Your average reader of Fortune magazine has a household income of $347,500 and a net worth of $2.2 million. Nearly two-thirds of the readers are top management, and one out of three is on a corporate board.
An influential and important group, to say the least. All one million-plus of them were presented with the following in the Aug. 22 issue of the self-styled "world's premier business magazine:"
"THE STEM-CELL WAR -- Fighting for Their Lives --The folks who brought you Silicon Valley want to ignite a biotech boom, and California's Prop. 71, with $3 billion for stem-cell research, was supposed to be the match. They got a political conflagration instead."
Those are the headlines leading into the story by writer Betsy Morris -- a lengthy piece focusing heavily on California but weaving in national and international events as well. It is chockablock with tidbits.
On California stem cell chairman Robert Klein: "Relentless, manic and one of the best salesmen you'll ever meet."
On the selection of the California stem cell HQ: "In the 11th hour of an Olympic-like bidding contest, San Francisco snatched the plum from a dazed San Diego, compensating for an undistinguished second-story office on King Street with $18 million in free rent, conference rooms, and the like."
On the nature of the stem cell industry: Roughly 185 stem-cell companies exist in the world but "venture capital in the field is a mere $470 million."
On the future: Dana Cody, executive director of the Life Legal Defense Foundation, is quoted as saying, "I'd still like to see voters get educated (during the delays caused by litigation) and see some sort of grassroots effort to overturn the initiative."
The Fortune piece is definitely high-impact. But which way it falls – to the benefit of the stem cell agency or to its detriment – is difficult to say. There is enough fodder in it to fuel almost any point of view. But the article makes it clear that the agency has not had an easy course.
Here are a few more excerpts:
"When the stem-cell initiative passed on Election Day last November, the future looked bright. But by May the effort had slammed into a wall of opposition from the religious right and anti-tax groups, which stalled it with lawsuits."
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"Suddenly California became a mecca for biologists the world over. California universities—the same ones that gave birth to Hewlett-Packard, Sun, Google—started jockeying for position. Their best Ph.D.s began dreaming about the possibilities. The same characters who gave us Silicon Valley—the Sand Hill Road venture capital crowd—began mobilizing to deliver the next tech revolution. 'Biology is the next wave of science to make a big difference, and early-development stem cells are the mother lode,' says Richard Mahoney, retired CEO of Monsanto, a leader in agricultural biotech. 'Nobody wants to be left behind.'"
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"What has happened in California shows how unpredictably complex and thorny this issue can be. Despite all the momentum, Prop. 71 has stalled and landed in the courts. Lawsuits have blocked the issuance of bonds that would fund the stem-cell research. Now the initiative's backers must scramble to arrange alternative financing and fight the legal battles as they try to judge grant applications. For the moment an odd but potent little army of pro-lifers and anti-tax groups, represented by the Life Legal Defense Foundation—the same organization that provided legal assistance to Terri Schiavo's parents—has thwarted all the Hollywood stars, the deep-pocketed venture capitalists, the Nobel Prize winners (40 of them), and patient-advocacy groups (70 of them) that endorsed the research. "
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"The International Society for Stem Cell Research annual conference, held at the San Francisco Marriott last month, should have been a triumphant affair. Instead, a siege mentality had set in. 'We are a blue city in a blue state," Mayor Newsom assured the crowd of scientists. The underlying message: You will not be considered pariahs here. In an urgent speech, Bob Klein beseeched them not to give up. 'This is a very small window of opportunity. We must act quickly, or the forces against us will change the tide,' he said."
Online access to the article is limited to Fortune subscribers.
(A footnote on the Fortune demographics: There is a difference between the number of readers and paid circulation, which is 918,739. Readership is substantially larger because of a pass-along rate, but Fortune did not report online its calculation for its readership.)
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