Boston (AP)  -- Gov. Deval Patrick, House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi and Senate President Therese Murray are taking a road trip to San Diego next month for a major biotechnology conference. But the way things are shaping up, they could end up as the proverbial skunks at a lawn party.

The three leaders are hoping to use the state's $1 billion life sciences initiative, a bill they expect will be law by then, to lure biotech investment to Massachusetts.

Yet the industry is rebelling against them because of a provision in a separate health care cost-control bill being pushed by the Senate president.

The provision would ban gifts of any kind from pharmaceutical manufacturers to doctors, their family members or their employees -- right down to writing pens with the brand names of drugs on them.

BIO, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, wrote DiMasi on April 30 that "the gift-ban provision threatens research and treatment for patients in the commonwealth."