The cost of proposed state-funded stem cell research in New Jersey keeps going up and up. Over the last month, at the behest of former Gov. Codey, it jumped from $145 million to $200 million to build two stem cell research facilities.

The Senate voted to approve the package on March 20. Now it's up to the Assembly to vote, probably sometime in April or May.

With help from Codey's Assembly factotum on this issue - Neil Cohen, D-Union, it looks like a third facility is on the horizon and what really makes informed observers tremble is Cohen's weird "New Jersey and Stem Cell, perfect together" take on this whole issue.

"New Jersey needs to be one large laboratory (with) a network of as many facilities as possible," he was quoted as telling the Assembly Health and Senior Services Committee.

Strange but true, the committee members listened and approved plans for a third research facility in Camden.

All this in an effort, Cohen and Codey claim, to attract simply the best scientific minds in the world. This is a notion that strikes Adolf Schimpf as preposterous considering the fact that other states - including California and Massachusetts - are already way ahead of Jersey where stem cell research is concerned.

"Say I'm a top scientist in the field," Schimpf remarked the other day. "Say I've got a choice as to where I want to do my research. Where do you think I'm going, Camden or Palo Alto?"

Schimpf, chairman of Letters for Life, and the vice president of business affairs at Delbarton School, Morristown, is a retired pharmaceutical professional with expertise in cell cloning.

He offered testimony at the March 13 State Assembly hearing on A2828, the bill that authorizes $200 million in tax funds for construction of the facilities that would conduct stem cell research in this state.

His objection to tax funding of these institutions is the same as mine, the same as hundreds of thousands if not millions of us: State officials have clearly indicated that embryonic stem cells will be used in the research.

Like Schimpf, many, many of us, who, by the way overwhelmingly support adult (non-embryonic research), agree that if the pharmaceutical industry wants to engage in such murky - not to mention unproven research - they can pay for it themselves.

Schimpf told the Assembly committee that the implications of this enormous fund raising effort are clear: "The pharmaceutical industry will not take the risk of investing in embryonic stem cell (research). The obstacles to using embryonic stem cells are clearly demonstrated by the fact that not one successful cure has been found from their use while there are hundreds of results from the use of adult (non-embryonic) cells."

While the moral and ethical ramifications of using embryonic stem cells might not be enough to stop the juggernaut, maybe cold hard fiscal realism will.

Schimpf, citing his professional experience in the pharmaceutical industry, pointed out several incorrect assumptions in the state's projects. A report prepared by Rutgers University to justify the research centers has created the impression that 2,600 new jobs would be created.

In actuality, he said, considering salary levels paid to researchers, the funding provides for less than 200 jobs over a seven year period and then only if an additional $236 million is approved by voters.

The Rutgers report, he said, also presumes that New Jersey will able to attract the previously mentioned top-notch researchers to the new facilities. But the money will not be enough to create state-of-the-art facilities which can attract researchers, he said.

Based on his years of direct involvement in the pharmaceutical industry with cost projection methods, Schimpf estimates it will take from 10 to 20 years and a cost of $2 to $5 billion to achieve any kind of results with embryonic cells. "Most scientists believe that success will never be achieved," he said.

"The cost of treatment charged to patients under this projection would be so high that the average person would never be able to afford it," he said. "Pharmaceutical companies know that they would never be able to recoup their investment. As a consequence, the industry will continue to avoid involvement with embryonic stem cell research, leaving taxpayers with the burden of funding dead-end research."