CGS-authored
AFTER A FIRST YEAR THAT veered off in too many bad directions, California's budding stem cell agency has started 2006 on more promising footing. At its meeting earlier this month, the governing board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine adopted admirable ethics standards and devised a fair formula for sharing future revenue.
The institute's ethics standards, which include requirements to inform potential egg donors of risks they face, are now higher than those recommended last year by the National Academy of Sciences. They should go a long way toward reassuring a public shaken by the scandal surrounding a South Korean stem cell researcher who faked many of his "breakthroughs" and coerced women into donating eggs.
The institute's rules for sharing future revenue from stem cell discoveries with the state fulfill a promise implicit in Proposition 71, the $3-billion bond measure to fund embryonic stem cell research. A few members of the governing board had balked at making provisions for the poor and uninsured to receive stem cell treatments made possible by California's investment. But the institute earlier this month...
The institute's ethics standards, which include requirements to inform potential egg donors of risks they face, are now higher than those recommended last year by the National Academy of Sciences. They should go a long way toward reassuring a public shaken by the scandal surrounding a South Korean stem cell researcher who faked many of his "breakthroughs" and coerced women into donating eggs.
The institute's rules for sharing future revenue from stem cell discoveries with the state fulfill a promise implicit in Proposition 71, the $3-billion bond measure to fund embryonic stem cell research. A few members of the governing board had balked at making provisions for the poor and uninsured to receive stem cell treatments made possible by California's investment. But the institute earlier this month...