Panel orders audit of stem cell program
By San Francisco Chronicle,
San Francisco Chronicle
| 03. 09. 2006
State lawmakers on Wednesday ordered an audit of the institute and committee created to spend $7 billion of voter-approved bonds aimed at funding stem cell research.
The Legislature's Joint Legislative Audit Committee voted unanimously to require the state auditor to review both the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine and the Independent Citizen's Oversight Committee. The stem cell program, approved by voters in November 2004, has come under fire for spending money on such things as public relations and lobbying and because many of the members of the oversight committee represent groups that may be awarded grants.
"I believe the audit will help ensure that the program is on sound footing as it moves into its grant-making phase next year,'' said state Sen. Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento, who called for the audit.
State Auditor Elaine Howle said the audit would evaluate the program's strategic plans and whether the two bodies are properly identifying and avoiding conflicts of interest. She also will look at whether the programs have the right controls in place to ensure they comply with state laws.
The audit will...
Related Articles
By Gregory Laub and Hannah Glaser, MedPage Today | 08.07.2025
In this MedPage Today interview, Leigh Turner, PhD, a professor of health policy and bioethics at the University of California Irvine, unpacks the growing influence of stem cell clinics and the blurred line between medicine and marketing. He explains how...
By Gina Kolata, The New York Times | 06.20.2025
A single infusion of a stem cell-based treatment may have cured 10 out of 12 people with the most severe form of type 1 diabetes. One year later, these 10 patients no longer need insulin. The other two patients need...
By Christina Jewett, The New York Times | 06.05.2025
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently declared that he wanted to expand access to experimental therapies but conceded that they could be risky or fraudulent.
In a podcast with Gary Brecka, who describes himself as a longevity expert...
By Mike Baker, The New York Times | 02.25.2025
As investigators struggled for weeks to find who might have committed the brutal stabbings of four University of Idaho students in the fall of 2022, they were focused on a key piece of evidence: DNA on a knife sheath that...
