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Center for Genetics and Society (CGS) Program Director Jesse Reynolds today called on the Independent Citizens' Oversight Committee (ICOC) to adopt conflict-of-interest rules that go beyond those now required under the terms of Proposition 71, which created the ICOC and granted it $3 billion to spend in support of embryonic stem cell research in California.

In a half-hour phone interview with California Politics Today, Mr. Reynolds reported that at yesterday's ICOC meeting, ICOC chair Robert Klein II, who authored and led the effort to pass Proposition 71, was appointed by the ICOC to serve as the "Interim President" of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), the organization designated in Proposition 71 to administer the allocation of the $3 billion appropriated by this measure.

The interview focused on Mr. Reynolds' belief that it would be advisable for the ICOC to adopt and implement conflict-of-interest rules that go beyond those now in place to regulate the involvement of ICOC and "working group" members as investors in bio-tech and construction companies in which they might hold a financial interest.

Under the terms of Proposition 71, as Mr. Reynolds said he understood them, there is nothing that prohibits members of the crucial "working groups" that will recommend the awarding of grants to bio-tech companies from owning stock or bonds of the companies for which they will be recommending these payments.

Mr. Reynolds said that the Center for Genetics and Society will be working on its own and in cooperation with like-minded other groups in the state to formulate a more rigorous set of ethical and legal guidelines for the disposition of the $3 billion in grant money than is currently provided for under the terms of Proposition 71 and to pressure the ICOC to adopt these higher standards.

You can hear this interview with Jesse Reynolds, Program Director of the Center for Genetics and Society, by clicking here.

You can access CGS's January 3, 2005 press release, "CGS Calls for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to delay grants until guidelines in place," by clicking here.

You can read a related op-ed piece by Mr. Reynolds entitled "Stem-cell cronyism," published December 28, 2004, in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, by clicking here.

You can read the Associated Press's report on these issues by clicking here.

To access a closely-related interview with Californians Aware founder and general counsel Terry Francke, click on "Terry Francke, general counsel of Californians Aware, wants Proposition 71 Working Groups to be subject to the openness and transparency provisions of the Bagley-Keene Act, or something like them."

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.

For more about the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM)'s new Interim President, Robert Klein II, and his involvement in real estate deals involving possible conflicts-of-interest and self-dealing not unlike those under discussion in the present situation, in Fresno, California, in the early 1980s, click on the headline of Etopia Media's California Politics Today #238: "Twenty-year-old article in The Fresno Bee reveals the secrets of stem cell entrepreneur Robert Klein's success," published on the California Politics Today web site on December 20, 2004.

For more about Mr. Klein's contributions to three of the four California "electeds" who unanimously nominated him as chair of the Independent Citizens' Oversight Committee (ICOC), click on the headline of Etopia Media's California Politics Today #239: "ICOC/stem cell chair Robert Klein II contributed $176,139.87 to three of the four politicians who (unanimously) nominated him for his new job,", published on the California Politics Today web site on December 21, 2004.