Charles Halpern Letter to ICOC

September 8, 2005

Dear Chairman Klein and Members of the Independent Citizen's Oversight Committee:

I reviewed the agenda for the September 9 ICOC meeting with interest and concern. My comments are addressed to Agenda Item 8, to the criteria for grants and for the procedure by which they have been processed. At this meeting, the ICOC should devote its time to genuine deliberation on the criteria for awarding grants-both training grants and research grants. The fact that these are Interim Criteria should not obscure the fact that the early rounds of grants will shape the Prop. 71 stem cell initiative for years to come. The criteria recommended by the Scientific and Medical Research Funding Working Group (WG), while a good starting point, are woefully incomplete. The ICOC should also reconfigure the process by which grant recommendations are presented to the ICOC in a manner which permits true deliberation on grant awards by the ICOC.

In particular, the ICOC should assure that none of the work in California laboratories and none of the training it funds will benefit those who...