Massachusetts State House--------embryonic stem cells--------California Capitol Building, Sacramento, California
Yesterday's news
In an article published yesterday, May 11, 2005, Etopia Media Medical News Network reported that "California cannot sell $3 billion in embryonic stem cell research bonds until a lawsuit challenging its right to do so is resolved.".
This report was based on a statement from California State Treasurer Phil Angelides' press secretary, in reference to the $3 billion in bonds authorized by the passage last year of Proposition 71 for purposes of human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research and a lawsuit challenging the right of the Independent Citizens' Oversight Committee (ICOC) created by the passage of Proposition 71 to issue those bonds, "This office cannot go to market with these bonds until these issues are cleared away."
The ICOC is chaired by Robert Klein II, a Palo Alto-based attorney who first came to prominence in the early 1980s as a bond consultant for the City of Fresno.
The lawsuit is being brought by Life Legal Defense Foundation Executive Director Dana Cody. You can listen to Ms. Cody talking about this law suit by clicking on the date of these previous articles about it on the California Politics Today web site: February 26, 2005, February 28, 2005, March 23, 2005.
This lawsuit has been characterized as "groundless" by Mr. Klein; as an example of "legal challenges brought by anti-choice activists in an attempt to halt the sale of the bonds" in a press release issued jointly by California State Treasurer Phil Angelides and California Attorney General Bill Lockyer; and as "a concerted effort…by a very narrow-minded interest group with a long history of anti-choice activism" by Mr. Angelides' press secretary.
$3 billion in hESC research bonds can't be sold
Those criticisms notwithstanding, the existence of that law suit has effectively stalled the sale of the bonds authorized by Proposition 71 to fund human embryonic stem cell research in California, as previously reported in a May 4, 2005, article on the SFGate.com web site entitled
"Questions surround stem cell financing Lawsuit, possible counter put details and timing in flux", which begins by saying:
"As soon as the courts give the green light -- a day that may be a few months away, or sometime next year, or may never arrive -- officials of California's first-in-the-nation stem cell program will visit the state's overseer of bond funds, seeking the first installment of research grants totaling $3 billion over 10 years.
"The uncertainty of the timing is because Proposition 71, like most controversial ballot measures, has landed in court."
This article goes on to include this piece of information from Attorney General Lockyer's press secretary:
"And as long as legal action remains pending, the bonds can't be sold, Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer, acknowledged Tuesday."
Will newly-created, university-based hESC research institutes be jeopardized (or helped) by this delay in funding?
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) announced in March, 2005, that it is
investing $20 million to build a new Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Medicine.
Asked today if the delay in raising embryonic stem cell research money through the sale of bonds would affect any aspect of UCLA's new Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Medicine, a spokesperson for UCLA declined comment, saying only that "My finance person doesn't feel comfortable commenting about this. Sorry."
Efforts to obtain comments about this question as it applies at Stanford University, from
Irving Weissman, Director of Stanford University's
Stanford Institute for Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine, and a prominent supporter of Proposition 71, were equally unavailing, as was an attempt to elicit a response about how stalled funding for hESC in California might affect the competitive status of Harvard University's new
Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI).
The ubiquitous presence in hESC research of an institution created by the aviation and film pioneer played recently on the screen by Leonardo DiCaprio
Coincidentally,
Douglas Melton, the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences at Harvard and one of the co-directors of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and
Owen Witt, professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics at UCLA and director of its Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Medicine, are each also identified by their respective university news services as an "investigator for the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute."
While the role of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in the overall embryonic stem cell research project deserves further and more-detailed attention, it will suffice for now merely to include HHMI's "origin myth" from its own website:
"In 1984, a group of distinguished trustees assumed responsibility for the Institute and reaffirmed its primary purpose of basic medical research. They guided the Institute through the sale of the Hughes Aircraft Company, which the Institute owned entirely, and the period of rapid expansion that followed. Sustained by the financial resources derived from that sale, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute has become the nation's largest private source of support for biomedical research and science education."
The cradle of the American Revolution falters as a cradle for hESC
As the Proposition 71-approved $3 billion funding of human embryonic stem cell research was going into limbo on the West Coast, the hESC project received another setback yesterday on the East Coast, a few miles away from Harvard University, just across the Charles River in Boston, where Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney returned, unsigned, legislation permitting the very "somatic cell nuclear transfer" (SCNT) procedure that underlies the entire human embryonic stem cell project.
In an article from the Associate Press entitled
"Romney returns stem cell bill to lawmakers, urges major changes,", published today, it's reported that:
"Gov. Mitt Romney is returning a recently approved stem cell bill to lawmakers, urging they make dramatic changes to the legislation, saying he can't sign it unless they do.
"Among the changes Romney is recommending is a ban on so-called "therapeutic cloning," a key element of the bill, which supporters hope will transform the state into a center for the cutting-edge research."
The AP article concludes with a reference to the human embryonic stem cell research scene on the West Coast, without any mention of the litigation roadblock now lying athwart the Proposition 71 initiative funding process:
"Two states – California and New Jersey – already allow therapeutic cloning. California voters approved a plan last year to spend up to $3 billion over the next decade on the research.
While overseas…
"Only one country, South Korea, has made a credible claim of successfully conducting a somatic cell nuclear transfer using human cells and eggs."
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