Public Stem Cell Research Funding Boon?

Executive Summary
The United States Congress and more than 28 state legislatures have considered spending billions of taxpayer dollars on stem cell research over the next several years. The National Institutes of Health has already committed billions. And in 2004, California voters approved the Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, also known as the Proposition 71 bond measure, which authorized the state to raise $3 billion over 10 years to fund such research. Though debates rage over the ethics of research using human embryonic stem cells, a more fundamental question has been ignored in this debate: Is stem cell research a sensible expenditure of taxpayer dollars? This is not a question of whether the research should be conducted, but whether public funding for it is justified.
Government programs, such as California's Proposition 71, are bureaucratic, wasteful, and mired in political controversy. And, because stem cell research is inherently speculative and politically controversial, the public would be best served if governments left it to the private sector. Each stem cell project is highly speculative, and it is not the place of government to gamble with taxpayers' money.