logo of the Center for Genetics and Society------------Jesse Reynolds, Program Director, CGS

The Center for Genetics and Society (CGS), headquartered in Oakland, California, is, in its own words:

"a nonprofit information and public affairs organization working to encourage responsible uses and effective societal governance of the new human genetic and reproductive technologies. We work with a growing network of scientists, health professionals, civil society leaders, and others.

"The Center supports benign and beneficent medical applications of the new human genetic and reproductive technologies, and opposes those applications that objectify and commodify human life and threaten to divide human society."

CGS is a self-professed pro-choice, progressive organization that opposed the passage of Proposition 71, the California constitutional amendment and Stem Cell initiative, recently approved by California voters by a 3-to-2 vote. (For more about Proposition 71, click on these links: Stem Cells #1, Stem Cells #2, Stem Cells #3, Stem Cells #4, and Stem Cells #5).

CGS Program Director Jesse Reynolds is a graduate in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management of the University of California at Berkeley. During the political campaign that led up to the passage of Proposition 71, Mr. Reynolds appeared on California Politics Today to discuss CGS's anti-Proposition 71 position. You can hear him doing that by clicking here.

With the "Independent Citizens' Oversight Committee" ("ICOC") (compare Voltaire on the "Holy Roman Empire" as "neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire"), whose existence and control of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), putative dispenser of $3 billion in grants in support of embryonic stem cell research, was authorized by the passage of Proposition 71, planning to hold its first, organizational, meeting on Friday, December 16, 2004, Mr. Reynolds spoke again with California Politics Today about how his group believes the stem cell research to be financed by California taxpayers under Proposition 71 ought to proceed and about how the ICOC ought to proceed in establishing and carrying out its operations.

You can listen to Jesse Reynolds of the Center for Genetics and Society discussing ways of correcting perceived flaws in the structure of California's embryonic stem cell research effort as authorized by Proposition 71 by clicking here.