Abstract
Proponents describe stem Cell Replacement Therapy and related technologies to be a significant step forward for medicine. However, due to the inherent ethical problems in human Embryonic Stem Cell Research (hESC), it is strictly regulated around the world. The US has passed at the federal and state level, both supportive and restrictive laws over the years. The changing legislative environment at the state and federal levels has created a situation whereby researchers have to choose whether and where to carry out this research. By exploiting the temporal and spatial heterogeneity and legislative shocks, we assess if the affected scientists have voted with their feet, leaving the state or country imposing restrictive rules and whether hESC research has clustered geographically. We find that most of the hESC research is carried out in supportive states, and significant legislative changes have had a minor but noticeable effect on relocation choices. Most importantly, the research has moved to supportive states. This result suggests that several state-level interventions (supportive), which were opposed to federal laws (restrictive), have counteracted each other.
Highlights
There is little doubt about the potential for stem cell-derived therapies to tackle many hitherto incurable diseases
We see that only 1.8–2.7% of Stem Cell researchers work for commercial entities, which is below the 3.8% we find the in the general scientist population
Before we address the impact of the two primary legislative intervention, i.e., Bush Ban and Proposition 71, we will characterize how the Stem Cell research population is distributed across the US
Summary
There is little doubt about the potential for stem cell-derived therapies to tackle many hitherto incurable diseases (e.g., neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson or Alzheimer). We look at two significant and sudden legislative interventions, i.e., the Bush Funding Ban (federal level) and Proposition 71 in California (state level) To address this question, we compile a comprehensive dataset of disambiguated authors, their affiliations and the text of their publications. We compile a comprehensive dataset of disambiguated authors, their affiliations and the text of their publications With this extensive dataset on individual level scientist mobility, we estimate the impact of several policies on the relocation choice of US hESC researchers over a decade (1998–2008). This period covers the early beginnings of the field up to the Bush administration, which saw a federal moratorium on funding. Our analysis, beyond the specific issue of hESC research laws, can be viewed as a case study of how state laws have been used to counterbalance federal regulation
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