BIO-TECH BATTLE

Complaints have been lodged against your executive director that I am anti-development.  Exhibit Number One for the prosecution is my opposition to River City becoming one of the hubs of the bio-tech revolution.  I am pleased to report to you, dear readers, that this is all nonsense.

As you know, what I have actually criticized are the proposals to let the government take your tax dollars to make investments in bio-tech companies, research, and infrastructure.  (I'm indifferent to how private investors may want to blow their money.)  I have objected to this use of your money on two levels.  First, the government's power to tax isn't a license to take your money for any reason the politicians and bureaucrats can come up with.  Taxes are to be used for those things that genuinely benefit the general public.  Pumping cash into the pockets of businessmen with the latest hot idea fails that standard miserably.  When the government engages in such projects, it is picking winners and losers in the distribution of your tax dollars -- the antithesis of a general public benefit.

Second, it's a bad idea.  Even if it were OK in principle for Guv Jen or the Republicans in the statehouse snare our hard-earned dollars to rain upon the entrepreneurs of the bio-tech revolution, it's not OK in practice.  The hard reality is that the big bucks in bio-tech will not be made in Michigan, let alone Grand Rapids.  Two bio-tech centers are already coalescing in Boston and San Francisco, with other big cities like Seattle and San Diego trying to get into the game.

Our state's biggest asset in the bid for bio-tech dominance is the University of Michigan; yet the sad fact is that the U-M is losing its bio-tech talent to the coasts.  Stanford University, part of the San Francisco bio-tech hub, just announced a few weeks ago that it recruited a top scientist away from U-M.  Furthermore, U-M President Mary Sue Coleman has complained that Michigan cannot hang onto its bio-tech and high-tech start-ups once they need a big injection of capital for their growth.  These companies pull up stakes and head to the East and West Coasts where the venture capitalists are.

River City's noisiest bio-tech booster, the Van Andel Institute, isn't going to change this equation.  After all, if it isn't clear that the Van Andel family is willing to invest any significant portion of their fortune into the VAI, then the VAI is just another organization out there competing for talent and capital against the likes of Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen (who is leading the charge to redevelop of chunk of downtown Seattle -- bigger than all of downtown G.R. -- into a bio-tech research and business center), and California's taxpayer-funded $3 billion embryonic stem-cell research program.  Indeed, the VAI's $150 million expansion is to be paid for entirely with other people's money.  So the Van Andel in the Van Andel Institute is no advantage at all in the rush for bio-tech gold.

Moreover, fellas like Peter Secchia will tell you that River City's bio-tech bid will go nowhere without a university medical research facility in town.  I don't doubt him, but does that justify spending tens of millions of dollars from donors and taxpayers to bring Michigan State University's lackluster College of Human Medicine to Grand Rapids?  East Lansing's attempt to steal some thunder from Ann Arbor's premier medical research center never panned out, so it's understandable that MSU now wants to unload its boondoggle.  But do we here in G.R. have to  play the role of the suckered hicks?

And even if I'm nothing but a naysayer, and the players can bring the big bio-tech bucks to River City, what does that get you and me in the end?  It's a fair question if the politicians are going to give the players our tax dollars to do this.  To answer that, let me share a snippet from a recent USA Today article on the brewing bio-tech battle:

"The [bio-tech] prize goes well beyond bragging rights.  Billions in government-research dollars are up for grabs.  Schools could earn millions in royalties paid by biotech start-ups licensing campus discoveries.  Those start-ups -- often launched in a university's backyard -- could create thousands of high-paying jobs for executives, attorneys, and other professionals churning out cancer drugs, pest-free crops, and other biotech goods."  [My emphasis.]

Note, folks, not high-paying jobs for factory rats like you and me.  Jobs for attorneys!  Do we really need more of them in town?  Yet, the Republicans in the state legislature and Guv Jen justify both of their ten-figure spending proposals on the promise that investing tax dollars into bio-tech and high-tech will replace the manufacturing jobs Michigan is losing because of its rotten tax and regulatory policies.  Just how a machinist will get one of those bio-tech executive slots, none of the politicians make clear.  If the VAI is anything to go by, any new jobs government spending on bio-tech creates will go to outsiders.  Out-of-state ready-to-migrate credentialed professionals will be the winners, not the guy next-door whose lost his job to a plant closing.

And this brings us back to my first objection to spending our tax dollars on the vain hope that bio-tech will be the salvation of our local economy.  The winners in this government gambit will not be the general public, but the very few ready to pounce on the bio-tech boom before it goes bust.  The losers will be the taxpayers, the very ones who are supposed to benefit.  When the bubble bursts, and from tulips to dotcoms the bubble always bursts, they will be left with nothing but big bond payments to make.

Comments

[Ptolemy]

I think that our only option is not to debate the ‘origin of life’ but to search out alternative means of getting stem cells, i.e. research with adult stem cells and teratomas. There is always more than one way to skin a cat and if you can’t convince the other side of your argument then you must search for another way to get what you want. We are falling too far behind to continue debating this tired concept of when life is life.

[The Executive Director]

Hello, Ptolemy.

There does seem to be some ignorance among the public that significant alternatives exist to embryonic stem cell (EST) research. There is adult and umblical stem cell research that is already yielding therapies while the promise of EST is yet long, if ever, in coming.

None of my articles against taxpayer subsidies for bio-tech are arguments against the continued development of biotechnologies. The issue for L.A.W. is who should pay for it, not whether it should be done.

Regards,
Bill Tingley
Executive Director