CGS-authored

California's Proposition 71 program was intended to create a $3 billion West Coast counterpart to the National Institutes of Health empowered to go where the NIH could not: full steam into the new field of biomedical research centered on human embryonic stem cells.

Instead, the program has gotten stuck in a seemingly endless legal morass. Although state officials say they are optimistic about their chances in court, it's expected that the program will take at least 15 more months to slog through appeals and start issuing the first major grants. Meanwhile, revelations of faked cloning research in South Korea have set back the scientific agenda and scandalized the entire stem cell field.

Rather than ramping up a bold, $350 million annual grant-making operation, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine appears to be entering a new era of declining expectations one year into its intended 10-year lifespan.

Universities have had to put construction plans on extended hold because of Prop. 71's slow start, while researchers seek other sources of grants to tide them over. At the same time, the nation's main...