"UMass stem cell lab to close; Funding to run out after big ’08 outlay" by Carolyn Y. Johnson | Globe Staff, June 28, 2012
The stem cell bank that was a marquee piece of Governor Deval Patrick’s effort to bolster the life sciences industry will run out of funding at the end of the year and close, state and University of Massachusetts Medical School officials said Wednesday. The state invested $8.6 million in public funds to establish the bank at the medical school’s Shrewsbury campus.
Money you are out, state taxpayers. Of course, you had nothing better to do with your tax dough than throw it at big pharma.
That decision in 2008 was seen then as a bold statement of support for research on human embryonic stem cells during a time when federal funding for work on the controversial cells was restricted.
Yeah, we got the whole treatment of new economy, jobs, blah, blah, blah, blah. Agenda-pushing support and everything.
But advances in technology and changes to federal policies rapidly made the bank obsolete, state officials said....
Susan Windham-Bannister, president of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, a quasi-public agency that oversees the $1 billion life sciences initiative, defended the decision to initially fund the stem cell bank.
Yeah, it ain't her money! Patrick borrowed that billion to put it in a fund so they could dole out money and you could pay interest on it, taxpayers.
She said there are many examples of technology that in hindsight are unnecessary, “but at the time it was conceived, when the investment was made, it was absolutely state of the art.” The center, she said, was one of them....
Then I DON'T WANT GOVERNMENT "investing in" and "betting on" ANYTHING!
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I would suggest you also see this, readers.
