Lofty promises, limited results
By Erin Allday and Joaquin Palomino,
San Francisco Chronicle [cites CGS' Marcy Darnovsky]
| 09. 06. 2018
After 14 years and $3 billion, has California's bet on stem cells paid off?
It was an extraordinary political proposal: Approve a $3 billion bond measure to fund the cutting-edge science of stem cell therapy, and soon some of the world’s cruelest diseases and most disabling injuries could be eradicated.
The 2004 measure was Proposition 71, the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative. The campaign to pass it was led by a Palo Alto real estate developer whose son suffered from an incurable illness that he believed stem cells, the keystones of human biology, could heal. Other supporters included preeminent scientists, Hollywood celebrities, business leaders and elite investors.
THE MIRACLE CELL
This series explores the hope and reality of the revolutionary science of stem cell therapy. It focuses on what has transpired since 2004, when California voters approved a $3 billion bond measure to fund stem cell research with the promise that it soon would produce new treatments for incurable diseases.
In four parts, it follows the stories of patients desperately seeking remedies; probes the for-profit clinics where unproven and unregulated treatments are being offered; takes you into the labs and hospital rooms where...
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The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has now spent almost all of the $3 billion of public funds (which entailed a further $3 billion in interest) allotted to it by a 2004 ballot initiative. The CIRM board seems to have no appetite for closing up shop; no better idea than to support another, even larger, ballot initiative that might lead to funds in 2021; and so far, not much of a plan for getting from here to there. But...
