This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

closing credits, "Analysis of the Financial Impact on the California State Budget of the Proposed California Institute of Regenerative Medicine," by Laurence Baker, Stanford University, October 27, 2003

names of anonymous recipients of unfunded "awards" finally made public

Yesterday's California Politics Today article entitled "Proposition 71 stem cell research funding process descends into farce as conflicted ICOC panel members vote on unfunded grants for anonymous recipients" reported on deliberations by the Independent Citizens' Oversight Committee(ICOC) to award unfunded grants to selected California research institutions in order to establish the credibility of the ICOC as the foremost source of funding in the world for embryonic stem cell research.

Zach Hall, named Friday by the ICOC as permanent president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) at a salary of $389,000 per year, said that:

"This program will be the most comprehensive and broadest program for stem cell research training in the country and I assume in the world."

Here's a list of who got IOU's from the ICOC, featuring the name of the research institution, the number of researcher positions being "funded" and the amount of money promised to them by the ICOC over the next three years:

UCLA, 16, $3.75 million
Stanford, 16, $3.73 million
UC San Diego, 16, $3.68 million
UC San Francisco, 16, $3.62 million
USC, 9, $3.16 million
UC Davis, 12, $2.68 million
UC Berkeley, 12, $2.53 million
J.Gladstone Institute, 10, $2.40 million
L.A. Children’s Hospital, 10, $2.39 million
Cal Tech, 10, $2.31 million
UC Irvine, 12, $2.04 million
Burnham Institute, 6, $1.49 million
Salk Institute, 6, $1.50 million
UC Santa Barbara, 6, $1.34 million
UC Santa Cruz, 6, $1.22 million
Scripps Research, 6, $1.06 million

the Los Angeles Times buries the lead and conflates "grants" and "loans"

An article announcing these "grants" in the September 10, 2005, Los Angeles Times, entitled "Stem Cell Agency Awards $39 Million," said that these awards were "the first of a planned $3 billion in grants," leaving out the fact that, under the provisions of Proposition 71, $750 million of the $3 billion (to be paid back, using the "full faith and credit" of the State of California, with at least $6 billion in taxpayer funds) will be spent to build "research facilities" and that, due to ongoing confusion and disputes over the structuring of this publicly-financed investment in bio-medical research and just who will profit from it, no decisions have yet been made about whether these funds will be awarded as "grants" or as "loans."

The Times article leads with the news that "California's stem cell research agency awarded the first of a planned $3 billion in grants Friday, announcing that a little less than $39 million would go to UCLA, UC Irvine, Stanford and several other campuses to help set up programs to train scientists," but waited until the fifth paragraph to mention that "For now, the institute doesn't have any of its own money to give out."

unfunded "awards" were made to establish the ICOC's "public mandate to advance stem cell research both responsibly and rapidly"

After citing a critic's complaint that "It's irresponsible for anyone to promise something you're not sure you can deliver," the Times quoted ICOC Chair Robert Klein as saying that awarding these unfunded grants was "key to fulfilling 'the public's mandate to advance stem cell research both responsibly and rapidly. With state leaders' help, we should be able to fund the grants by next month."

For details about the suspension of embryonic stem cell bond sales while litigation challenging the viability of the ICOC is pending, click here.

The article did not include any details about which "state leaders' help" would enable the ICOC to fund the grants it was "responsibly and rapidly" awarding now without any money to back them up.

The Times further quoted Klein:

"But in any case," he said, "we had to announce the grants today, to make it clear that California is poised and ready to recruit the nation's best and brightest stem cell researchers."

According to a September 10, 2005, article on the SignOnSanDiego.com web site published by the San Diego Union Tribune entitled "Despite uncertain funding, agency issues first grants":

"The awards are intended to train graduate students, clinical researchers and scientists who have just gotten their Ph.D.'s."

unfunded "awards" seen as down payments on future largesse

Another function of these unfunded "grants" was highlighted in this part of the Times' report:

"Dr. Judith Gasson, the co-director of UCLA's stem cell research institute and director of the university's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center,…acknowledged that the $3.75 million her students will receive over three years won't buy much in the research world. But she said she believed that the award would position UCLA for money to fund more ambitious research in the future."

"the state is not at risk," says Klein, referring to the sale of "bond anticipation notes" to fund these as-of-now unfunded grants

In a September 10, 2005, article in the Sacramento Bee, entitled "Stem cell funds awarded," the paper reports:

"Institute President Zach Hall said later that it was important to keep moving to send a message that the lawsuits - which challenge the constitutionality of the funding and have effectively eliminated public financing for now - won't stall the program.

"'We need to move ahead,' he said. 'Stem cell research is moving ahead around the world.'

"Klein has said that he hopes philanthropic organizations will help by buying an investment tool called a bond anticipation note.

"Klein said if state funding comes through, the notes would be repaid. If not, they would become grants to the state. 'The state is not at risk,' he said."

the Sacramento Bee mistakenly identifies ICOC Chair as "Dr. Robert Klein"

The Bee's coverage of the ICOC meeting included a photo of the ICOC Chair with this caption: "Dr. Robert Klein, chairman of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine governing board, listens to debate in Sacramento on Friday before announcing research awards."

In the Fall 2004 issue of Stanford Medicine Magazine, in an article entitled "Taking the initiative--Meet the man behind the California ballot measure to fund stem cell research," Mr. Klein is identified as a "Palo Alto developer" and as a "Stanford-trained lawyer, [who] wrote the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative and is now statewide chair for the proposition, which will appear on the November ballot." There is no mention of either a Ph.D. or M.D. in his resume.

Further evidence of Mr. Klein's lack of medical training can be found in a statement he made on the PBS program California Connected, quoted in the August 25, 2005, California Politics Today article entitled "ICOC Chair Robert Klein offers incomplete and misleading comments about human cloning, stem cell research, and bond anticipation notes, in which, asked by the host "Can you help those of us who are not science majors understand the difference between 'human cloning' and 'therapeutic cloning'?"

Mr. Klein replied:

"Absolutely. The key here is that human reproductive cloning, which everyone, all responsible scientists and patient groups believe should be banned and is banned in California, is the reproducing of a human being through taking stem cells and implanting them in the womb of a woman as you would in [garbled] and that is already against the law in California, and in fact Proposition 71 put a ban on it in the state Constitution.

"Now, the alternative is using stem cell research to copy cells, sometimes called cloning, but, to copy cells to create stem cell therapy, or what's been called "therapeutic cloning," but in fact this is merely taking stem cells that are disease-specific stem cells and reproducing them so that you have enough cells to study the development of the disease or you have enough cells, for example, to use as a trial in place of human trials that would put people at risk, testing a drug and you have a therapeutic disease-specific stem cell line you can use those instead of putting a human at risk to test new drugs for heart disease, diabetes and other diseases that afflict Californians, and the nation, as well as the world."

Mr. Klein, is, however, a renowned expert in the field of tax-exempt and other bonds by which government entities finance their operations. You can read more about his experience and expertise in this field by clicking on the title of the September 4, 2005, California Politics Today article entitled "Robert Klein, Chair of the Independent Citizens' Oversight Committee (ICOC) created by Proposition 71 to spend $3/6 billion in California taxpayers' money on embryonic stem cell research, now and then."

real breakthroughs in embryonic stem cells coming from Roslin and Whitehead Institutes, near Edinburgh, Scotland, and in Cambridge, Massachusetts, respectively

While this charade of supporting cutting-edge embryonic stem cell research in California with unfunded "awards" is unfolding, stem cell researchers in the U.K. have achieved one breakthrough by creating "parthenotes" from human egg cells, as reported in this September 10, 2005, article on the FT.com web site published by the Financial Times, entitled "Embryo Breakthrough Offers Alternative Source of Stem Cells," and researchers at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have announced another breakthrough regarding the means by which human embryonic stem cells maintain their "pluripotency," the ability to eventually develop into any of the various specific types of human cells that make up the body.

This process involves the operation of "stem-cell master regulators" Oct4, Nanog, and Sox2. You can read more about this in "Researchers discover key to embryonic stem-cell potential."

opening credits, title, and authorship, "Analysis of the Financial Impact on the California State Budget of the Proposed California Institute of Regenerative Medicine," by Laurence Baker, Stanford University, October 27, 2003

 

Get in the swing with additional Etopia Media News Network articles and interviews and Google Alerts

To access additional, recent articles from the Etopia Media News Networks web site, as crawled and cataloged on the Google News web site, click here.

To sign up for Google Alerts whenever a new Etopia Media News Networks article appears on Google News, click here.

Join the "Etopia Media Live!" mailing list (unless you're already on another Etopia Media mailing list)

Just send an empty e-mail to etopiamedialive-subscribe@yahoogroups.com