In 2016, less than a year after giving birth to our third child, my wife underwent months of brutal cancer treatment. Seven years later, my 65-year-old mother collapsed with brain lymphoma and was confined to a hospital bed for three months.
Both endured wrenching treatments – radiation, chemotherapy and surgeries – in a sprint to eradicate the cancer. My mom lost her race, and to this day my wife battles lingering side effects from the radiation targeting her neck and jaw, including scary choking fits.
I want better, less debilitating treatment options for the sick and dying, such as those that may be spawned by Proposition 38. Backers of the $8.4-billion bond measure on the Nov. 3 ballot say it could “prevent and cure” cancer and other deadly illnesses in our lifetime.
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Although the proposition could lead to breakthroughs in immunotherapy treatments for cancer patients and others suffering chronic diseases, passing it would set a terrible precedent for how taxpayers fund scientific research.
Immunotherapy, which harnesses the body’s immune system to attack cancer cells and treat other conditions, promises longer survival and better quality of life than what patients typically receive today. But the details of how Proposition 38 would fund this research – and how much it departs from the open, competitive processes for scientific grantmaking – feel like a shocking abuse of California’s initiative system. Knowing that my wife and late mother might have benefitted from a similar bond, I will still vote against it.
Proposition 38 divides its $8.4 billion into two halves: One for competitive grants, and the other to fund a single unnamed research institute meeting an oddly specific set of criteria. In July, CalMatters reported that only one facility would qualify, the UCLA-affiliated California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy, whose chairman and billionaire benefactor, Dr. Gary Michelson, is backing Proposition 38.
In an era when the Trump administration is targeting funding for the National Institute of Health and seeking to control where it directs grants, Michelson’s $120-million gift to launch the immunotherapy institute is a breath of fresh air. It will fund lifesaving research, regardless of what voters decide in November.
But a little more than a year after announcing his donation, Michelson filed an initiative that cryptically asks taxpayers to fund a much larger gift, and he has spent more than $20 million to get it passed, according to public campaign spending records.
Golden State staff
Robin Swanson, a spokesperson for the campaign, defended the measure’s criteria as simply prioritizing efficiency. “The way that it's structured is to ensure that we have institutes that are ready to go and ready to hit the ground running, because … patients don't have time to wait,” Swanson said.
That explanation is hard to swallow given that Michelson’s institute isn’t open yet and has no immunology research track record to speak of. The building housing it, part of a new UCLA research park on the site of the defunct Westside Pavilion shopping mall in West Los Angeles, is still under construction.
As for Proposition 38’s other $4.2 billion – the half funding competitive grants – experts have raised concerns over transparency and how truly competitive those grants will be.
The measure’s text stipulates that a council with members chosen by the chancellors of seven University of California campuses, plus up to 15 additional appointees from other California universities and nonprofit research institutions, will determine which projects receive funding. Alarmingly, only the institutions represented on the council can receive grants – and only after consultation with the unnamed institute determined by that highly specific set of guidelines.
At a news conference held by opponents of Proposition 38, Judy Heiman, a former postsecondary education analyst at the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, said of the closed-off grantmaking process, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Mariel Garza
Robert Kaplan, a professor at UCLA and Stanford and former associate director of the NIH co-chairing the campaign against Proposition 38, raised additional concerns about confining so much funding to a single field of research. He noted that immunology and immunotherapy, though “very hot topics in biomedical research,” were among the 331 research expenditure categories tracked by the NIH when he was there during the Obama administration. Proposition 38 would cost the state about $500 million a year for as much as a quarter of a century, crowding out funding for HIV care, immunization programs, public health laboratories and other needs in California, Kaplan warned.
There’s a better option to fund important research: Senate Bill 895 by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-Francisco), which awaits Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature. It would put a $7.5-billion bond measure on the ballot in 2028 to fund competitive science and health research grants in the state. Kaplan said he worries that passing Proposition 38, a gargantuan funding source for a single field, could sour voters on a better bond measure to fund a wider range of research in an open, competitive manner.
The Proposition 38 campaign leans heavily on the heartbreaking stories of people suffering from diseases that new immunotherapy treatments might be able to cure. But in listening to these moving accounts, voters should remember what Proposition 38 actually is: an arguably deceptive measure to fund the pet project of one wealthy man, and in a way that betrays long-held standards of scientific openness.
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