I have here a “blast fax” - one of those spam fax that spew out of your own fax machine overnight at your expense. This one is from some no-name stock market tout, puffing the latest greatest thing. Normally it would be trash, but just as I was crumpling it up I happened to notice some of the buzzwords. You don’t get a whole lot of bioethics stock recommendations.

Stem Cell Research Without All the Controversy! . . .

It seems like for every positive application scientists believe will come from [stem cell] research, moral issues counter them. If only there was some way to bypass the moral issues and allow this life-saving research to continue . . .

That’s precisely what [Worthless Biotech Company] offers. [Worthless Biotech Company] is the emerging leader in a radical new process of collecting, processing and storing of stem cells from something called cord blood. . . .

Stem-cell research could lead to treatments for two-dozen degenerative diseases such as cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. . . . [Worthless Biotech Company] is at the forefront of saving lives - which translates naturally to a healthy profit. . . .

And so on. Excitingly, the “analyst” is predicting a 500% increase in stock price over the next year!

The overhype is familiar to both the worlds of stem-cell research and penny-stock flogging (in particular, Alzheimer’s is widely agreed to be a poor candidate for stem cell therapy, but repeatedly comes up in discussion, even from people who should know better). And the casual observation that “saving lives . . . translates naturally to a healthy profit” says volumes about biotech as a business. This may be the first time I’ve seen ethical controversy cited as a distinct investment factor, however.

Looking further into this subject, though, I found almost exactly the same comment made by a more respectable analyst. Indeed, it’s hard to deny that public agitation surrounding a company’s technology would be a factor investors would be concerned about - it’s not unreasonable to base investment decisions on the presence or absence of such controversy. (Doing so can even be a form of activism, as witness the “divestment” campaigns aimed at various reprehensible governments.) But to see issues of great moral import appearing as line-items on an investment analysis summary somehow seems as startling as the equation of lifesaving and profit. What this tout sheet seems to imply is that there are investors scouring the biotech stocks for companies that occupy some specific niche at the intersection of new technology and low moral controversy - a form of “technical analysis” that even the most dizzy-eyed day trader has probably not considered.

I don’t know that I have any great moral lesson to draw from this. Seems odd, though.