which he built as a $300 million facility and has invested about $60 million in it since 2000. The NJ initiative will be between $270 and $500 million. The California initiative is $3,000 million. Protecting private investment is a good start, but you need a philanthropic billionaire and even then it is difficult to reach the levels possible with public funds.

What did you mean by "one more referendum..."? Do you think the pro-research amendment is likely to be undone?

[emptypockets]

texasdem, you answer your own question about as well as I could -- I think you're right on. The benefits of distributing research across the country are basically: 1. teaching, 2. political representation, 3. equality. In short -- teaching, most researchers are at universities and the quality of the research is somehow related to the quality of the teaching of the undergrads who will go on to live there (and to teach in public schools there); political representation, as you said, it helps to have as many Congresspeople as possible have a local interest in being pro-research, and that means not sticking it all in CA & MA; equality, this one's more obscure but it goes something like, everyone's paying for it and everyone should get something back (even the red states). It's hard to draw the line where the benefits of science stop diffusing, so this one is certainly arguable.

I think you're right also that the cycle is changing in terms of political hostility toward science -- but I think that wheel will turn again, and now (as we have the mainstream behind us) is the time to establish the institutes and practices that will protect us from another round of anti-intellectualism 5, 10, 20 years down the road -- we'll need them.

[DemFromCT]

Do you think the pro-research amendment is likely to be undone?

Do we think opponents are finished? I don't.

[Brian Boru]

The Latin word which gives the ablative form pluribus doesn't actually have a form plurum; plurimi (very many) might be better.

[emptypockets]

Brian, I had a feeling someone would call me on that, but didn't know how to make it right -- thank you.

[knut wicksell]

The problem with states funding the research isn't the location of that research -- it will be done where the Doctors' want to live -- it's the cost. This is expensive research. Better funded at the Federal level than the state level for all sorts of reasons that I won't bore you with. But as between no funding from the Feds and state funding, better state funding.

Yhe way things are going, the critical research will be done in Europe. The research community in the US is looking at the back side of the moon.

[creeper]

I, too, have a problem with foisting so much off on the states.

On the other hand, the states may exercise better oversight of the funds than the feds. That wouldn't be too difficult and should result in less waste. Even more important, perhaps a substantial portion of the money won't be going to feather the nests of Republicans' friends.

[emptypockets]

knut wicksell: Scientists can't start an institute wherever they want to live any more than an English professor can start a university wherever he or she wants. You're right that the cost of research is high and needs public support, and as I said at the outset I don't think any state has the resources to replace its share of NIH funding entirely -- but as we go forward, one can wonder whether new growth will/can/should come primarily from states or federal. European research funding is waaaaayyyyy behind US funding -- as much as we may complain about the stagnation at NIH and meddling by Bush, the research community in the US is much more vibrant and well-funded than in Europe. (For a scientist, looking at the back side of the moon may represent the more sophisticated challenge -- you don't need much funding to look at the front.)

creeper: Oversight of research funding hasn't been a major problem, nor has feathering Republican nests. Again, as much as we complain about NIH, it still works exceedingly well by the standards of most government agencies. The main problems at NIH have been fuddy-duddiness -- a predilection to fund research that is already known will work, that directly translates into medical treatments, and that is well in line with mainstream expectations. This is fine for a business, but public funding should do what businesses will not -- fund high-risk, unexpected, novel science that will may lead to fundamental breakthroughs (or may flame out altogether). Those breakthroughs are the engine that drives scientific progress, and they are too risky and too removed from medical applications for the private sector to go after them.

Brian: my in-house Classics scholar recommends "plures"

[kim]

Interesting post EP, maybe state funding will stimulate further pro-science sentiment following on the last election. I'll also take this opportunity to point out some absurd Administration creationist interference at the Grand Canyon:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/12/29/park-service-cant-give-o_n_37406.html

[emptypockets]

kim, I was hoping you'd weigh in. I meant to apologize to you (and others) for not keeping up my end of the conversation in this previous thread -- I'm always reading, but sometimes other obligations keep me from having time to reply.

The creationism foisted on the parks service has been an ongoing story for a couple of years, I'm not sure why it's resurfacing now? although it's always good to draw renewed attention to these things.

[kim]

No problem at all EP, just being my typically annoying self. :)

[Brian Boru]

Empty, I went for plurimi because there's more more there (my Ph.D is in Latin).

[emptypockets]

Brian, did you catch this morning's FoxTrot in the Sunday funnies?