! VOTER ALERT ! VOTER ALERT !

James and Virginia Stowers
James and Virginia Stowers have contributed $25+ million in an attempt to buy Constitutional Amendment 2 (Missouri Ethics Commission filings, 2006).

Missouri Taxpayers
Under Amendment 2, Missouri taxpayers will provide ever-increasing funds to any institution that does stem cell research or cloning, including the Stowers Institute For Medical Research (proposed Amendment 2, sections 5 and 7).

Stowers Institute For Medical Research
Tax-exempt entity
Under Amendment 2, the Stowers Institute will be constitutionally entitled to receive ever-increasing taxpayer funding with no legislative oversight whatsoever. James and Virginia Stowers are directors of the Stowers Institute (Stowers Institute Annual Report, 2005).

BioMed Valley Partnership (BVP)
Tax-exempt entity
The Stowers Institute is a partner in the BioMed Valley Partnership. "One of the [partnership] requirements will be that the Institute turn over all of its future scientific discoveries to BioMed Valley Discovery," a for-profit Delaware Corporation. (The Stowers Report, Fall 2002)

BioMed Valley Corporation (BVC)
Tax-exempt entity
BioMed Valley Corporation manages the BioMed Valley Partnership. The Stowers Institute controls BioMed Valley Corporation through its control of the board of directors. "SIMR [Stowers Insitute For Medical Research] has the right to appoint as many... directors as necessary for SIMR to represent a majority of the board of directors" of BioMed Valley Corporation. (Stowers Institute Annual Report, 2005)

BioMed Valley Discoveries, Inc. (BVD)
For-profit corporation
BioMed Valley Discoveries, Inc., the for-profit Delaware Corporation that will receive the "future scientific discoveries" of the Stowers Institute, "is wholly owned by BVC" (Stowers Annual Report, 2005). BioMed Valley Discoveries, Inc. "will have the exclusive right to seek, patent, develop, and market all the discoveries arising from the laboratories of the research partners" (The Stowers Report, Fall 2002). The Stowers Institute controls BVD through its control of BVC.

The net effect of this is that Missouri tax dollars will fund research whose profits will go to a for-profit corporation controlled by the directors of the Stowers Institute.

BioMed Valley Discoveries, Inc. is effectively a risk-free venture capital company, because Missouri taxpayers, who will get nothing, will fund the high-risk research. Any discoveries are transferred to the for-profit BioMed Valley Discoveries, Inc. Because BVD is a for-profit corporation, private individuals and entities as yet unknown will be able to share in any pool of profits from its activities at the discretion of the controlling directors, that is, the then directors of the Stowers Institute.