CGS-authored
The billion dollars in royalties that voters were told could flow to the state if they passed California's $3 billion stem cell research funding initiative in 2004 may turn into an empty promise.
Researchers and business groups are raising a host of reasons the state should claim no portion of the revenue from inventions produced under the stem cell program created by Proposition 71.
For one thing, they say, requiring that the state get a share would hinder work toward disease cures by removing some of the incentive for private investors.
But perhaps their strongest argument is that the state might actually be forbidden from sharing royalties by federal tax laws -- that is, if California chooses to finance the program by the cheapest possible route: tax-exempt bonds.
Whether those tax laws actually would be an obstacle, however, is by no means certain. And yet no one with responsibility for the $3 billion in bonds -- not the main author of the initiative, Robert Klein, who now chairs the state's stem cell institute, nor state Treasurer Phil Angelides, who is...
Researchers and business groups are raising a host of reasons the state should claim no portion of the revenue from inventions produced under the stem cell program created by Proposition 71.
For one thing, they say, requiring that the state get a share would hinder work toward disease cures by removing some of the incentive for private investors.
But perhaps their strongest argument is that the state might actually be forbidden from sharing royalties by federal tax laws -- that is, if California chooses to finance the program by the cheapest possible route: tax-exempt bonds.
Whether those tax laws actually would be an obstacle, however, is by no means certain. And yet no one with responsibility for the $3 billion in bonds -- not the main author of the initiative, Robert Klein, who now chairs the state's stem cell institute, nor state Treasurer Phil Angelides, who is...