CIRM Makes "Progress" Says Monitor

Jeanne Loring, co-director of the stem cell center at the Burnham Institute in La Jolla, reports that her staff is taking pay cuts to keep grad students and post doctoral clinicians on payroll until the money starts flowing from the California stem cell agency.

So said writer Daniel Wood of the Christian Science Monitor in a piece on the agency and its current state of affairs. Known as a "situationer," the article said,

"By most accounts, the CIRM has made significant progress on practically every front. It has filled out its governing board with some of the top scientists in the country and has held over five dozen public meetings to air concerns."

The article, which also appeared in USA Today, was generally favorable. Wood reported,

"'The CIRM has been subjected to an extraordinary amount of attention from public, press, and legislators and has responded with extraordinary openness through the past year,' says R. Alta Charo, a law and bioethics professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison."

A couple of comments: Perhaps the attention seems "extraordinary" to Charo, but the reality is that it has amounted to only a minor blip. The attention CIRM has received has been higher than that given to the creation of the department created by Prop. 65 a few years ago in California. But Prop. 65 did not carry a $6 billion price tag. Extraordinary attention is what the gubernatorial recall election received in 2003.

The other comment: CIRM continues to assert that because it has held something in the neighborhood of 60 meetings, that means it is moving forward. And reporters, constrained by media obligations to report even the weakest of assertions, repeat the claim. We all know that what counts, at least in business terms, is product sold, contracts signed and money in the bank. So far, CIRM still is living on the dole and has not funded a grant. Purchasers of bond anticipation notes are not going to be fooled by a tally of meetings as a measure of progress. The agency has other, better benchmarks. CIRM should drop the feeble claim. Perhaps they could schedule a meeting to officially retire the assertion.