Doyle commits to biotech, stem cell science

Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle pledged his support March 5 to helping Wisconsin’s biotechnology industry and to blunting legislative attacks on stem cell science.

At a meeting of the Wisconsin Biotechnology Association held at UW–Madison’s Genetics-Biotechnology Center, Doyle cited biotechnology as a pathway for Wisconsin to regain its economic health.

Addressing a campus audience of Wisconsin biotechnology executives, university administrators, and faculty scientists and entrepreneurs, Doyle says, “You are at the center of what we need to do to get the economy growing. We can make Wisconsin the center of biotechnology industry not just for the country, but for the world.”

Doyle recognizes current and historic contributions by the university to the state’s economic well-being and promises to veto legislation that would criminalize some aspects of biomedical science, notably bills aimed at curtailing research with human embryonic stem cells.

Those are “bills that would set the economy of this state back decades. There will be bills that will come to my desk that will put all that work at risk. Those bills will be vetoed,” Doyle says.

He says developments in stem-cell research not only have important economic implications for Wisconsin, but will save lives.