Scientific Structures: Dominence and Strength

By Jennifer Lahl

My colleague, Evan Rosa, has a great piece here on the recent approval of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to award $271 million dollars in facilities grants to 12 academic and research institutions. 800,000 square feet of buildings to be erected by 2010 for the purpose of embryonic stem cell and human cloning research funded by the California taxpayers.
10 of the 12 buildings will be on university campuses. Like the University of California, Berkeley's Li Ka Shing Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences, which will boast 60,000 square-feet and 12 labs dedicated to embryonic stem cell research.

Rosa writes, "Structures are suggestive . And these buildings, bought on the Prop 71 budget, suggest something radical: academic, political and cultural approval of (human) embryonic stem cell research. They are monuments—monoliths even—of scientific dominance and strength.

Even Robert Klein, chairman of CIRM's governing agency , agrees, "This Prop 71 stem cell research facilities program is one of the largest building programs ever dedicated for a new field of medical science and it will deliver an impact that will be felt worldwide."

Consider this final thought: Klein also responds to the May 7, 2008, hESC research facilities decision that "[California research institutions'] incredible commitment [of funding] underscores the promise that stem cell research holds for patients suffering from chronic disease and injury."

There's that word again. Promise . For such a politically skeptical culture—people so wary of the easy words of our would-be leaders—we sure have exhibited a lot of faith in the "promise" scientists and politicians are making for human embryos. We're betting $271 million (and who knows how many human lives?) on that promise this month, and by 2010 and beyond we'll see how these structures stack up: memorials or mausoleums?"

Proposition 71: The New Gilded Age

When the creators of Proposition 71 spent tens of millions buying a constitutional amendment in California to permit human cloning research, they promised CURES! CURES! CURES! And what are people spending hundreds of millions of dollars of borrowed money on? EXPENSIVE FANCY BUILDINGS! EXPENSIVE FANCY BUILDINGS EXPENSIVE FANCY BUILDINGS! From the story in today's San Francisco Chronicle:

The governing board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine is expected to give final approval today to a package of grants that will prompt a construction boom at academic campuses throughout the state.

More than three-quarters of a billion dollars in laboratory construction will get under way as early as next month, seeded by $271 million in facilities grants made possible by the passage of Proposition 71.

And not a workable building designed by "The General," that prefab contractor, either. We are talking high end, expensive architect, all the add-ons, type buildings. Example:

At UCSF, planners had to figure out a way to shoehorn a stem cell research center into the space-constrained confines of their hilltop Parnassus Heights campus. So they tapped one of the world's top design firms, Rafael Viñoly Architects, which delivered a striking plan.

The Institute for Regeneration Medicine will be housed in a silver, terraced structure that snakes uphill along the winding curves of Medical Center Way - tucked behind the 16-story towers housing the campus' major research labs.

I would have hoped that at a time when California is literally drowning in a $20 billion in deficit, that some restraint would be shown. But who was I kidding? This is the kind of moral corruption, pigs-feeding-at-the-trough kind of excess that undermines the people's confidence in government and our ruling institutions.

Somebody ought to sue: Hint. Hint.