Stem Cell Lines and Paid-for Eggs: Stem Cell Agency Delays Action on Easing Restrictions
By David Jensen,
California Stem Cell Report
| 07. 24. 2013
A key panel of the California stem cell agency today balked at approving a plan to ease restrictions on using stem cell lines derived from women who were paid for their eggs.
The proposal had been scheduled to be taken up tomorrow by the governing board of the $3 billion agency, but
the board's standards working group delayed action.
In response to a question, Kevin McCormack, a spokesman for the agency, said in an email,
“It was felt that more discussion was needed before moving to a vote so another meeting is going to be scheduled.”
In 2006, the CIRM governing board approved regulations that banned the use of CIRM funds for stem cells lines derived using compensation. That rule would be modified under today's plan, which would permit the CIRM governing board to approve the use of such lines following a staff study evaluating scientific and ethical issues. Their use would be allowed if the lines would “advance CIRM's mission.”
The delay came after four organizations, including the Center for Genetics and Society in Berkeley, argued that the plan...
Related Articles
By Emma McDonald Kennedy
| 07.11.2024
Louise Perry’s recent article in The Spectator cautions against “The quiet return of eugenics,” a threat she locates in preimplantation genetic testing for polygenic disorders. The technology is billed as a way for parents undergoing IVF to select which embryo to implant based on information about each embryo’s genetic risk factors and traits. These reports, she says, give parents “a very full picture of the adult that embryo could become”––from their child’s risk of developing different diseases to their “likely...
GATTACA was released in 1997, but — remarkably — is even more relevant now than it was then, as the technologies whose social implications it explores have developed considerably.
On Thursday, June 13, the California Film Institute presented GATTACA to a sold-out house at the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center as part of their Science on Screen series. CGS Associate Director Katie Hasson offered framing for the film and participated in a Q+A discussion.
The film’s plot explicitly involves...
By Ellie Kincaid, Retraction Watch | 06.18.2024
Nature has retracted a 2002 paper from the lab of Catherine Verfaillie purporting to show a type of adult stem cell could, under certain circumstances, “contribute to most, if not all, somatic cell types.”
The retracted article, “Pluripotency of...