Stem Cell Initiative Archives
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Wow. Sen. Bill Frist got a spine transplant. Man. This modern medicine is pretty powerful stuff, huh? Particularly when it's served up with a dose of political ambiton and fear.
The Senate Majority Leader has - finally! - woken up and realized that his job is to lead the United States Senate, not to take orders or dictation from the White House. As such, he's decided to follow the (increasingly powerful) moderate wing of his party and work to pass a bill that would allow federal funding for some kinds of embryonic stem cell research. Why? 'cause that what the legislative branch of the party he's supposed to lead wants to do.
But Frist always wants to have it both ways. The kicker comes near the end of this New York Times story.
In his speech, Mr. Frist seemed to adopt that line of reasoning, harking back to a set of principles he articulated in July 2001, before the president made his announcement, in which he proposed restricting the number of stem cell lines without a specific cutoff date. At the time, he said the government should pay for research only on those embryos "that would otherwise be discarded" and today he similarly supported studying only those "destined, with 100 percent certainty, to be destroyed."Continue reading "News Flash: Senate Majority Leader Grows Backbone"Moreover, he said, "Such funding should be provided only within a comprehensive system of federal oversight."…
[The legislation currently proposed] "lacks a strong ethical and scientific oversight mechanism," does not prohibit financial incentives between fertility clinics and patients, and does not specify whether the patients or the clinic staff have a say over whether embryos are discarded. He also says the bill "would constrain the ability of policy makers to make adjustments in the future."
Fri 10:26 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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The Stem Cell emotion battle is reaching new, er, highs.
Today's New York Times has a front page piece on "adopted" embryos, yet another attempt on the part of the Family Research Council to get people to believe that little collection of cells are living, breathing humans. It's part of the research council's attempt overturn Roe v. Wade by drawing historical comparisons beween the anti-abortion movement and the abolition of slavery.
As part of this political evangalizing, they're playing with science. Which is really annoying. Ask anyone who's ever tried to have a kid just how hard it is to get those little collection of cells to take root and grow. That's when you're considered pregnant by most doctors and that's why folks like me have such little patience with these attempt to breath life in to cells that have – under the right circumstances – the chance to become human beings.
Lots of women never get pregnant because that very important step never takes place and we don't go around calling them murders. Not yet, anyway. We say it's nature taking it course. It's a rough road, too. Even when you have science on your side it's hard to get that collection of cells to turn into a human. The Times piece takes a stab at this point, an inelegant one, but an attempt never-the-less:
"To carry an embryo, Ms. McClure, 45, who home-schooled her children, now 11, 16 and 19, first had to undergo surgery to remove polyps. Then, most of the 13 embryos proved unviable, and one round of embryo implantation failed before she finally had a successful pregnancy using the final embryo.Couples adopting or donating Snowflakes embryos are mostly Christian, and most embryo donors are white, Ms. Maze said. Some families are Roman Catholic, even though the church has historically opposed in vitro fertilization."
I'm sorry. This isn't about "saving" lives. It's about demonstrating moral certainty and superiority for political gain and it ought to be called what it is, as bluntly as possible as quickly as possible. I am getting sick of this sort of rhetoric; it goes nowhere. It changes no minds. It just makes thing more empassioned and less informative.
FOOTNOTE: For another update on how Family Research and company have taken a difficult topic -- Terri Schiavo's last days - and boiled it down to a point of moral certainty, see Joan Didion's piece in the New York Review of Books. It's a nicely nuanced view of a subject that she rightly point out, none of us are really prepared to address. Didion does the best job I've seen of taking the woman she calls Theresa Schiavo's side in this debate and her conclusions and observations are worth reading.
Thu 12:26 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week's eWeek column is about stem cells and some tactics that proponents might use to pick up enough votes in the House of Representatives to over-ride President Bush's threatened veto.
I'm stealing a page from Tom Friedman, here. In his rush to get the U.S. jazzed about foreign competition in this new flat world, Friedman has suggested that someone – the government, maybe -- set the search for energy independence as a program to revive interest in the sciences. But that's kind of dull, compared with oh, I dunno, being able to cure cancer or Alzheimer's or Parkinsons disease. I say make stem cell research the new space race.
Senators are saying today that they have the votes to over-ride Bush's veto. That's not too surprising given the new-found political muscle of the Senate's moderates. Over on the House, it's still going to be a tough fight. Majority Leader Tom Delay keeps a tighter rein on his troops and Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.), who sponsored the stem cell bill in the House, was really moaning yesterday after the bill passed that he didn't think he'd find any more votes than what he had.
That's a bit of a contrast to what's going on here in California where it looks like we'll get yet another chance to vote on the merits of stem cells this fall. If there's a special election – and 10,000 state employees probably aren't going to stop that, I don't care what Warren Beatty says – voters are going to be asked to place new limits on the committees that state's newly created Center for Regenerative Medicine.
This isn't good for the center. Not because it's an interruption in what they do or how they're doing it. It's bad because it keeps the organization in permanent campaign mode and it needs – it badly needs – to set itself up as an agency, not a ballot initiative effort. This is a transition that's tough to make. Plenty of political candidates have stumbled in transitions like this. This new campaign isn’t going to help things.
Thu 07:36 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Friday, May 20, was an important day. It was the day President George W. Bush proved himself to be demonstrably un-American.
The day that South Korea announced that its scientists had successful used human embryos to clone new stem cells, the president said opposed any expansion of government-funded programs that would – hold your breaths you America-firsters – catch up to South Korea.
Legislation making its way through the House and Senate – backed by Republicans including Mormon Orrin Hatch – would expand funding for stem cell research. Bush has sworn to veto it.
Why is this un-American? Because it's a denial of our history. It's a long-standing American tradition to take ideas – say the to use of electronic impulses to send the human voice to a distant location (telephone, radio) or the creation of numeric protocols that allow easy transportation of digital data across a network of phone lines (the Internet) – and commercialize them. Look at the end of the last century and you'll see lots of innovation and invention around the world; the combustion engine, the television and the radio weren't strictly American inventions. But the commercialization of those inventions done most successfully here in the U.S. And it created a positively boisterous economy. We're still reaping the rewards.
Continue reading "Deny, Deny, Deny"Sun 04:09 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Regular readers of this site probably aren't surprised to see that I haven't made that big a deal about the decision to locate the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine here in San Francisco.
It was pretty obvious this would happen when we started on this path this time last year.
Mayor Gavin Newsom's charm and hard work helped, of course. But a quieter power, the influence of the guys who built this thing was – and will remain – a force to be reckoned with in the days ahead. It's been billed as a Democratic Party effort (kinda, sorta) and as a L.A.-backed effort (only in the eyes of New Yorkers). It would have been much more surprising if CIRM had ended up in San Diego or LA. CIRM, you see, is a product of Silicon Valley's "friends and family" culture, the culture that enriched the valley during the tech bubble and which has kept its inventors, scientists, engineers, financiers and others in the "change the world" business for some time now.
Continue reading "Job One: Change the World"Tue 02:32 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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The journey from business person to politician is seeded with landmines and this week's column over at eWeek takes a look at one that's of real importance for California.
The $3 billion stem cell initiative passed in November by a healthy 59 percent and backers of the measure, the crowd I call Progressive libertarians, are taking the margin of victory as a sign they can do no wrong.
The California legislature isn't as convinced.
Like good politicians – see the post below about the Bush family – the state legislature is looking forward to the next election. Not back at the last campaign. What's going to happen is what counts. And the next election here – remember, we Californians like democracy so much, we vote seasonally – may well include a ballot measure clipping the wings of the folks running the stem cell bond issue. This is a real threat and it would make a mockery – on a national level – of efforts to create a safe haven for embryonic stem cell research. Democrats like to carry this effort in front of their party as proof of their open-mindedness. The way things are going, that's not going to last.
Continue reading "Stumble and Fall"Thu 10:42 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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How is it that stem cell research an issue considered by many – almost 60 percent – of California's voters has become so bogged down in political bickering?
Writing yesterday in a posted called "A Litany of Loss," reporter David Jenson outlined the current sad state of affairs. That was followed up today by an editorial in the Sacramento Bee calling for the California Regenerative Medicine Institute – the agency charged with issuing $3 billion in state bonds over the next 10 years – to clean up its act.
Continue reading "How Far. How Fast. How Sad."Fri 03:46 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week's eWeek column is about stem cell research. It's a follow-up to the passage of California's initiative allowing the state to spend $3 billion over the next 10 years to fund such research,
Everyone, it seems, is getting in on the act. Any state with a major university – New Jersey and Princeton, Connecticut and Yale, New York and Columbia as well as Rockefeller and Cornell, Massachusetts with Harvard, MIT and the UMasses – is worried about being outclassed by California.
The working total of money that could be authorized? Another $3 billion, give or take. Not all these proposals are going to get enacted. But the political grandstanding is certainly meant to reassure large institutions worried about losing funding – and jobs – that their local politicians are behind them.
So, one ballot initiative has unleashed the potential to double the amount being spent on this research. I'm not exactly sure this is what conservative have in mind when they talk about federalism but it's a good example – a great example, in fact – of the course Democrats could steer in the future in a number of different ways. And it's a fine, fine example of Progressive libertarian thinking: the belief that government isn't always the answer and that focused efforts, led by business-minded individuals or groups can get a lot done.
Thu 11:16 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Today's LATImes has a long piece investigating the financial ties – stock grants, speaking fees -- between scientists and researchers at the National Institute of Health and the pharmaceutical industry.
It's not that much of a stretch to say that this piece is a good, if somewhat limited, example of the sort of deals and arrangements that are likely to arise as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine takes shape, establishes itself and truly becomes what promoters have said promised: A mini-NIH.
Continue reading "It Could Happen Here"Wed 11:52 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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The awkwardly named Independent Citizen's Oversight Committee for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine gathered at San Francisco's UCSF Friday and did pretty much what everyone expected. Robert Klein, the guy who pushed Prop. 71 up a mountain and past the ballot box was elected committee chairman. His chosen co-chairman, Edward Penhoet, also got the gig he was expected to get.
Poorly executed PR on the committee's part kept the press focused on silliness: How the meeting was announced and its agenda set. It's pretty hard to blow a touchy-feely cause like this one but Klein's spokeswoman doesn't seem to know much about pre-press conference schmoozing and that kept reporters focused on what will, in the end, be seen as minor details. But it's set a tone that's not going to go away any time soon. The committee's biggest critic, Charles Halpern, who wanted but didn't get nominated for the vice chairman's job, is making noises about filing suit alleging that the meeting wasn't legit and attempt to overturn the vote. He'll get lots of ink on that, never fear.
Continue reading "They Came. They Saw. They Cut the Ribbon"Mon 06:43 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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As expected, Palo Alto real estate guy Robert Klein has gotten the nod from Gov. Schwarzenegger to head the citizen's committee to oversee the allocation of stem cell research funds. The Bee's Laura Mecoy – the reporter to watch on this story -- has a rundown of other nominees to the group which is expected to hold its first meeting here in San Francisco later in the week.
Most of them have ties to the biotech business making Sen. Deborah Ortiz's legislative insistence – it can't really be more than that – for committee members to disclose financial interests all the more important. It's not that anyone is going to obviously profit – these aren't stupid or clumsy people.
But there are plenty of opportunities for a little quiet money-making: Shorting stock, buying shares, investing in companies that do similar research to something that looks promising, recruiting scientists or researchers who have done promising and potentially profitable work, referring those folks to savvy venture capitalists. This is all the stuff that makes up Silicon Valley's friends and family culture – a culture that is both insulated and spectacularly profitable. This time around it should be watched carefully and publicly.
Tue 10:26 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week's column over at eWeek is about California's stem cell proposition, the one that raised $3 billion and which is gathering critics like honey gathers flies.
Partly, it's the money, the public money. But the prop's backers are playing their politics wrong. This is after all a blue state – that's how the measure which allows the use of embryonic human stem cells passed, you know – so a little sensitivity to all this process-oriented, good government stuff that lefty Democrats so cherish is in order.
Continue reading "Flies to Honey..."Thu 10:37 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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It's only been two weeks and they're calling Prop 71 – the ballot initiative that created a $3 billion stem cell research fund for California – the new gold rush. Worried local papers are already writing about companies headed West, looking for grant money. To get a slice of the pie, you have to be here. Which is why, in the short- and long-runs, this is a jobs measure.
The state's big research institutes – three of the biggest here in the Bay Area -- are warming their hands over the bond fire. Scientists from UCBerkeley, La Jolla's Salk Institute and Stanford University are among the appointments to the 29-member committee that will oversee how the grant money – some $300 million a year – is doled out. You can expect to see someone from USCF soon joining their ranks. As well as scientists from USDavis, UCLA and Irvine, too.
Criteria for the remaining appointments is pretty tightly defined by the ballot initiative itself with emphasis on folks familiar with science grant-making and oversight. So the monkey business should – that's "should" as in "might, if everyone behaves well" – stay to a minimum. There are 10 slots for "disease advocates" to be appointed by the legislature. That's where the tone and structure of the board may well be set. Patronage-like appointments will diminish the oversight board's seriousness. Supporters of Prop. 71 said it would take the politics out of science by creating a stable environment for research. We'll see about that.
UPDATE: See indeed. The Bee's Laura Mecoy weighs in with the latest set of appointments -- the UCs have weighed in -- she takes a look at the side-politics between Proposition 71 backer Robert Kline and the politicians doing the oversight committee appointments.
Tue 10:09 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Mitch Kapor, co-founder of Lotus Notes, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, now running the Open Source Applications Foundation and a new political site, Of, By and For.org is putting his considerable reputation as a start-up CEO, friend of venture capitalists and politically savvy Silicon Valley insider on the line.
And he's telling many people who might normally vote in favor of California's Prop. 71 to vote against it. The measure would allow the state to sell $3 billion in bonds to fund embryonic stem cell research.
Continue reading "Just Say "No" Says Mitch"Tue 10:00 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Deep down in the New York Times stem cell sidebar to actor Chris Reeve's obit there's a tantalizing little detail about the Bush Administration's policy on stem cell research.
"I don't think you have to elect Senator Kerry to have more stem cell research," said Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, who is leading an effort in the Senate to expand the president's policy. Mr. Specter said, "I can't give you any specifics, but I think there's a chance the president may have a different view in a second term."
His remarks were echoed by two other Republicans, Representative Michael N. Castle of Delaware and James C. Greenwood of Pennsylvania. Mr. Greenwood, who is retiring from Congress at the end of the year to run the biotechnology industry's trade association, said he thought Mr. Bush would wait until after the election to make any policy changes because to do so earlier "would make it look like it was being done for strictly political purposes."
This is especially interesting for Californians.
Continue reading "$tem Cell$"Tue 12:13 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Over at the Washington Monthly, Kevin Drum wonders why he should break his resolution to vote against any and all California ballot initiatives to support Prop. 71, the stem cell measure.
Drum politely notes that he hasn't seen anything to really sway him in favor of the measure. Well, some guys don't read enough, do they?
Prop. 71 is a jobs measure. It'll pump $295 million a year for 10 years into the state for high-end research. That's going to have an impact in San Diego where the Salk Institute and UC San Diego are located. It's going to have an impact here in the San Francisco Bay Area where UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco and Stanford are already looking at stem cell research projects.
And no, the state can't really afford it. But, well, it can't afford not to do this either. The funding for research envisioned by the stem cell research measure used to come from the federal government. Ask anyone who grew up in Silicon Valley. Chances are good that Dad worked in the aerospace or defense business. Those federal dollars are still creating jobs and innovation in this part of the world. So, Prop. 71 -- like James Lick's insistence that San Jose build a road up Mt. Hamilton so he could put a telescope up there – will have consequences, most of them good.
And before you decide I've gone soft in the head, yes, I am fully aware of the self-dealing nature of this ballot initiative; it's the smart and cool side of the Progressive Libertarian agenda, taking on projects that are neglected or impossible in the public sector, funding them and, yes, eventually profiting. Funded in large measure by software execs and venture capitalists living in the Bay Area, there's no question that Prop. 71 is going to use state-backed funding to help their businesses. But, given all the good that can come from this sort of research – not to mention the jobs – I still think it's a good, far-sighted idea.
Oh, and speaking of ballot initiatives – and we will, don't worry, again and again – today's Chron has a mini run-down. Kind of a "whose on first" for voters.
My favorite listing, however, remains Dan Weintraub's short, sweet and to-the-point list from early this summer.
Mon 10:39 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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The New York Times weighs in on the stem cell debate with a group of stories that are pretty cool and some photos that are way cooler. This is one of the things The Times does best: talking about the science and the politics, hammering nicely on the economics and competitive consequences along the way. So go read ‘em.
The whole issue is generating a fair amount of mail in this little corner of the web.
Continue reading "Little Cells, Lotsa Noise"Wed 01:32 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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It’s hardly a fair match-up, the son of a much-loved former president speaking before the party that reviled his father and a national television audience and a guy writing into a web site but Ron Reagan did a very nice job of drawing the lines that needed to be drawn on the ethical disputes over embryonic stem cell research.
Although he sounded like a TV-voice over during much of his speech, Reagan didn’t engage in any soft-sell anecdotes about his father’s illness. What he did was present the case that human cells developed and destroyed in labs are not life as we know it and that we can – and should -- make an ethical distinction. And he did it without emotion or drama. Ron Reagan’s not his father. But, you know, perhaps the nicest thing is that he’s not trying to be, either. And he’s not alone on this: His sister Patty will be talking with Larry King about the need for stem cell research next month.
Continue reading "Looking Ahead, Looking Back"Wed 06:19 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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Prop. 71, the California initiative on stem cell research is going to generate plenty of debate, comment and mail.
Here’s a note from Roger Hudgins who is writing in response to my eWeek column. I’ll have lots more to say on this topic, particularly after Ron Reagan speaks at the Democratic Convention this week. But feel free to join in. Rules for getting posted are pretty simple: Be polite and concise and try to add to the argument, not repeat what’s been said. Here’s Mr. Hudgins:
Continue reading "Cellular Politics: Mail Bag"Mon 06:38 PM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
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This week’s eWeek column is about Prop. 71, the California initiative to encourage stem cell research in the state’s universities and medical centers.
For better or worse, it's going to focus national debate on this contentious issue, mostly because of the Reagan family’s involvement. The family’s interest in encouraging stem cell research puts a face on the potential for cures and treatment and could turn into another social issue defeat for the Bush administration. Reagan’s death and his son’s clear eulogy and the comments he’s made since are pushing back – hard – against the president’s decision to limit funding for stem cells research. Stem cells could be like gay marriage: Big push by the party’s conservatives but strong sentiment that the party is over-reacting by its moderates. End result: Tie.
Continue reading "Cellular Politics"Fri 11:06 AM | permalink | printer-friendly version | email this article
