State stem cell program facing tough times ahead

Sacramento Bee ^ | 8/31/7 | Christopher Thomas Scott

[SmithL]

It's been a rocky start for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and now the departure of its top scientist illustrates the difficulty it has had coming to terms with issues of politics, compensation and governance.

Voters approved Proposition 71 in 2004, creating the institute and authorizing it to pump nearly $300 million a year in bond money into the state's research laboratories.

The institute first had to break free of two years of lawsuits challenging its constitutionality. Then in April, President Zach Hall abruptly announced his resignation after a stormy meeting with the group that oversees the agency, the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee. The news was a surprise: The institute seemed to have finally found its footing, announcing the winners of a round of large research grants.

Last week, the other shoe dropped: Arlene Chiu, the top scientific officer responsible for running the institute's grants operation, resigned.

In August, the institute named an interim leader, Richard Murphy, former president of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla and a former member of the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee. Murphy's appointment as president begins Saturday and will last six months -- a short time in which to address five major challenges. Those challenges include:

• Staffing. Murphy should tend to the needs of the senior executives as the first priority. . . .

[SmithL]

About the writer:

• Christopher Thomas Scott was a candidate for the CIRM presidency and says he is not a candidate in the current presidential search. He is director of the Stanford University Program on Stem Cells in Society and senior research scholar at the Center for Biomedical Ethics.

[SmithL]

Your tax dollars at work, building bureaucracy.

[Publius6961]

Your tax dollars at work, building bureaucracy.

And politicizing science.

If we thought Global Warming was a boondogle...
California used to be such a great place.

[Kuksool]

If CA didn;t agree to spend so much on Embryonic Stem Cell Research, then perhaps Arnold would be able to balance the budget with his healthcare plans.

[Cicero]

The whole project is a crooked political boondoggle. No reputable scientist would agree to be involved, since fetal stem cells are far less promising than adult stem cells.

The entire purpose of the bond issue was to: a) lend political support for abortion by convincing people that killing babies is good for their health; b) inplicate people in killing babies by persuading them to vote for it; c) distribute tax-funded grant money to favored political clients.

There is no medical, scientific, or humanitarian justification for it. If fetal stem cell research had any future (laying aside the bitter moral consequences), then private money would be drawn into it.

[George W. Bush]

Good!

[Dumb_Ox]

If fetal stem cell research had any future (laying aside the bitter moral consequences), then private money would be drawn into it.

Even if there were a future for this, how much would treatments cost? The only widespread procedure involving embryonic manipulation, IVF, runs at about $20k a pop.