Stem cell research regulations mulled

By Sandi Dolbee
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
February 1, 2006

LOS ANGELES _ Women who donate eggs for state-funded embryonic stem cell research could be reimbursed for their expenses, including lost wages, under recommendations approved yesterday by a committee charged with setting medical and ethical standards for California's $3 billion stem cell research initiative.

The proposed regulations prohibit state-funded projects from paying donors for eggs, which complies with Proposition 71, the initiative approved by California voters in 2004 to jump start embryonic stem cell research through a decade of public funding.

_This is very complicated. It's going to be controversial,_ acknowledged Bernard Lo, a medical ethicist at the University of California San Francisco and co-chair of the Scientific and Medical Accountability Standards Working Group, one of the advisory committees established by Proposition 71.

Lo, however, dismissed suggestions that reimbursing women for lost wages is a slippery slope toward creating a for-profit market that could coerce poor women into selling their eggs.

Zach Hall, president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the agency created to implement this initiative, said the guidelines...