Tuesday morning's Globe carries a front page item, with the headline above the fold, outlining the wayward course which Governor Patrick's biotech initiative has taken. Originally outlined as a broad sweep to nurture biotech growth in the Commonwealth with an emphasis on academia, the project has morphed in the Legislature into a set of earmarks.
None of the earmarks are completely devoid of biotech relevance, but they certainly aren't going for broad strokes. $13M for an interchange (near where I live) to relieve commuter congestion around a big Wyeth biopharmaceutical production facility & $13M for a water treatment plant in Framingham which Genzyme needs to support an expanded production plant there. Both will help retain existing biotech facilities which are important employers, but neither of these is likely to drive any growth outside the specific plant targeted (should the Wyeth environs sprout a plethora of omics companies, I will happily figure out a way to eat crow during my exponentially shortened commute!).
Other funds are targeting state university favorites of legislators. U Mass was always going to get a new stem cell repository (which it was pointed out originally was a clever hand to Harvard, which wouldn't mind getting a graceful exit from that business), but the tab is now up to $195M. Nearly $50M will go to build a life science center at a Western Mass school not known for life sciences education; indeed, it doesn't even have a graduate program in the field -- but does have a powerful pol as an alumnus.
University professors & at least one biotech CEO (Genzyme's) are already crying foul, but this is unlikely to have much effect. Massachusetts is effectively a one party state with little involuntary turnover in the Legislature (or the U.S. Congress seats come to think of it). The pols already have retreated to "It's the public money & we have the perogative to spend it!" -- true, but not exactly a justification for how they're spending it.
Who is to blame for the mess? Governor Patrick need look no farther than his mirror. First he made insane estimates of the job creation it would drive -- something in excess of 4X the current employment in the entire existing life sciences sector. Then he burned all his political capital trying to get casino gambling legalized in the state, and then at the moment of the key vote was off to New York signing a book deal rather than corraling a few last votes. With no real leverage, he's at the mercy of the Legislature. The quote in the article suggests that he's ready to sign whatever comes his way, a hollow victory preferable to an honorable defeat.
One thing Patrick clearly underestimated, perhaps because he really is even newer to the state than I am (not quite to the 2 decade mark) is that there is an enormous geographical divide (not that I anticipated it when I initially reacted to it just over a year ago either!). The conditions that favor biotech tend to be in Boston, Cambridge and some surrounding areas -- with Worcester (about 1 hour away) the one other large outpost. Everyone feels that anyone closer to Boston is getting a better deal than they are. So a biotech bill likely to favor the apparently favored was going to have a hard time without a bit of bacon fat to grease the skids -- but once you wave some pancetta before the pols, it's hard to get them to stop.
Showing posts with label public policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label public policy. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Monday, September 10, 2007
Quite unlike Caesar's Wife
Massachusetts is buzzing with the news that the Mass Biotech Council, an industry group, had closed in a candidate to replace the ethically challenged former politician who had resigned as the previous president. The big news isn't only who it is, but the fact that the same person has been cleverly multitasking by nearly simultaneously interviewing for the MBC job & writing the Patrick administration's big biotech program. Uh, oh.
It's truly sad. Biotech generally has a good public reputation and is viewed as different than Big Pharma. Squandering that good will by even appearing to be engaged to double-dippers is disappointing. Many more shenanigans like this & biotech will be viewed as just another big business playing the corrupt political gain for private benefit at public expense.
The Globe has also reported that the MBC is looking less-and-less like an organization run by biotech executives and more-and-more like a pure lobbying group. I've attended some MBC-sponsored seminars and they were quite good. I'm not naive enough to think that lobbying isn't useful, but it is equally naive (but in the other direction) to allow it to take over.
It isn't hard to see how that slippery slope is entered. Millennium once sponsored a role-playing simulation, and Tom Finneran (the former MBC head who resigned after being convicted of corruption) is a charming guy. He'll charm your socks off. He'll activate every charm-induced promoter in your genome. But he also made the MBC look to the public like just another cushy landing for a charming pol.
It's truly sad. Biotech generally has a good public reputation and is viewed as different than Big Pharma. Squandering that good will by even appearing to be engaged to double-dippers is disappointing. Many more shenanigans like this & biotech will be viewed as just another big business playing the corrupt political gain for private benefit at public expense.
The Globe has also reported that the MBC is looking less-and-less like an organization run by biotech executives and more-and-more like a pure lobbying group. I've attended some MBC-sponsored seminars and they were quite good. I'm not naive enough to think that lobbying isn't useful, but it is equally naive (but in the other direction) to allow it to take over.
It isn't hard to see how that slippery slope is entered. Millennium once sponsored a role-playing simulation, and Tom Finneran (the former MBC head who resigned after being convicted of corruption) is a charming guy. He'll charm your socks off. He'll activate every charm-induced promoter in your genome. But he also made the MBC look to the public like just another cushy landing for a charming pol.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Rewarding Failure
Yesterday I blogged on Governor Deval Patrick's $1B biotech proposal and suggested that perhaps the money should be spent on something other than grants. Today I'll offer a modest suggestion on how to run the grant competitions.
Give it to the losers.
Which losers? Failed grant applications for NIH grants, that's who.
Of course, not just any failed grant should be submitted -- only the best will make it. This isn't an attempt to simply have a consolation prize, but rather to address the oft lamented failing of grant competitions, the fact that truly novel & innovative research is often rejected.
My process, if implemented, would attempt to be very efficient with researchers' time. The grant proposal would be resubmitted, with the prior reviewers comments, with a short description of what parts of the original proposal would be attempted under the new grant. No rewriting allowed.
Of course, not just any failed grant would be eligible. Obviously since this would be a state program the researcher must be Massachusetts based; such parochialism is foolish but politically necessary. New England could probably compete better with California if the various states worked together, but instead you see the mayor of Boston threatening to sue a New Hampshire airport for putting Boston in its name. Rhode Island has an active effort to poach biotech companies from Massachusetts, but their most heralded catch (Alpha-Beta) had the bad manners to go bust after moving.
Furthermore, not all failures need apply. The goal is to find the interesting rejections, the ones bounced because the grant reviewers lacked sufficient imagination. Not the grants that are 90% likely to succeed, but the proposals with a 10% chance of success -- but that potential success would be spectacular. Or, proposals where a scientist successful in one sub-specialty is attempting something in a very different one -- precisely the type of cross-pollination which leads to radically new thinking. Of course, the proposals would need to address important topics -- no stamp collecting expeditions, no routine cloning studies or genome sequencing.
High risk, high reward -- that's the requirement. Most of these won't produce direct results, though they will help train new scientists. But if a few go big, then everyone benefits -- and perhaps some of the next Amgen or Google will be based in Massachusetts.
Give it to the losers.
Which losers? Failed grant applications for NIH grants, that's who.
Of course, not just any failed grant should be submitted -- only the best will make it. This isn't an attempt to simply have a consolation prize, but rather to address the oft lamented failing of grant competitions, the fact that truly novel & innovative research is often rejected.
My process, if implemented, would attempt to be very efficient with researchers' time. The grant proposal would be resubmitted, with the prior reviewers comments, with a short description of what parts of the original proposal would be attempted under the new grant. No rewriting allowed.
Of course, not just any failed grant would be eligible. Obviously since this would be a state program the researcher must be Massachusetts based; such parochialism is foolish but politically necessary. New England could probably compete better with California if the various states worked together, but instead you see the mayor of Boston threatening to sue a New Hampshire airport for putting Boston in its name. Rhode Island has an active effort to poach biotech companies from Massachusetts, but their most heralded catch (Alpha-Beta) had the bad manners to go bust after moving.
Furthermore, not all failures need apply. The goal is to find the interesting rejections, the ones bounced because the grant reviewers lacked sufficient imagination. Not the grants that are 90% likely to succeed, but the proposals with a 10% chance of success -- but that potential success would be spectacular. Or, proposals where a scientist successful in one sub-specialty is attempting something in a very different one -- precisely the type of cross-pollination which leads to radically new thinking. Of course, the proposals would need to address important topics -- no stamp collecting expeditions, no routine cloning studies or genome sequencing.
High risk, high reward -- that's the requirement. Most of these won't produce direct results, though they will help train new scientists. But if a few go big, then everyone benefits -- and perhaps some of the next Amgen or Google will be based in Massachusetts.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Deval's Big Biotech Play
Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick announced today a 10 year, $1B plan to encourage further growth of the biotech sector. The money will be used on a variety of programs, including grants and several showpiece centers, particularly a stem cell bank to be housed at U. Mass Worcester Medical Center. Much of the funding would target stem cell research and RNAi (Craig Mello, one of the Nobel laureates for RNAi, is also at the medical center).
A big driver is the fear that Massachusetts will lose future biotech activity to other states, particularly California with its huge stem cell initiative. As mentioned previously, all sorts of states and countries are here at BIO trying to poach companies.
I wonder if this approach will really address the most important needs for Massachusetts biotech. More research funding is nice, but is that really the key issue?
For example, one could imagine funding programs to educate high school students in biotech, particulary laboratory technique. Making biotech retraining available to adults through community colleges and adult education programs would be another worthwhile activity. Both of these would create a large reservoir of potential technicians, and many of these skills are transferable elsewhere. In a similar manner, one could imagine programs to retrain health care workers, such as nurses and med techs, in relevant areas. This isn't an attempt to rob the healthcare Peter to pay the biotech Paula, but rather would reflect the reality that many such professionals burn out or want career changes for other reasons.
The governor might also target the permitting process, which is routinely bemoaned by the construction industry. Builders shouldn't have carte blanche, but reducing the complexity of rules and processes (especially across jurisdictions) would enable new research (and other) buildings to go up faster. Taking a look at local laws would be helpful; Cambridge's neighbor Somerville missed the biotech boom because into the 1990s (and perhaps later; I never did hear of a repeal) it was illegal to recombine DNA in Somerville.
It would also be worth looking at the growth of future biotech in Cambridge. Most research activities in Cambridge are in an irregular 2-mile or so long swath bounded by residential neighborhoods, MIT and the Charles River, with a large railroad & road corridor forming the extreme end. It is easy to scan that region with a builder's eye and see that there aren't many more parking lots or dilapidated buildings that will be easy to do away with (other than in the I-93/MBTA corridor, which is just starting to be built out). Throw in some reasonable urban mix of housing and retail, and there's only so much growth potential left -- particularly given Cambridge's aversion to very tall buildings & the very appropriate desire to have low-rise buffer zones on the edges of older residential neighborhoods. When Cambridge is truly full, where will the activity go? That might be a good question to start asking -- there is plenty of other biotech scattered in the state, but the concentration in Cambridge would argue there is advantage to density.
Transportation would be another important issue to tackle is transportation -- the Boston area already has a strained transportation system. The Cambridge biotech district is crossed by a number of bus and one subway line, but you can be somewhere in the Boston area with good transit service and not have good connections to Cambridge. One proposed transit line, the Urban Ring, would run smack through the middle of the district and connect it to the airport and the Longwood Medical Area.
In other words, perhaps the best way to support biotech in the state is to stick to some more traditional domains of state government. It might not be as sexy, but it might have a bigger impact and more beneficial side effects.
A big driver is the fear that Massachusetts will lose future biotech activity to other states, particularly California with its huge stem cell initiative. As mentioned previously, all sorts of states and countries are here at BIO trying to poach companies.
I wonder if this approach will really address the most important needs for Massachusetts biotech. More research funding is nice, but is that really the key issue?
For example, one could imagine funding programs to educate high school students in biotech, particulary laboratory technique. Making biotech retraining available to adults through community colleges and adult education programs would be another worthwhile activity. Both of these would create a large reservoir of potential technicians, and many of these skills are transferable elsewhere. In a similar manner, one could imagine programs to retrain health care workers, such as nurses and med techs, in relevant areas. This isn't an attempt to rob the healthcare Peter to pay the biotech Paula, but rather would reflect the reality that many such professionals burn out or want career changes for other reasons.
The governor might also target the permitting process, which is routinely bemoaned by the construction industry. Builders shouldn't have carte blanche, but reducing the complexity of rules and processes (especially across jurisdictions) would enable new research (and other) buildings to go up faster. Taking a look at local laws would be helpful; Cambridge's neighbor Somerville missed the biotech boom because into the 1990s (and perhaps later; I never did hear of a repeal) it was illegal to recombine DNA in Somerville.
It would also be worth looking at the growth of future biotech in Cambridge. Most research activities in Cambridge are in an irregular 2-mile or so long swath bounded by residential neighborhoods, MIT and the Charles River, with a large railroad & road corridor forming the extreme end. It is easy to scan that region with a builder's eye and see that there aren't many more parking lots or dilapidated buildings that will be easy to do away with (other than in the I-93/MBTA corridor, which is just starting to be built out). Throw in some reasonable urban mix of housing and retail, and there's only so much growth potential left -- particularly given Cambridge's aversion to very tall buildings & the very appropriate desire to have low-rise buffer zones on the edges of older residential neighborhoods. When Cambridge is truly full, where will the activity go? That might be a good question to start asking -- there is plenty of other biotech scattered in the state, but the concentration in Cambridge would argue there is advantage to density.
Transportation would be another important issue to tackle is transportation -- the Boston area already has a strained transportation system. The Cambridge biotech district is crossed by a number of bus and one subway line, but you can be somewhere in the Boston area with good transit service and not have good connections to Cambridge. One proposed transit line, the Urban Ring, would run smack through the middle of the district and connect it to the airport and the Longwood Medical Area.
In other words, perhaps the best way to support biotech in the state is to stick to some more traditional domains of state government. It might not be as sexy, but it might have a bigger impact and more beneficial side effects.
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