CGS-authored
IN APPROVING Proposition 71 last year, Californians agreed to invest $3 billion of public money in stem-cell research.
It is entirely reasonable for taxpayers to demand that the people making decisions on the distribution of that money be free of conflicts of interest. It is also only fair for taxpayers to expect that this project, if as successful as we all hope, should provide at least a modest return to the public treasuries.
However, the proposition itself did not provide anything close to adequate assurances that this state-financed project would be conducted in an open and forthright way, or that it would produce a public benefit.
Sen. Deborah Ortiz, a Sacramento Democrat who was an early supporter of stem-cell research, has been pushing the governing board of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine to tighten its conflict-of-interest rules and to make a commitment to make treatments, therapies and products that result from these state-issued grants available and affordable to low-income residents.
Ortiz has been making progress, mostly because of her proposed ballot measure, SCA13, which would etch those "sunshine" and...
It is entirely reasonable for taxpayers to demand that the people making decisions on the distribution of that money be free of conflicts of interest. It is also only fair for taxpayers to expect that this project, if as successful as we all hope, should provide at least a modest return to the public treasuries.
However, the proposition itself did not provide anything close to adequate assurances that this state-financed project would be conducted in an open and forthright way, or that it would produce a public benefit.
Sen. Deborah Ortiz, a Sacramento Democrat who was an early supporter of stem-cell research, has been pushing the governing board of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine to tighten its conflict-of-interest rules and to make a commitment to make treatments, therapies and products that result from these state-issued grants available and affordable to low-income residents.
Ortiz has been making progress, mostly because of her proposed ballot measure, SCA13, which would etch those "sunshine" and...