Stem Cell Research

California's Little Hoover Commission, which investigates government agencies and focuses on efficiency, is out with a thoughtful new report on the state's stem cell agency and its governing board.

The report concludes that the board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is too large and that the initiative that created the agency, Prop 71 in 2004, is "overly prescriptive" and locks in place too many inefficiencies. I reported as much last month in the Scientific American.

Among the major recommendations, from a summary released by Little Hoover:

Bob Klein, the Northern California developer who chaired the board of the state stem cell agency created by the 2004 ballot initiative he wrote, has announced he will step down at the end of 2010. That would mark the end of his six-year term.

Klein is a polarizing figure in California politics. And the stem cell initiative, Prop 71, remains controversial five years after it was passed. Supporters saw it as giving California a leadership role in an important area of research. Critics saw it as a financial boondoggle and an example of the ballot box budgeting that has helped put California in a fiscal hole.

John Simpson, who tracks the agency for Consumer Watchdog and broke the news of Klein's decision, has details here.

In this Scientific American piece, I explain how the creation of California's stem cell agency (and its governing board) by ballot initiative both protects and constrains the pursuit of stem cell research here.

Two Michigan measures -- one to lift restrictions on stem cell research, the other to permit use of marijuana for medical purposes -- have qualified for the ballot. But a third measure -- the Democratic-inspired initiative to cut legislators' pay, change the courts, and downsize the legislature -- was not placed on the ballot. (This is the measure, you'll recall, that was billed as a goo-goo reform effort before the discovery of a Power Point presentation that showed it to be part of a labor-Democrat effort to curb the mostly Republican courts). A court likely will decide whether that initiative makes the ballot.  The AP sums it up.