Stemcellreport on San Diego consortium

IPBiz got a feeling of "deja vu all over again" when californiastemcellreport noted on June 20, 2007:

Somers [of the San Diego Union-Tribune] did not report any negative comments on the CIRM or consortium plans, which were probably not made at the session. But one reader of the newspaper's Web site, identified only as "ghoward79" filed this online comment on Somers' story:

"If it has such promise then private investors would be all over it. Think about the investment returns! Either way companies promoting this are making money off it and they want someone else to pay the price."

IPBiz notes that Investor's Business Daily had written in 2006:

Activist complaints about the private sector's focus on adult and umbilical-cord stem cells have driven the state to spend $3 billion on embryonic stem-cell research — something the market won't touch, even though you can find plenty of liberal venture capitalists out there willing to pay for political campaigns with celebrity endorsers.
The only thing this amounts to is a boondoggle for voters — fool's gold the private sector had already panned for and rejected, having found the truth out first.

From an IPBiz post in October 2006:

Lawrence B. Ebert wrote in JPTOS (published March 2006, available BEFORE the Lysagt article):

In this time period, there was a belief that commercializations of the technology lay far in the future. Michael Cook wrote: "The feeling among stem cell entrepreneurs and the venture capital managers who stump up funds for biotech start-up firms is that cures – for conditions such as Alzheimer's and diabetes -- arising from embryonic stem cell research are 10 to 15 years away -- if we are lucky."(68)

Footnote 68: Michael Cook, "Fickle fortunes of biotech biz," The Daily Australian, p. 26 (Aug. 17, 2002). Cook quoted Queensland Institute of Medical Research director Michael Good: "I believe the Australian public has been hoodwinked by the proponents of this research, from a scientific perspective."

***Separately, the stemcellreport wrote:

"'I don't know why the consortium emerged or how they did it, but the fact that it has is one of the key developments that Proposition 71 (the stem cell initiative) envisioned,' said John (M.) Simpson of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights.

Of the consortium, IPBiz had written:

Of the San Diego connection: In San Diego, the four research institutions on the Torrey Pines Mesa – UC San Diego, the Burnham Institute for Medical Research, the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and The Scripps Research Institute – did not wait for Proposition 71 money to begin making changes. They pushed aside egos and bureaucracy to form a consortium under which they will share grant money and scientific expertise.

The work will be done in a new building the consortium hopes to construct near the Torrey Pines Gliderport.

Forming a consortium is a rather obvious strategy to improve one's funding opportunities and to spread risk.

Note that Terri Somers of the San Diego Union-Tribune still will not discuss the Loring/Burnham patent application on stem cells that had a claim broader than any sought by Thomson / WARF. Even though Loring filed a declaration on behalf of the FTCR / PubPat challenge to the Thomson patents, John M. Simpson of FTCR is not talking about the Loring patent application either. When one is not walking like one's talking, there's a problem.