Aggregated News
The state Supreme Court yesterday delivered a final, fatal blow to the legal challenges that have prevented California from issuing bonds to fund stem cell research since 2005.
The state's high court declined to review a lower court ruling that upheld the constitutionality of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, created when 59 percent of voters approved a $3 billion ballot measure in November 2004.
"The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine has lift-off today," said Robert Klein, a lawyer and patient advocate who wrote the initiative known as Proposition 71 and later was chosen to lead the institute's governing board.
Proposition 71 was promoted as an avenue for California taxpayers to circumvent federal funding restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research, which proponents say has the potential to lead to therapies for some of the world's most devastating diseases.
The research is controversial because it destroys human embryos. Taxpayer advocacy groups with ties to individuals who oppose abortion had challenged the constitutionality of the initiative, and the stem cell institute it created, because the money it would be distributing was...