Stem Cell Initiative- Grossly expensive subsidy to private profit

Actually, the very serious part of this initiative would be a huge public subsidy for this research. It would be too much even if they took off one or two zeros from the $3+ billion dollars. Because the money would be generated via bonds, the public would have to eventually repay $5.4BILLION dollars - as in, double the yearly budget of the state of Nebraska which I just looked up-$2.7billion. This is more than the Bay Bridge boondoggle which might reach $5 billion. Psychologically, it seems easily to lose track of the magnitude of prices and numbers once they are over 100,000, but we really need to think about what a billion means here.

There are other public health concerns that are far cheaper to treat that affect more people. Diabetes, bad nutrition, asthma, obesity among poor children fed cheap corn syrup based or starchy foods at failing elementary schools. The stem cell research cost would total more than several years of public health costs. It would be more than the entire operation cost of UC Berkeley for a year, or even several years. When we complain about the state prison industry where guards are earning $75,000/year and higher with overtime and criticize how much this cuts into education and other important needs, just this stem cell item would start to rival those prison costs.

Moreover, we already publicly pay tremendous amounts to the pharmaceutical industry with tax money for medicare, and also privately. Healthcare in the United States is supposed to take up something like 12% of the national GDP, which is higher than the percentage paid in Canada. Profitable stem cell research will be easily funded by itself with the large intake of healthcare and drug payments.

Given that we could be funding this research, does this mean that Californians would be able to all benefit for low cost or free from any potential treatments developed with their money? It's very unlikely. Money given for research at the NIH (National Institutes of Health) produces a lot of academic information and ideas. Technology and patent transfers are typically handed over to private companies during the end stage of the process where they proceed to market drugs, techniques and products at whatever price they wish.

Such a public subsidy will definitely create a cottage industry in California for stem cell research. Will this create lots of good upper-middle class jobs? When I got out of school with my biology degree, I worked for free for 5 months, and then for $9/hour in a DNA lab doing large amounts of PCR and sequencing. A family member retired from ICOS, the company that sells the drug Cialis, earning $11/hour with 40 years of experience in medical technology and working at the NIH and University of Washington multiple sclerosis research lab. People typically need graduate degrees to get a wage equivalent to what people with computer science bachelors degrees were earning in Silicon valley, and so lots of the earnings go to investors in the stock market as profit.