By Mike Shields
KHI News Service
TOPEKA, July 16
Embryonic stem cell research isn”t the only bioscience issue reverberating in Kansas politics but almost all of them in some way or other have connection with Jim and Virginia Stowers and the research institute they founded in Kansas City in 1994, which now has an endowment of nearly $2 billion.
The Stowers are each cancer survivors and he is founder of what became American Century Investments, a leading asset management firm. They have used their wealth to advance bioscience research and have pledged to spend more in Kansas City, though recently announced they were putting a planned research expansion on hold.
Their names were invoked by Sen. David Wysong, R-Mission Hills, on the floor of the Kansas Senate in April during debate over the omnibus appropriations bill, which at the time included a House proviso dealing with University of Kansas Medical Center affiliations. Key Kansas City civic and philanthropic leaders have a plan to make the city a national bioscience hub and unimpeded affiliations by the KU Medical Center are seen as critical to that plan, which also builds on the Stowers” research efforts.
“This is a huge mistake,” Wysong said of the proviso. “Contacts in the Kansas City area have told me that the Stowers family says they won”t invest any more in the bioscience effort if we pass this proviso whether it is vetoed or notThis is one of the biggest decisions this body will ever makeNow they”ll (the Stowers) take their next $1 billion someplace else.”
Gov. Kathleen Sebelius vetoed the proviso.
But last month, amid reports that efforts were building to roll back the Missouri constitutional amendment, the Stowers announced they were putting on hold a planned 100-acre expansion in Kansas City and transferring about $850 million from the institute”s Missouri endowments to a nonprofit Delaware corporation called Stowers Resource Management, Inc.
-Mike Shields is a staff writer for KHI News Service, which specializes in coverage of health issues facing Kansans. He can be reached at
mshields@khi.org
or at 785-233-5443, ext. 123.