California Proposition 38 seeks to authorize state bonds for immunology medical research
By Julie Sharp
California voters are weighing Proposition 38, which would authorize the state to sell $8.4 billion in bonds to fund immunology research and therapies in state institutes and universities.
This comes as the Trump administration has cut billions of dollars in funding for medical research at universities and medical centers, according to CBS News.
The funding would be evenly split between a single University of California-affiliated nonprofit medical research institute and research grants. Prop. 38 was designed to pay for itself by requiring that 10% of any revenue generated from the funded research be given to the state.
This revenue must first go into the state General Fund until it repays the cost of the research bond, the amount borrowed plus the interest. Any additional revenue would be used for future immunology and immunotherapy research.
Proponents say Prop. 38 supports life-saving immunology research to cure and prevent diseases such as cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s.
Supporters include the Alzheimer’s Association, the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research and the City of Hope.
Gary Michelson, a retired surgeon and billionaire inventor of medical devices, is the largest backer of the initiative. He has donated over $40 million to the Yes on Prop. 38 campaign.
Zev Yaroslavsky of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs explained that supporters want to continue medical research in hopes of finding cures.
“We have some of the finest universities in the world here that are doing research on that. Some of it right here in Los Angeles, UCLA, UC Berkeley up north,” Yaroslavsky said, noting that he believes that if the proposition does not pass, it would “gut the research momentum.”
Robert Kaplan is a senior scholar at the Stanford University School of Medicine and co-chair of the No on Prop 38 campaign.
One of the key arguments of the No on Prop 38 campaign cites a CalMatters investigative report, which found that the highly specific criteria leave only one institution qualified to receive funding: the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy, associated with UCLA and founded by Michelson.
“When I first heard of Proposition 38, I was excited about it because it provides more money for biomedical research, which I think is necessary,” Kaplan said.
Kaplan says there needs to be open competition between institutions and questions the limiting of funding to a single discipline, immunotherapy, when there is a wider array of biomedical research.
He is also concerned that the anticipated 10% of revenue generated by discoveries funded through the measure to repay the General Fund could take decades, given the uncertainty in the amounts and timing.
