Those linked to stem cell board received more than $2.1 billion

Over the last 15 years, California’s stem cell agency has spent $2.7 billion on research ranging from arthritis and blindness to cancer and incontinence.  The vast majority of the money has gone to enterprises that have ties to members of the agency’s governing board.

All of which is legal. All of which is not likely to change.

Eight out of every ten dollars that agency has handed out have been collected by 25 institutions such as Stanford University, multiple campuses of the University of California and scientific research organizations.  Their combined total exceeds $2.1 billion.

All 25 have links — directly or indirectly — to past or present members of the board of the agency, according to an analysis by the California Stem Cell Report, which has covered the agency since 2005.

“They (the agency’s directors) make proposals to themselves, essentially, regarding what should be funded. They cannot exert independent oversight,” says Harold Shapiro, who led a 2012 study of the agency by the prestigious Institute of Medicine (IOM), which is now called the National Academy of Medicine. ...