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the Stem Cell Page time and ignorance are the enemies |
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The stem cell brain drain |
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April 21, 2006
Jeff Kopolow is a retired teacher, friend and fellow stem cell advocate. Some time ago he hypothesized that if we didn’t remove the obstacles and repair the potholes in the road to stem cell research, a resulting brain drain could be just over the rise. Even when he shared those thoughts with me, I doubt he was aware it had already begun.
Iowa was among the first to ban SCNT stem cell research back in 2002. I know what you’re thinking…
“But that’s Iowa. How important is Iowa to the world of medicine? After all, Iowa doesn’t have anything like Stanford or Washington University or Johns Hopkins or Harvard, right?”
That’s correct. Iowa City is quite different from Palo Alto or St. Louis or Cambridge. Unlike the others, it’s a quaint, small Midwestern town. Also differentiating itself, it’s home to The University of Iowa Medical Center - the largest teaching hospital in the United States.
Instead of shifting to other areas of research, some top researchers fled Iowa for stem cell friendly states. Mary Hendrix was a cellular biologist at the University of Iowa from 1996 until the ban went into effect. “For Iowa to come out with a law that specifically prohibited research in that area, it seems to me without realizing the promise of the reward, was terribly shortsighted,” she said. Hendrix left to become president of Children’s Memorial Research Center at Northwestern University in Chicago and just received a $2 million grant for stem cell research from the state of Illinois - where no such ban exists.
Others at the University of Iowa observed and lament the impact of the SCNT ban. Immunologist Dr. Nicholas Zavzava notes that research occurs where grant money exists and the human resources migrate with the money. Asked about the impact of the SCNT ban he summarizes, “It’s a disadvantage to Iowa.”
This garnered little attention in most places (it failed to even receive a mention the Congressional Research Service’s report to Congress), though it was eventually noticed in Iowa. Iowans finally learned to distinguish between reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning, and the political pendulum reversed course. Governor Tom Vilsack placed reversing the ban on a short list of “must do” tasks, calling for its repeal in his Condition of the State Address.
Iowa will likely accommodate the governor’s request but what will have been the ban’s cost, even if repealed? Restarting research programs would now require new personnel and a renewal of funding. More difficult may be overcoming the stigma created by the ban. How do you convince top researchers that a future ban won’t close the door to research once again? It’s difficult to persuade someone that “it can’t happen here” once it already has. And even if Iowa can overcome all that, they will once again be starting again from ground zero.
Some dismiss Iowa’s predicament by pointing out that one can’t equate an isolated local situation to the rest of America. That’s dangerously myopic. Iowa’s folly could easily become national prophesy.
Competition for the best and brightest is fierce between universities and institutions, and even between the states. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich recently sent out a few hundred stem cell research recruitment letters across the border to Missouri’s finest. When a copy of the letter made its way into the hands of Missouri Governor Matt Blunt, he was livid. Blunt countered with a letter of his own, promising to veto any anti-stem cell legislation that crossed his desk. But realistic and politically savvy researchers aren’t necessarily convinced. Blunt can’t remain Governor forever and his successor might not honor his commitments, let alone share his stem cell convictions.
The competition doesn’t end with the states either. England, Israel, Singapore, Korea and even China were all represented at the recent biotech convention in Chicago for the primary purpose of pilfering America’s researcher pool. They hawked new state of the art facilities, boasted of generous government funding and touted perhaps the biggest plum: work environments free from political interference.
How does that resonate with American researchers? Some are already defecting - not just to other nearby institutions or other states but, yes, to other countries. Some of our finest “name brand” institutions are beginning to lose their most prized and valuable assets – their people. The Associated Press reports:
"I am absolutely amazed at what they have. It's just knock-dead gorgeous," said Dr. Judith Swain, a University of California, San Diego, heart researcher who will decamp to Singapore in September to run the country's new Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences at a state-funded research wonderland called Biopolis.
Swain's husband, Dr. Edward Holmes, who is dean of the UCSD medical school and a ranking official with California's stem cell agency, is also going to Singapore to work as a government researcher.
AP also reports that another husband-and-wife team, Neal Copeland and Nancy Jenkins have relinquished their posts from no less than the sacred National Institutes of Health, along with an increasing number of stem cell scientists. Copeland was frank about his decision to depart the U.S., stating that he's leaving for Singapore because of its unfettered support of human embryonic stem cell research. This stands in stark contrast to the policies of the United States, where federal funding has been severely restricted by President Bush. Both Copeland and Jenkins could have remained with the NIH or accepted lucrative offers from others including Stanford University's stem cell department. They declined, opting in favor of Singapore.
So how does Singapore entice our best and brightest? More from AP:
At the center of Singapore's emergence is Philip Yeo, the government official in charge of recruiting scientific talent as chairman of his country's version of the NIH, called the Agency for Science, Technology and Research.
Showing off a model of the Biopolis complex at the Singapore booth at the biotech convention, Yeo slyly grins and mentions that he had just finished breakfast with yet another prospective recruit.
"I am offering them academic freedom," Yeo said, adding that recruits typically get sizable five-year government grants with few strings attached. "They don't need to spend their time writing grant applications. We are much more efficient."
Singapore has already spent $4 billion on biotechnology and has committed another $8 billion over the next four years, totaling $12 billion in this decade. Their goal is to steal the lead in the biomedical race while the United States wallows in political muck and the tactic appears on target. Financial support is key to their strategy. $290 million in government funding, and another $400 million in private investment by the two dozen biotechnology companies based there, built the Biopolis. It’s staffed by nearly 2000 younger, and mostly imported, scientists from all over the world. Comprised of seven sky-bridged buildings, Biopolis opened in 2003.
Important to remember is that America can compete, if it so chooses. The Stowers Institute for Medical Research, already our nation’s second largest private medical research institution, has been poised to spend $350 million on a new state of the art stem cell research campus in Kansas City. But due to an ongoing (five years now) legislative agenda in Missouri to ban embryonic and SCNT stem cell research, backed by the religious right, the plans have been suspended. They await a ballot initiative for a state constitutional amendment to settle the disparity between minority-pandering legislators and the state’s popular majority. Polls indicate that Missouri voters approve of embryonic stem cell research by better than a 2 to 1 margin.
But even a mandate from voters is no guarantee. California overwhelmingly passed Proposition 71. It not only provided the legal basis to ensure the research could continue, it was also to provide $3 billion in state funds over 10 years, largely to help overcome the paltry $24 million authorized in the federal budget (an average of $480,000 per state, approximating the median price of a single family house in California).
Reality check: California has been delayed in delivering those state funds. An endless stream of litigation led to some creative financing facilitated by philanthropic endeavors, but so far only $14 million has shaken loose.
To put this in perspective, California’s 34 million people occupy 163,707 square miles. By comparison, Singapore is an island nation of merely 250 square miles and 4.5 million residents. But consider the vast difference in financial resources committed to stem cell research: California at $3 billion over a decade ($14 million so far), versus Singapore’s $12 billion ($4 billion so far) and a four year head start.
This has already established an ominous, documented trend. Jennifer McCormick, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow in the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics. "There is a gap between publications from U.S. and non-U.S. groups," she said. "With the current trajectory, if things don't change, that gap is going to continue."
McCormick and her colleague, Jason Owen-Smith, PhD, assistant professor of sociology and organizational studies at the University of Michigan, collaborated on a study published in the April issue of Nature Biotechnology. They identified 132 published articles between November 1998 and December 2004 that relied on human embryonic stem cells. Research organizations from 18 countries published human embryonic stem cell research, most from the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom and South Korea.
Forty-five percent of the publications, which originated from 97 research organizations, were from U.S. researchers. But when the articles were categorized according to whether the researchers were within or outside the United States, they indicated a clear trend. Domestic U.S. research has actually declined. In 2002, there were 10 published articles involving human embryonic stem cells, roughly one-third from the U.S. Only two years later, the publication total grew to 77, but the U.S. portion declined to only a fourth. McCormick noted, "The United States can't allow its technology and scientific strengths to lessen because it will affect competitiveness."
A key element seemingly ignored by opponents of embryonic and SCNT stem cell research is that despite what domestic influence they hope to wield, the research will continue. They can’t stop it overseas.
Moreover, that American research scientists would leave the comforts of home for the inconvenience of foreign cultures, just to be able to carry on with their work, speaks to both the promise of the endeavors into embryonic and SCNT stem cell research and its importance to those who seek to heal and cure the world’s injured and ill. The medical research community is sending America a clear message:
The world will not wait while American politicians and extremist factions duke it out at home, nor shall we. We will continue working toward treatments and cures - even if driven overseas.
America had better be listening. No policy will prove more dangerous than exporting our precious gray matter. And the embryonic stem cell research brain drain isn’t just a theory any more.
- Jeff Eisen
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