Posted on 03/01/2005 7:15:47 PM PST by NormsRevenge
STANFORD, Calif. (AP) - Even before neuroscientist Zach Hall was formally given the job Tuesday to run California's $3 billion stem cell research institute, his salary came under fire.
Charles Halpern, a Berkeley writer who filed a legal petition with the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine protesting some of its activities, complained that Hall's $389,004 annual paycheck to serve as interim president was too lucrative.
Halpern and other institute critics complained that the institute president should be paid a salary comparable to the head of the National Institutes of Health, which is roughly $100,000 less than Hall's pay.
The language of Proposition 71, which created the institute when passed with 59 percent of the vote in November, said the agency's president should be paid in the same range as the leaders of the five University of California medical schools.
SpencerStuart, the San Francisco headhunting firm hired to find a permanent president, pegged the president's salary at between $300,000 and $600,000.
Members of the 29-person committee appointed to oversee the institute unanimously approved Hall's contract at its monthly meeting at Stanford University. Hall had been a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine since 2002.
Committee chairman Robert Klein, who Hall replaces as interim president, said Hall's salary is "close to what he had at USC," where he served as vice dean of medical research.
"He has a remarkable set of credentials ... we are just plain lucky," said committee member David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate who is in charge of the California Institute of Technology. "The salary is commiserate with his skills."
For his part, the mild-manner Hall said the criticisms contained in Halpern's petition, including concerns over salaries, open-meeting issues and preventing conflict-of-interests at the institute, were the "growing pains" of creating a new agency.
Hall said his first task will be to hire scientific staff.
"I'll raid everyplace I can to get the talent I need," he said. Hall, who lives in the Bay Area and whose wife is an English horn player with the San Francisco Symphony, said he viewed his role as "I'm John the Baptist here to prepare the way ... for the first-rate people who will surely be interested."
The institute Hall was hired to run is bankrolled by $3 billion in bonds, most of which is expected to be doled out as grants to fund research and laboratory construction that supports human embryonic stem cell study.
Hall, 67, said Klein first approached him two months ago to apply for the permanent president's position, which is a six-year term. But Hall said he didn't want to commit to serving that long because he may want to pursue other professional and personal interests after his contract expires next March.
The institute is expected to hire a permanent president by June and Hall is expected to serve as chief scientific officer or something similar afterward. Hall said he hasn't ruled out applying for the permanent position, but is not now considering it.
Hall served as a University of California, San Francisco vice chancellor until he left in 2001 to launch the biotechnology company EnVivo Pharmaceuticals where served as chief executive until he went to USC.
He said Tuesday that he resigned from the company's scientific advisory board, but retains an ownership interest in the private firm. He also said he owns stock in publicly traded biomedical companies that he declined to identify Tuesday. He said he would file a required financial disclosure form with the state disclosing his holdings within the next 30 days.
Halpern and others called on Hall, Klein and committee vice chair Ed Penhoet to divest themselves of all biotechnology and pharmaceutical interests to avoid appearances of conflict of interests. Klein has made such a vow, but Penhoet - who co-founded biotechnology firm Chiron Corp. and still owns stock worth millions - said the companies he's invested in aren't involved in stem cell research. Hall apparently won't divest his medical holdings either.
Halpern said the institute should follow the same conflict guidelines the National Institutes of Health recently adopted, forbidding compensation from any biomedical firm.
"The NIH has very stringent conflict rules," Halpern said. "The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine should follow those best practices."
Halpern and Dr. Philip Lee, a former UCSF chancellor and a former senior official at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, filed a petition last month under the state's Administrative Procedure Act demanding the institute install strict conflict rules and cap the institute's maximum salary at $290,000. The institute has 30 days to respond, which Klein said he would do after consulting with agency lawyers.
First of all, any USC grad is worth a salary of at least that much, and secondly, isn't that about what an apartment rents for in California these days?
No, the first point is we're talking about technology that has the potential to clone Shakey's Pizza joint so we can get all the free pizza we want!
His salary should be three times that, provided he shares the stem cells with the rest of us.
Secondly, he's on the public dole, so I can't feel to bad for him. If he were heading the stem cell division at Ben and Jerry's, I might feel a little bad.
Thirdly, the people of CA were suckers when they voted for this. But, then, they're Californians, and you can't squeeze sense from a pod person.
I do miss Shakey's pizza. There may still be one in Midland, Texas, but I've never seen one in the greater Houston area. Mostly they were a California thing.
Not sure whether the Bakersfield reporter is in on the joke or an editor was snoozing on the job ... but we're commiserating, all right.
We had one in Milwaukee. Before Pizza Hut my dad took us there all the time.
We still went after Pizza Hut came into existance too, but it was after that Shakey's started to die out.
Then Rocky Roccoco's came muscling its way in from Madison. I never really liked Rocky's pizza, too much bread.
The crust is supposed to hold the cheese and toppings and not be more intrusive than that. This new Deep Dish crap needs to be banned far more than cell phones and cigarettes.
New? My Sicilian friend's parents introduced me to it...home made, as nobody sold it...along about 1966. They wouldn't touch "pizza parlor" pizza on a bet.
Don't be surprised if they die face down in a spongy pizza when the authentic pizza mob catches up with them.
Not only deep dish, but Alfredo Sauce, without a tomato in sight. Garlic, chicken, artichoke hearts, olives, several cheeses, red & green peppers, onions...
Why should they when we (the suckers) let them write the rules? A disaster in the making.
Yet when a football coach makes twice that, no one complains at all as long as he wins.
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