CIRM won't give up on eggs for cloning-based work

In the first draft of its revised strategic plan [PDF], the California stem cell research agency indicates that it will continue its recent push for women's eggs for cloning-based stem cell research, perhaps paying if necessary:

The second level of activity [concerning materials procurement policies of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM)] involves re-evaluation of existing policy regarding the procurement of oocytes for research. Some observers have suggested that Medical and Ethical Standards regulations have constrained efforts to develop stem cell lines through somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). To discuss this important issue further, CIRM will convene a meeting with a range of participants, including those directly affected by oocyte donation and those with special interests in this process.

President Alan Trounson and board chair Robert Klein have led the charge, going public with their efforts at a meeting of the research standards advisory group in February and one of the full board in June. There, they proposed work-arounds of the prohibition on paying for eggs, one of the few ethical standards explicit in Proposition 71, which was authored by Klein to create the CIRM.

The work of Hwang Woo-Suk, however scandalous it was, did indicate that the supply of eggs may not be the problem. He burned through over 2200 eggs, some of them acquired in illegal and coercive ways. Yet Hwang, a skilled yet ethically-challenged researcher, was not able to produce clonal embryos, much less stem cell lines. And even if eggs were the limiting factor, do we wish to lower our agreed-upon ethical standards any time they impede research?

In any case, cloning-based stem cell research is a very speculative, largely unsuccessful path, and one whose goals are rapidly being achieved by an alternative method, cellular reprogramming, or iPS.