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Stem Cells' Shadow

If you drive north from Boston on the interstate you will cross the stateline and enter a town called Nashua. Nashua narrowly went for George W. Bush in 2000, and took the entire state of New Hampshire with it. And it is here, you would think that the debate on stem cells could impact the most. While California has the country's largest stable of biotechnology research, Masschusetts is a close second. Further, new campuses now spring up much farther away from Cambridge, home to Harvard University, the Massachusettes Institutes of Technology, and the city with the largest number of biotechnology companies in the US. During the 1990s, urban sprawl meant that now towns like Nashua, NH are becoming bedroom communities to suburban businesses in the Greater Boston area. And for this reason, some of those well off biotech workers may switch sides and cost Bush the entire election.

But it may not be in New Hampshire. Instead, where Bush could be hit the hardest is Iowa. The Hawkeye State is not one he carried in 2000. However, with popular Republican senator (and hog farmer) Charles Grassely running for reelection, Iowa is a state that could slip away. Yet, even here, the new economy has come to mean the sound of hogs being replaced with the sound of a centrifuge. Spurred on by Democratic governor, Tom Vilsack, Iowa has a burgeoning biotechnology industry. What is more signficant though is the rising strength of the biotechnology lobby nationally.

Biotech is big business. And as people consume more drugs, and as Medicare begins to subsidize the cost of those drugs, the profile of those multinationals like Glaxo or Pfizer grows. The difference is that unlike other white collar jobs, biotech is not as likely to be exported. The biotech sector needs the strong patent laws the US confers to protect its product. It is for this reason that firms looking to cut labor costs and move their workers from the expensive real estate of Boston to the endless potential of Iowa City. Still, this doesn't answer why firms are so eager to have stem cell research proceed.

In a word, protein. Proteins bridge the world of individual molecular components and active biological agents. Though everyone jokes about "cold fusion", stem cell research is the "cold fusion" of the biotech world. It's not that the stem cells themselves are needed for protein research, it's that suddenly proteins can be harvested from stem cells lines. All this means that even if the current election is unmoved by the stem cell debate, the Republican Party especially is vulnerable to being split by the issue.

Still, there was a time and a place when many believed Bush's toughest administrative decision would be his edict on stem cells. In terms of electoral politics, that could still be true. With the economy and foreign policy producing ambivalence, Bush has strove to maintain his values. Now it seems, stem cells will test that strategy.

posted by Thomas at 12:07 AM 0 comments