Deborah Ortiz, California State Senator, Senate District #6

One month after California Proposition 71 (the "Stem Cell Initiative") was enacted by the voters of California with a "Yes" vote just below 60%, a California State Senator has introduced legislation designed to correct some perceived shortcomings in this epochal, $6 billion investment in one particular bio-medical technology.

Recent articles have high-lighted the surprise some people have experienced when considering the actual details of the complex and lengthy legislation implemented through the initiative process by Stanford-trained, California Democratic Party insider and financier Robert Klein and his allies at a cost of $27,583,128.70, which was mostly used to pay for television commercials that deceptively promised almost-certain cures for terrible diseases from an unproven technology which at that time (and now) has yet to cure anyone of anything anywhere.

Even though some people may be "shocked, shocked" to find that the iron-clad legal boilerplate in Proposition 71 provides an unprecedented opportunity for massive self-dealing; shreds existing protections regarding both the public's ability to monitor the operations of the new, $3-billion dollar bio-medical bureaucracy created by the constitutional initiative and the right of human subjects to be protected from excessive experimental exuberance on the part of Prop. 71-financed embryonic stem cell researchers; burdens the taxpayers of California with $6 billion in financial obligations; and sets the stage for the mass exploitation worldwide of women in their role as "volunteer" human egg factories, all without any assurances that the California voter/taxpayers who've approved this measure will gain any tangible benefits either as investors or patients, these facts are already well-known to those who followed the campaign to pass Proposition 71 on various web sites published by Etopia Media News Networks, particularly in such compilations as "A 'Mostly No on 71' Sampler" and "More 'No on 71' attacks", published online on September 24th and October 23rd of 2004, respectively.

Some of California's leading newspapers have already editorialized on behalf of California State Senator Deborah Ortiz' "Proposition 71 Public Accountability Act" (SB 18).

The San Francisco Examiner published an Opinion article entitled "Proposition 71 needs reform" on December 7th, in which it said that "The Legislature should look for a way to inject these [Ortiz' SB 18] common-sense reforms into the state's funding of stem cell research." In an editorial entitled "State deserves a share of stem-cell benefits" published today, the San Francisco Chronicle calls for an appropriate division of whatever profits materialize through the State of California's investment in stem cell research through Proposition 71 between the venture capitalists and other private investors who paid less than $30 million of their own money to pass the measure and the citizen/taxpayers of California who are investing $6 billion of theirs to actually pay for the research that may eventually yield tens of billions of dollars in profits.

You can access an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) copy of Senator Ortiz' "Proposition 71 Public Accountability Act" (SB 18) by clicking here.