Stem Cell Politics: The Michigan Initiative
My name is Sean Morrison and I direct the University of Michigan Center for Stem Cell Biology
The state of Michigan had been one of the states in this country
with the most restrictive laws when it comes to embryonic stem cell research.
It was legal in Michigan to throw embryos away that had been created
during in vitro fertilization
and in fact, for a variety of reasons, large numbers of embryos
are routinely discarded from those clinics
that cannot be used for fertility treatment.
So, it was legal to throw embryos away,
but it was not legal to take the embryos that were being thrown away
and use them to drive embryonic stem cell lines
that could be used in medical research that might one day help patients.
This was really blocking the ability of stem cell research to develop
in the state of Michigan in a way that other states
with major research universities didn't have to content with.
So we, within the University of Michigan,
worked to try to improve those state laws.
Initially, by trying to work through the legislature,
and when that didn't work, we went straight to the people of Michigan,
knowing that there was broad bipartisan support among the people of the state
for expanded embryonic stem cell research,
much like in other states.
It turns out that we as scientists have to be involved
in the public policy process
because if you're not involved, you get bad laws for bad reasons.
Policies end up being created partly out of ignorance,
partly out of other agendas that can oftentimes
destroy opportunites to make people's lives better.
So, during the proposal to campaign, we spent a lot of time
thinking about how to explain what stems cell research really was,
what was at stake, how it could be done more effectively,
and how it would potentially help the people of Michigan.
Part of that process was in polling and doing focus groups
which tried to understand what the public understood,
what the public thought about the research,
what aspects of the research needed to be explained more,
and how we could best help people to understand.
And in that process, there were a lot of surprises about what the public really understood,
what the public was worried about, and how we could best understand it.
Unfortunately, our opponents were also, of course, doing polling and focus groups,
except they were looking for what they could use to most frighten the public‚Äî
to cause people to not support the ballot proposal.
Politics 101 is if you want people to vote against an issue, you frighten and confuse them.
And so, sadly, the opponents of the proposal, to campaign,
when they realized in their own focus groups and polling that
none of the true messages about what the proposal was really about
actually resonated with public and actually frightened them,
they decided to run a 100% false campaign
where they made stuff up to frighten and confuse the public that just wasn't true.
Their first message was, "Vote against Proposal 2 because it'll increase your taxes."
Well, there was no funding associated with the proposal.
There was nothing - it had nothing to do with taxes.
But, they learned in their polling that people were frightened of new taxes.
Their second message was that crazy scientists wanted to mix human DNA with animal eggs
to try to clone half-people, half-animals.
and they would dress actors up in cow suits and put them on TV
to try to frighten people about this brave new world
that they would create by voting for Proposal 2.
In fact, again, it was obviously a false and ludicrous suggestion,
particularly given that cloning remains illegal in the state of Michigan.
Prop 2 dealt with the ability to give patients the right to donate for research
embryos that were created by in vitro fertilization
and that would otherwise be discarded if not donated for research.
So it put that right back into patients hands,
as it is in most other states within the country,
to decide what they do with their own embryos,
rather than leaving those decisions with the state legislature.
Finally, they argued that stem cell research was akin to the Tuskegee syphilis experiments,
which was a terrible period in the history of American medical research
in which minority sharecroppers were victimized in the course of medical research experiments.
But, of course, that was a turning point in the development
of our current notions about medical ethics and patient protection,
and nothing like that could ever happen again,
as a result of Federal laws, and other kinds of state laws,
and the more sophisticated notions we have about what medical research should be.
And so there was no truth to that claim,
but yet they felt that had an opportunity to frighten the voters.
Well, there was widespread coverage in the media,
partly because of the efforts of scientists to explain what the research was really about
and why the opposition claims were false.
There was widespread coverage in the media about how false the opposition claim was
and it eventually, during the campaign, engendered anger in the general population
about how this special interest group was trying to defeat this proposal
by tricking the voters into voting against their own self interest
and against their own values.
What we learned as a result of that campaign
is that hope and truth prevail over fear and misinformation
and that scientists can play a really critical role
in making sure that the right thing happens in the end
by being clear and by spending the time to explain the research to the general public.
One of the interesting things that we learned
as a result of the polling that we did prior to the campaign
was that we asked people to rank sources of information in terms of credibility.
And, we listed ten different sources of information:
Your friends and family, your physician, your pastor, university professors, etc.
And, number one in terms of credibility was university professors
University professors are perceived as people who are in the business of education,
and who are trying to explain things to the public, and so it's important for us to get engaged.
And as a consequence, we had the presumption of credibility
when we engaged with the merchants of fear and misinformation in the debate.
And so, we owned the moral high ground in this debate
because we had the capacity to defend our position by telling the truth
and the more the truth came out during the debate,
the more likely we were to win.
Whereas the opposition had to lie in order to
convince people to vote in the way that they wanted.
Well, according to every rule of thumb in Michigan politics, we should have lost that campaign.
The rule of thumb is that if you want people to vote yes on a proposal,
you have to outspend the opponents 2:1.
Well, it was 1:1 because we were up against a well-funded opposition.
The rule of thumb is that you have to go into the election day
with about a 10% lead in the polls because undecided voters
break disproporionately to No on election day.
And yet, we were going in neck and neck into election day.
So, the day before the election, I saw comments from 10 different political pundits,
9 of whom said the proposal was going to go down to defeat.
And yet, three different news organizations did exit polling
throughout the state on the day of the election,
and in every case, the exit polls were so clearly trending toward the Yes side
that all three news organizations unofficially called it in our favor
when the polls closed at 8pm that night.
So it was a remarkable experience because we could see
that when you could explain things clearly to the public,
the public would have an opportunity to really
make up their mind based on the merits of the issue
and to see through the tactics of fear and confusion
that often pervade political debates.
And going forward in this area, it will be particularly important
for more scientists to be engaged in these kinds of processes,
both to defend the public investment in medical research,
as well as to create effective laws.
And as young people come up through the system and become scientists,
for them to understand that part of their job is
not just to work in the laboratory and to do their work,
but to explain to the public why it's valuable for the public to invest in that work.
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