Text of McCormack and Loring Emails on Stem Cell Board Meeting

Here is the text of the Sept. 9, 2015, email message to Sherrie Gould, executive director of Summit4stemcell, from Kevin McCormack, senior director of communications for the California stem cell agency, along with one from Jeanne Loring, head of the stem cell program at Scripps, to McCormack.  Loring sent her email to McCormack after she received a copy of his email to Gould.

The Gould-McCormack email comes first with the Loring-McCormack email following.

“Dear Sherrie
“I just wanted to let you know that there has been a change in plans for our September board meeting. As you know, it was originally scheduled to be held in San Diego, however, that has changed and it is now simply a telephonic meeting. The reason is that the agenda is going to be lighter than originally anticipated and it didn’t make sense to incur the cost of an in-person meeting for one hour’s worth of business. 

“I know you were planning to have many of the Parkinson’s group attend the meeting so I wanted to let you know so you can alert them to the change.
 “Our next in-person meeting will now be in Los Angeles on December 17th.
“Cheers,
“Kevin McCormack”

Loring’s email to McCormack:

“Hi Kevin:
 “Two in a row??  CIRM has rather pulled the rug out from under the patient advocates -these meetings are supposed to be public, so how is the public going to participate if there is no access?  Does CIRM have a plan to give access?  More importantly, is CIRM doing this to avoid having public access?
 “I'm disappointed and the Parkinson's patients are exceedingly disappointed.  The Parkinson's group is trying to find out the resolution, if any, of the timing of the grant applications.  Has anything been done in that regard yet?
 “In addition to the advocates, my students will be disappointed.  I always bring my interns and my CIRM fellows to the meetings so they can meet their benefactors.
 “Any plans for access to the public would be welcome.
 “Jeanne”