Editorial: More Conflicts Come to Light at Stem Cell Institute
By Editorial,
The Sacramento Bee
| 05. 25. 2013
With a new chairman, Jonathan Thomas, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine claims it has turned a page. Thomas has vowed to be aggressive in avoiding conflicts in dispersing millions of public dollars for stem cell research.
Yet serious conflicts continue to be revealed involving CIRM. The latest one throws into question a $20 million grant awarded last year to StemCells Inc., a company that wants to transplant neural stem cells to treat Alzheimer's disease.
The institute's oversight board approved the award in September, following a lobbying effort by Robert Klein, a former chairman of the oversight board who authored Proposition 71, the initiative that created the stem cell institute. As part of that effort, Klein last year donated $21,000 to CIRM so it could send six of its in-house science officers to a conference in Japan, where Klein had special access to them.
Prior to this lobbying campaign, the institute's outside scientific reviewers recommended twice against awarding the money to StemCells Inc. Yet following Klein's efforts, the oversight board overruled them, agreeing on a 7-5 vote to approve the...
Related Articles
By Nicholas Wade, The New York Times | 04.30.2026
“J. Craig Venter” via Wikimedia Commons licensed under CC by 2.5
J. Craig Venter, a scientist and entrepreneur who raced to decode the human genome, died on Wednesday in San Diego. He was 79.
His death was announced by...
By Susan Dominus, The New York Times Magazine | 04.27.2026
Why are babies born young? The most natural phenomenon on earth is actually hard to explain — at least on a cellular level. Consider this problem: The components of conception are old. When a woman gets pregnant, she has...
By Jonathan Basile, Los Ángeles Review of Books | 04.29.2026
WILLIAM BATESON, a foundational figure in the science of genetics at the turn of the last century, once recounted the response of a Scottish soldier to one of his public lectures: “Sir, what ye’re telling us is nothing but Scientific...
By Dr. Coco Newton, Progress Educational Trust | 03.30.2026
Have you ever wondered what it means to have dozens of half-siblings across the world – or to never know where half of your genetic identity comes from? A recent episode of Zembla explores the human consequences of the global...
