Potential of Stem Cells Relentlessly Oversold

Now and then, we get reminded that even the hoariest cliches spring from a basic truth.

Consider the following proverb: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” At this moment, the good intentions are represented by the sentiments at the core of Proposition 71, the stem cell initiative on Tuesday’s California ballot. The hell they will lead us to is fiscal insanity.

Proposition 71 would require that the state float a $3-billion bond ($6 billion with interest) to finance California-based research into embryonic stem cells, which has been hamstrung by ill-considered Bush administration funding restrictions. Promoters of the measure say that this money would be returned -- possibly in spades -- by economic growth, patent royalties and healthcare savings derived from new therapies for a host of devastating diseases.

But they can support those claims only through assumptions about the imminence of such achievements that few responsible scientists would endorse.

Since this column first addressed Proposition 71 in August, the campaign has become a juggernaut. Its war chest has nearly doubled to $21 million, fed by investors who stand to profit from the voters’ largess. (The opposition’s funding is paltry.)

Its marketing, meanwhile, has become more cynical, sinking to the airing of a TV ad posthumously featuring Christopher Reeve, and trotting out the noted scientific and fiscal expert Brad Pitt to extol the measure for the “Today” show’s slavish Katie Couric. When they aren’t publishing celebrity endorsements, backers are busy citing the unanimous approval of stem cell experts, who hardly can be expected to accentuate the uncertainties of their field when a $3-billion slush fund is at hand.

Let me state, by the way, that I favor lifting the Bush administration’s sanctimonious restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, and that I sympathize with patients whose suffering may become alleviated through the science.

This is important, because opponents of this profligate measure can be easily caricatured as religious Luddites or heartless swine. After my first critique of Proposition 71, I received numerous e-mails asking how I’d feel about it if my own child or parent suffered from a disease that might be cured through embryonic stem cell research.

The easy answer is: I’d want to do anything to find that cure, no matter the cost. But the question is irrelevant; personal empathy is not the proper basis for public policy.

For the same reason that we don’t allow families of murder victims to dictate the sentences of their killers, we shouldn’t decide how to spend public funds based on our personal circumstances, or those of friends or people we read about in the newspapers. To do so exposes the state treasury to any claim based on a tug of the heartstrings, including some on much shakier practical grounds than stem cell research. The winners in such a race will be the best-

financed and the most publicity-savvy, not necessarily the most deserving.

For it is only this initiative’s access to a $21-million campaign fund that promises to let it trump the competing needs of millions of Californians: people who would benefit from better public schools and universities, improved roads, a cleaner environment and enhanced healthcare and job training. Also destined to come up short are those who might benefit from medical research that would go begging because it wouldn’t qualify for a Proposition 71 grant.

These goals -- all of them worthy -- will only become harder for the state to finance if $6 billion becomes tied down for the next 35 years.

Consider, too, Proposition 71’s effect on other research. The research budget of the

University of California has suffered a staggering reduction of $78 million, or 25%, since 2002, on top of 20% in cuts in the early 1990s.

Proposition 71’s projected annual grants of about $300 million (for about 10 years) would exceed the state’s current annual contribution to UC research. But it would be narrowly restricted to one scientific category and spread among many other recipients. Just imagine, alternatively, what a broad-based $3-billion research endowment would mean to a state university system whose once-dominant position in American research is fast becoming a distant memory.

Of course, many big contributors to Proposition 71 must be thinking less about the future of California research than about their own opportunities. Half of the campaign chest comes from venture capitalists and others who stand to earn a handsome return in the new field; how convenient if the riskiest investment round -- an unprecedented $3 billion in seed money -- is staked by the taxpayers.

Other supporters of Proposition 71 may honestly believe they are backing scientific breakthroughs that lack only money to come true. Yet the campaign has relentlessly oversold this potential. The backers’ latest economic projections, released last month, forecast that the bonds will generate at least $14 billion from royalties and reduced health costs for California. This estimate is supposedly conservative, but it’s obvious that in considering a speculative science you can’t safely project any return. It’s one thing to prophesy a world of medical breakthroughs, but another to bank the royalties 15 years in advance.

For all that the Proposition 71 campaign claims scientific truth and the moral high ground, it has largely played on the electorate’s ignorance: ignorance of medicine, ignorance of public finance, ignorance of the gulf between what is known about embryonic stem cell behavior and what needs to be learned before it yields useful therapies.

There are few things more morally dubious than over-promising a cure to the public, much less to suffering families. The promoters of this initiative should be ashamed.

Golden State appears every Monday and Thursday. You can reach Michael Hiltzik at golden.state@latimes.com.