Scepticism about California’s stem cell institute persists

[barbara]

There have been problems with CIRM from the get go. The major focus was on embryonic stem cell research. I believe they sold the public on the idea of miracle cures not by outright statements, but by implication just like this article states. The results have been dismal with really not much of anything as far as clinical application for patients. It seems like everything they have done is always on the edge of being ready for clinical trials. Instead, there is the usual unending research and money not being accounted for. If I lived in California, I would not vote for one more taxpayer penny to fund the CIRM until there is some indication that this research is actually headed to the clinic to help patients and not to just create research and administrative jobs and put money in the pockets of those involved. Obviously, those involved in CIRM disagree, so I say to them, let's see some action for patients and let's see more work with adult stem cells which really are ready for clinical application right now. Michael Fox has already grown weary of waiting. His Foundation is moving towards a more pharmaceutical approach as I posted in another thread. CIRM is spending too much money, with too few results and the public is catching on to it.


BioEdge
by Michael Cook | Jun 07, 2012 |

The dispute over 2004's Proposition 71, for setting up California's US$3 billion stem cell research institute, has surfaced again in the local media. Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik wrote a stinging critique as part of his attack on a new proposition to tax cigarettes to pay for medical research (that went up in smoke in Tuesday's ballot):

"Proposition 71, you may recall, was sold to a gullible public via candy-coated images of Christopher Reeve walking again and Michael J. Fox cured of Parkinson's. The implication was that these miracles would happen if voters approved a $3-billion bond issue for stem cell research. Who could be against that?

"As it turned out, the stem cell measure created an unwieldy bureaucracy and etched conflicts of interest into the state Constitution. By last count about 85% of the $1.3 billion in grants handed out by the program, or some $1.1 billion, has gone to institutions with representatives on the stem cell board. The program is virtually immune to oversight by the Legislature or other elected officials. For these reasons and others, it has grappled with only mixed success with changes in stem cell science and politics that have called its original rationale into question."

The head of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Alan Trounson, indignantly responded in a letter to the editor (see below) that "No ads for Proposition 71 promised miraculous cures. They promised good science, and that is what is being funded, with more than 62 promising therapies for 40 different diseases on their way to clinical trials."

Hiltzik admitted that the promoters did not promise "miraculous cure", but they did offer unwarranted certainty.

"Given that the essence of scientific research is that no one can predict the outcome, to assert as fact that 'lives will be saved by Prop. 71' is plainly to promise something downwright extraordinary, if not outright miraculous."

http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bio...10098#comments

Here's the letter to the Editor from Alan Trounson & Jonathan Thomas in response to Hiltzik (Trounson is president of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine; Thomas is chairman of the institute's board.)


Los Angeles Times
May 30, 2012
In his article opposing Proposition 29, Michael Hiltzik makes a number of misleading statements about Proposition 71, the voter-approved measure funding stem-cell research.

No ads for Proposition 71 promised miraculous cures. They promised good science, and that is what is being funded, with more than 62 promising therapies for 40 different diseases on their way to clinical trials.

The stem-cell agency has conflict-of-interest rules as strict as any government agency. We undergo state-mandated audits to ensure we follow all rules and regulations, and the most recent one, completed just this month, praised the agency for its performance.

As for being "an unwieldy bureaucracy," just 6% of the money we get goes to pay for staff; 94% goes to fund research here in California, creating new jobs, generating income for the state and, most important, helping find treatments for deadly diseases.

Alan Trounson

San Francisco

Jonathan Thomas

San Francisco