Missouri

On November 6, 2006, Missourians, by a slim majority, voted to pass a constitutional amendment that would allow Missouri’s stem cell researchers to conduct any research permitted under federal law and checked the state’s ability to prohibit such research. Missouri became the first state to make stem cell research legal via a constitutional amendment. But far from making Missouri a haven for the brightest stem cell researchers and a magnet for the biotechnology industry, the amendment’s passage turned the state into a political battleground that made scientists leery of relocating to the state and prompted the Stowers Institute for Medical Research to suspend a planned $300 million expansion. Although researchers at the Stowers Institute and Missouri’s research universities have continued to engage in stem cell ...