Two years ago, Evan Snyder, a developmental and child neurologist, was working at the Harvard Medical School, transplanting neural stem cells into the damaged brains and spinal cords of mice and other animals and watching them reconstitute tissue or recover function. “I had just moved to better lab space,” Snyder recalled in June at the Argent Hotel in downtown San Francisco, where he'd gone to attend the Biotechnology Industry Organization's annual conference (BIO 2004). At the time, President Bush had recently announced strict limits on federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research, and Snyder, like many scientists, sensed the federal government's troubled and hesitant relationship with a field he considered deeply promising.

AUGUSTA, MAINE -- In Latin, the word dirigo, Maine's state motto, means "I lead" or "I direct." On a sleepy summer Wednesday at the Maine State House, with the legislature out of session, this slogan at first seems out of place. Scattered visitors waltz into the capitol without passing through security, having parked their cars in the same small lot as the few legislators who are here working overtime. The low-key scene seems fitting for a state of 1.2 million people, one that sometimes gets cut out of the top right corner of U.S. weather maps. Still, Maine shouldn't be underestimated. Just ask U.S. pharmaceutical companies: Several years ago they failed to take this state seriously, and the mistake could cost them a fortune in profits.