Posted on 12/01/2006 11:39:24 AM PST by NormsRevenge
SAN FRANCISCO
California voters, wooed by an aggressive, multimillion dollar campaign that promised cures to myriad diseases, overwhelmingly approved the nation's most ambitious stem cell research center two years ago.
Now, $181 million is set to flow to cash-starved scientists struggling in a field financially and politically hamstrung by Bush administration opposition and lawsuits filed by conservative organizations against the center.
The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine managed to push out $14 million in "training grants" for young researchers last year, but much of the money it doles out in 2007 will finally go to senior scientists eager to push stem cell research out of the lab and into patients.
But don't expect those promised cures anytime soon. The research is in such a nascent stage that even fundamental questions such as what defines a human embryonic stem cell remain unanswered.
When the committee that runs the center meets to adopt a 10-year scientific plan Thursday it is expected to acknowledge that routine, widespread stem-cell treatments are unlikely to arise within a decade.
"Our aspirational goal is to cure disease," said Zach Hall, the institute's president and top scientist. "But you can't snap your fingers and have that done."
Hall said the institute's immediate goal is to bring "new ideas and people into the field."
Voters passed Proposition 71 in 2004 to create the institute and give it authority to borrow and spend $3 billion over 10 years. Lawsuits, however, have prevented it from going to the Wall Street bond market for its money.
So the institute will fund the next rounds of grant-giving with a $150 million loan from the state and another $31 million in loans from philanthropic organizations such as the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, which chipped in $10 million.
A grant-review committee led by 15 scientists from outside of California last week sifted through 232 applications from state researchers vying for 30 grants worth a combined $24 million. Many of the grants will go to scientists getting into stem cell research for the first time and will be formally awarded in February.
In March, another round of 25 grants worth about $80 million will go to established stem cell scientists.
The most ambitious goal of the center's 150-page plan is to move the research out of the laboratory and into preliminary tests on people within 10 years. No known researcher has yet tested human embryonic stem cells in patients as scientists continue to puzzle out whether the cells will work properly when implanted into the body and not turn into tumors.
The plan concedes the agency probably won't fund larger-scale, pivotal trials required for Food and Drug Administration approval.
"That really stands in contrast to the rhetoric used during the campaign," said Jesse Reynolds, a longtime agency critic at the politically liberal Center for Genetics and Society in Oakland. "The expectations and the timeline in the strategic plan are realistic, but it shows how the institute has had to engage in expectation management since Proposition 71's passage."
Proposition backers spent more than $40 million during the 2004 campaign that included television advertisements featuring actors Michael J. Fox and the paraplegic Christopher Reeve, who died days after filming his spot.
"People were left with the impression that Superman would walk again," said John Simpson, another critic at the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights in Los Angeles.
Human embryonic stem cells are created in the first days after conception and give rise to all the organs and tissues in the human body. Scientists hope they can someday use stem cells to replace diseased tissue, but many social conservatives, including President Bush, oppose the work because embryos are destroyed during research. The microscopic embryos are days old and usually donated by fertility clinics.
Proposition 71 came as a reaction to the Bush administration's 2001 decision to cap federal funding for stem cell research at about $25 million annually and impose strict research guidelines that scientists say limit advances.
Five states have also skirted federal restrictions with stem cell research funding schemes of their own: Connecticut has a 10-year, $100 million initiative; Illinois spent $10 million last year; Maryland has approved a $15 million budget; and New Jersey has spent about $25 million in two years.
None approach California's ambition of spending about $300 million a year for the next decade, which California voters overwhelmingly approved two years ago when they passed the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative.
The institute's chairman, Robert Klein, who led the Proposition 71 campaign and donated $3 million to it, said the fruits from the state-funded research will go beyond creating new medicines.
Researchers will now have the money to create realistic disease models in the laboratory, which will give them better insight into illness and allow them to test more experimental drugs for toxicity in test tubes rather than humans.
"That's a tremendous benefit to the public," Klein said.
On Thursday, the 29-member committee that oversees the institute will also consider draft rules on how to ensure the state gets a slice of any profits made from products created with institute grants.
The new awards were made possible by $181 million in state and private loans as two lawsuits challenging the institute's constitutionality block borrowing $3 billion from traditional bond markets.
A superior court judge earlier this year ruled in the institute's favor, but it is still shut out of the bond market until appeals are exhausted sometime next year.
"Stem cell research is in its infancy and we may not realize its full promise for many years," said banking billionaire Marion Sandler after announcing a $5 million loan from the Sandler Family Supporting Foundation last week. "By supporting the institute now, we hope to see that promise fulfilled as quickly as possible."
On the Net:
California Institute for Regenerative Medicine: http://www.cirm.ca.gov
"Now, $181 million is set to flow to cash-starved scientists struggling in a field financially and politically hamstrung by Bush administration opposition and lawsuits filed by conservative organizations against the center."
My suspicion is that in 10 years, Californians are going to be asking what they got for this "investment."
LOL...can you say "snake oil salesmen?" I knew you could.
The only things produced by embryonic stem cell research so far are cancerous tumors and newly-elected Democrat senators. They have a lot in common as parasitic killers of unsuspecting hosts.
But don't expect those promised cures anytime soon. The research is in such a nascent stage that even fundamental questions such as what defines a human embryonic stem cell remain unanswered.
So it boils down to: "We even don't know what we're looking at or how we can use it, but give us buckets o' cash so we can find out!"
Any criminal enterprise might make the same argument. ;)
If embryonic stem cell research held so much promise, why don't businesses invest time and effort?
Better to spend the money curing common stupidity and delusional thinking.
The restriction of federally funded research into stem cells does not effect state funded or privately funded research.
The primary source of research funds should be private industry, where decisions will be based on sound science, not based on politics and researchers just trying to land the next big grant without every having to produce anything usable.
The government is usually horribly inefficient at directing research money to where it will be best used.
Spending tax money on such things is usually not the most efficient way to make real progress because it pulls money out of the hands of private industry which tends to be more efficient, and puts it in government research grants that are usually poorly managed and handed out more on a political basis than on a scientific or practical basis.
sorry that should be the pursuit of knowledge
States that allow their citizens a way to participate in a direct democracy alternative to representative republicanism via initiative and referendum permit taxpayers to decide how their money is to be spent. In California perhaps the two most famous implementations of direct democracy were Proposition 13 of 1978 which had the effect of amending the state constitution to reduce property taxes by an average of 57% and Proposition 209 of 1996 which ended affirmative action in the public sector.
Well, Californians should have asked that before they/we voted. "What do WE get out of this?"
Let me answer -- "Oh, YOU suckers get the opportunity to fund, out of your hard-earned taxes, research which NO sane agency or money interet would fund with THEIR hard-earned money. In addition you get to show President Bush that (you think) you are smarter than him; the opportunity to feel good about helping Christopher Reeves walk ... or someone somewhere; and the opportunity to BEND OVER and get taken to the cleaners by a special interest group."
Is that what you (voters) expected??? Um, did you do any research? Um, did you even read the Initiative? We tried to tell you ....
Ever frustrating, politics here in California.
LOL. Absolutely true. It has very little to do with medicine and a whole lot to do with taxpayer $ going into the pockets of a selected group.
My joy knows no bounds.
And $Billions of debt.
Just to get your blood pressure going, did you realize that this "loan" won't even have to be repaid if they don't prevail in court? Sweet deal, huh? All on our dime.
See end of this thread for that amazing discovery by Amerigomag:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1741845/posts
I am already asking.
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