With California’s $10 billion financial debt, one would find it irrational to even spend another dollar towards something unnecessary. Yet this November’s ballot contains a proposition that will spend more than just a dollar … $6 billion more.
It’s called Proposition 71 and it allows the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to be established to regulate and fund stem cell research. It would cost us Californians $6 billion-$3 billion in bonds and $3 billion in interest. This is one of the most expensive propositions on the ballot, and if passed will take out more money from our already in-debt hands, money that could instead can go into offsetting the ever increasing per unit costs of colleges around California.
Those who are so gung-ho about such an expenditure claim they won’t be the ones to pay these billions of dollars. Instead Proposition 71 gets its funding through tax-free state bonds. It is as if they make “tax-free state bonds” sound like taxpayers are totally exempt from such costs. It alludes one to think that these bonds magically grow on trees. But in actuality, our tax dollars are the seeds that produce these trees. Our tax dollars are part of the general fund. And according to the Legislative Accounting Office, the General Fund bond debt will grow from $33 billion to over $50 billion in debt by June 30, 2005.
With all these ridiculous numbers thrown at us, we as college students find ourselves questioning why spend billions of dollars on stems cells and not on our own brain cells. $3 billion in bonds is being contributed to a cause that may save lives, but there is no solid proof.
Some may say, “Well, I hear it can cure my Uncle Joe’s cancer and my granny’s Alzheimer’s.”
So, if this stem cell research can work miracles and save the lives of those you love, then why isn’t this research funded by biotech and pharmaceutical companies instead of California residents? Wouldn’t these companies jump at such an opportunity? Wouldn’t they want their titles to go down in history as the ones who found the cure for cancer? Wouldn’t they take the risk for that name, that title, and that honor?
Well, if this involves the embryonic cells in real patients, in which the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative uses, despite the fact that it is currently banned from federal funding because of ethical and moral issues, then the answer is no. They believe the likelihood of success is too low and the risks are too high.
Also, this proposition does not fund adult and cord blood stem cell research, which has produced more than major medical breakthroughs. For example, according to the National Marrow Donor Program, in 1988, doctors transplanted cord blood stem cells into a 5-year-old boy suffering from Fanconi’s anemia. Ten years later, the boy is alive and seems to be cured of his disease. So why doesn’t this $6 billion proposition fund this stem cell research that produces real progress, rather than take such a tremendous risk at the expense of our tax dollars, tax dollars better spent on cheaper fees that could be affordable to low-income students who really need it? Or maybe tax dollars better spent on allowing students to be full time students instead of working part time in order to pay for school. And if federal funding does not want to support such a “miracle,” then why does such a proposition exist in California?
It’s because they’d rather have gullible California voters fall for such propaganda. Skyline College students know all too well the effects of our state debt. We have come face to face with the consequences. While California suffers from budget cuts left and right, with a $6 billion butcher knife we suffer from another cut, a deep wound; we have to clean up and fix ourselves. According to the California Secretary of State – Elections & Voter Information-2004, it would take over 30 years to pay off such costs. So, after leaving Skyline, instead of going to graduate school or even law school we simply can’t afford it because for the next 30 years our General Funds will not go to our dire need of education, but instead our dire need for stem cell research. Let the federal government pay $6 billion if they believe it is worth it. Oh wait, they don’t. So why should we?
Vote no on Proposition 71 for the sake of healing our $6 billion wound, instead of cutting it deeper.