On the betting portal Kalshi, the probability that California proposition 38 will be approved by voters this November is 49 percent. If it passes, the state will issue $8.4 billion in bonds to fund immunology and immunotherapy research.
I have ultimately decide to vote No, but it was a close call. $8.4 billion is a lot of money for a specific research area, and would be likely to make a difference. It’d be spent over 20 years, which is the annualized equivalent of $420 million per year. This would make the budget of Proposition 38 comparable to other large biomedical funding bodies like Cancer Research UK or the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation, which are well regarded in the biomedical research field, but also have a broader remit.
There are several problems with Proposition 38, which I will get to in a moment. But is a law not being perfect a reason for opposing it? Isn’t the correct question voters should ask, would we be better off with or without this law?
As it turns out, answering this last question isn’t straightforward with Proposition 38. The proposition, as currently written, is too specific in terms of where the funding would go. It’s not at all clear, and in fact unlikely, that immunology and immunotherapy research is really the area of biomedical research that needs additional research funding the most.
Half of the funding would go to one specific, unproven research institute, the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy. CIII was co-founded by billionaire Gary Michelson, who also chairs the board and has donated $120 million to CIII. He is also the biggest funder of the Yes on 38 campaign. This isn’t disqualifying, but I dislike that the proposition obscures this fact. The bigger problem is that CIII is not just an arbitrary research institution, but also that it has not yet shown that it can deliver, even when given generous funding.
A much better way to write such a proposition would be to allocate the money to the biggest unmet need in biomedical research, and to specify that it would go to the researchers who are most likely to make the biggest difference. Pre-specifying both doesn’t make senses unless the goal for the backers is to fund the same organization that they are invested in.
Several well-regarded organizations that fund and carry out biomedical research are in favor of Proposition 38, including the Michael J. Fox Foundation and the ALS Association. I suspect that they see the problems with this proposition, but because they’re constrained by their mission statements, are unable to oppose any increase in research funding. It’s close to impossible for them to say, we support increased biomed research funding, but not this specifically.
The California proposition process is ultimately about prioritization. This November, there are 14 propositions on the ballot. It’s impossible for voters to carry out cost-benefit analyses for every one of them. Instead, we have to use heuristics to decide what makes sense, and one reasonable heuristic is, has this proposition been formulated in such a way that the money is well spent? On this, Proposition 38 falls short, and this is the reason why I voted against it.
