Feed Me! 3—Missouri

Now that Amendment 2 has passed—which did not include public funding because that would have made it harder to win—we now get to the whipsawing. Business leaders are urging Missouri lawmakers to get with it and improve the atmosphere for Big Biotech. If MO doesn’t, they warn, why all the business will go to Kansas. This, of course, means public funding of life science departments and perhaps grants to private companies. But one is like the other since the life science departments all have business deals with private concerns. This is what Neal Munro of the National Journal calls the “Scientific-Industrial complex.”

In a related story, the Greater St. Louis Area Chamber of Commerce wants 25% of the state’s tobacco settlement money put into life sciences. This will, no doubt, at least partly include human cloning.

Oh, those promises you heard during the campaign that A. 2 wasn’t about public financing? If you really believed them, you really haven’t been paying attention to what is going on.

Post Script: MO slashed its Medicaid funding so deeply last year that feeding tubes became “optional” services. Before the state gives taxpayer money to Big Biotech, shouldn’t it at least restore the cuts that were made in Medicaid?