Governor Jim Doyle

Welcomes us to Wisconsin, where sun and 70 degrees are normative.

It was right here that Jamie Thomson and a few other brilliant researchers made the discoveries that changed the way we think about medicine and health.

Here's a quick story. I was in NYC with Michael J Fox, and we had met with some of the researchers there . . . he told me that when he got on the plane to Madison he felt like he was making a pilgrimage--going to the place where incredible breakthroughs have been made.

We feel very honored to have played such an important role in this accomplishment. I get to brag. We're not just home to Jamie Thomson; we have 40 stem cell researchers, and they're cited more frequently than any other team in the literature.

We've got the institute for medical research associated with the school of public health that will make it possible to move therapies faster from concept to patients.

The Milwaukee medical college has also created a program in stem cell research, so it's not just happening in Madison.

When Forbes named the 12 revolutionaries in stem cell science, 2 of them came from Wisconsin.

The private Morbridge institute will allow our scientists to work directly with the private sector . . . we'll have collaboration.

We now have 34,000 people working in bio-technology, contributing $9B to our economy.

Like lots of you, we've fought through some very significant hostility in our legislature. I'm proud to say that in this state the voices of our families were heard, and many of them are here in this room. We had help from other states; but stem cell research was never slowed down in Wisconsin.

The battle here is over. In Michigan there is a battle going on right now; voters will decide in six weeks whether or not they want to allow hESc research in their state.

Federal funding has been flat since 2002; we need to give our researchers the resources they need to do their work.

The political battle in Wisconsin over stem cell research ended with the election of a governor who supported it. Nationally the same thing can happen. I want to make sure that we have a president who rescinds the restriction on NIH funding as one of his first acts.

We have to decide whether personal ideologies must triumph over science. One of the most harmful things to come out of the conversation in the last few years is the perception that scientists operate outside of moral boundaries.

Your work has the capacity to heal and to alleviate human suffering. Please let the public know that we're not talking about mad, evil guys in a lab . . . that these are well-considered and balanced decisions being made.

We in Wisconsin are prepared to make significant investments into companies that are making practical applications out of stem cells. How does it get better than saving human lives while growing your economy? That's what we've worked hard to build here in Wisconsin.

I'm often asked if Wisconsin is going to "lose" in the competition to create therapies. This isn't football. This isn't a competition. The breakthroughs that happened here led to more of the same elsewhere; breakthroughs elsewhere will lead to more of the same here.

Wisconsin is going to be a major factor in this research for many years to come.