embryonic stem cell colonies from the lab of developmental biologist James Thompson
Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Used with permission © University of Wisconsin Board of Regents

California's Proposition 71, The California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative will be voted on this November. If passed, it will establish the "California Institute for Regenerative Medicine," which will be responsible for spending $3 billion dollars for scientists and facilities to research stem cells. It will cost the taxpayers of California $6 billion to retire the bonds that will be used to raise the original $3 billion.

The campaign to pass Proposition 71 has a state-of-the-art web site, the endorsements of countless Nobel laureates, celebrities, and businesspeople, and limitless money, including a recent contribution of $400,000 from noted philanthropist Bill Gates.

Since Proposition 71 is the happenin' thing right now in the world of stem cells, Stem Cell World knew it had to cover the proposition and the campaign to pass it.

Accordingly, SCW prepared a list of questions for the proponents of Proposition 71 and sent them, by e-mail, on Sunday, August 15th, to their campaign office in Studio City, California, not far from the world headquarters of SCWs commercial parent, Etopia Media.

You can read that first set of questions by clicking here.

(There's a link in that PDF file to a 1996 article by Ralph Moss entitled "The Cancer Industry: The Classic Expose on the Cancer Establishment, New Updated [1996]". If you can't get to it through the PDF link, just click the title in this paragraph.)

On September 1, more than two weeks later, I got an e-mail from a publicist working for the high-powered public relations firm that's handling the Proposition 71 account. In it, I'm referred to the "Questions & Answers" page on the Proposition 71 web site and told that most of my questions can be answered simply by going there. I was also told that if I had additional questions, not covered on the "Questions & Answers" page, I should refer them back to the publicist.

Assuming this was true, and without reviewing the original set of questions, I looked over the "Questions & Answers." After doing that, I still had unanswered questions, most of which were generated by the statements included in the "Questions & Answers." Accordingly, I prepared a second set of questions, focusing on matters not answered on the web site and on matters raised by statements in the "Questions & Answers" page itself.

Because these questions reflected such strong skepticism about the intentions of some Proposition 71 supporters and mentioned so many taboo subjects (mostly money), it was very apparent to me that these questions would never be answered by the publicist, nor would I be allowed to ask them of anyone in the Yes on Proposition 71 organization.

It would sort of be like when film-maker/provocateur Michael Moore stood outside Congress and asked supporters of the Iraq War if any of them would volunteer their children to fight there. And I wasn't even wearing a baseball cap.

Having decided that the best course of action would be to post the completed second set of questions on this web page, I then took a look at the first set, the one that the publicist had said was full of superfluous questions, most of them being answered on the site.

While some of the questions about the mechanics of the initiative and the Institute for Spending Tax-Payers' Money that it would set up (which were there to educate and inform listeners about the basics so they'd have a context to understand what followed), there were a lot of questions that referred to subjects (in particular money and access to the fruits of the stem cell research being contemplated) not mentioned anywhere in the "Questions & Answers."

In other words, it simply wasn't and isn't true that most of my questions had already been answered on the web site, as claimed by the publicist for Proposition 71.

Going into this effort, I had every expectation that my request for an interview with a qualified Proposition 71 spokesperson would be denied. I had expected (incorrectly) that the denial would be accompanied by a statement to the effect that my questions were simply too rude to be asked or answered.

Far more subtly than this, the Proposition 71 organization refused my request on the grounds that most of my questions had already been answered in advance on their site and that, by implication, I'd be wasting my time and theirs by asking them to tediously go over the same old points in an audio interview.

A careful reading and comparison of the "Questions & Answers" page and the two sets of questions I prepared to give California voters a clearer picture of what's involved in their agreeing to be pay $6 billion dollars of their tax money to further enrich the richest Californians in the name of dubious medical advances that may never occur and, if they do, may cost far more than most of them can afford, will show that most of my questions are not answered on the site.

This will also show that almost all the questions I want to ask grow out of the failure of the "Questions & Answer" page to honestly address basic questions about the need for, the financing of, and the distribution of risks and benefits in, the actions that would be mandated by the passage of the constitutional amendment contained in Proposition 71.

Everyone's saying how important it is to have a free press. If the super-sized political and economic players like the supporters of Yes on 71 won't answer simple and basic questions about what they have in mind, then whether or not the press is free to publish what they won't say will be meaningless.

Especially when the knowledge to be gained by spending these particular six billion taxpayer dollars may contain the tool sets for remaking what humanity is, while the arrangements embodied in Proposition 71 make sure that the power and the glory and the profits derived from those tools will belong firmly to Leland Stanford's spiritual heirs and their friends.

You can access the second set of questions, which I'm making available to you instead of sending to the publicist for Yes on 71, and which I hope you will think about and ask the Yes on 71 campaign yourself if you have a chance, by clicking here.

Links to two articles about the venture capital money and people behind the qualification and campaign of Proposition 71 in that document may not work through the PDF file. You can get to them by clicking on their titles below.

"California Advocates Try to Put Stem-Cell Initiative on Ballot," by Antonio Regalado, in the Wall Street Journal, February 9, 2004.

"Venture capital money backs California stem cell measure," by Paul Elias, Associated Press, in USA Today, May 21, 2004.

The article about low-cost, high-powered bioinformatic computing on Etopia Media's Cluster Workstation World mentioned in the second set of questions can be found by clicking on its title, Colin Hunter, President and CEO of Orion Multisystems, discusses his company's new line of "Cluster Workstations.

An earlier Stem Cell World commentary about Proposition 71, Socializing the Risk while Privatizing the Health Benefits and Profits, as California's Proposition 71 does, is Unethical, can be accessed by clicking on its title.