Meeting, Meetings, Meetings, But More is Needed

If you are interested in following the affairs of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, you better cancel most of your plans for Jan. 25 and part of Jan. 24. The agency has scheduled three teleconference meetings, which means that the meetings will held in one location and broadcast to several locations elsewhere in the state.

The site search committee is meeting from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m on the 25th. You can fill that afternoon with a 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. meeting of the “scientific and medical research fund working group search committee.” The business of the site search committee is obvious. The scientific research group will consider, among other things, grant formats and criteria for selection of members of the research working group, which is not the same thing as the search committee for the research working group, which is the one actually meeting on Jan. 25. This may sound confusing, but one can only do so much with the names of groups that are nearly identical.

In other agenda news, the presidential search committee meets in teleconference mode on Jan. 24 from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. to consider responses from personnel search firms seeking to conduct a search for a president for CIRM. If you are a such a firm, the deadline for proposals is Jan. 19, Wednesday, at 5 p.m.

Comment: This seems to be a good use of teleconferencing to allow interested parties to actually hear the meetings from various locations around the state. (See the locations and agendas at the CIRM web site.) However, there are several problems. Listeners will not be able to see any documents, such as search firm proposals. The actual members of the committees are not listed. No procedures for voting are laid out, including what consitutes a quorum for these committees. This is a young agency with a host of start-up issues. But it is time for it to publish procedures that lay out how it works beyond what is in the actual initiative, if it has such procedures. While we are on the subject, it is past time for CIRM to publish some version of minutes of previous meetings. This is standard procedure for other government agencies and should not be neglected. It would also be a good idea to broadcast all meetings via the Internet instead of to specific locations. Access would be much improved.

Good Enough for the Golden State?

A blog on the website of the American Journal of Bioethics has raised questions about reliance by California on national standards for stem cell research.

The item on blog.bioethics.net by Glenn McGhee reacted to a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle today by Carl T. Hall. McGhee said it would be helpful for California to get the Moreno committee report discussed in Hall's piece.

"But it is difficult to see how any group writing guidelines for national stem cell policy - or even for state and national policy - can cover both the issues inherent in national dilemmas, and the issues present in the states' differing legal, clinical, political, economic, and social situations, and still be finished in eight months," he said.

"It remains to be seen whether California will create its own ethics group or ethics research division within Proposition 71, and it would be dangerous indeed for the state to avoid doing so. California state stem cell policy might not be something you want - for the long term anyway - to have "phoned in" at the last minute. What Californians really need to do is hire Jonathan Moreno away from Virginia! "

CIRM Waits on National Research Standards

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine is waiting on national research guidelines before beginning the process of making grants -- guidelines that may be in place in April.

The timetable was disclosed in an article by Carl T. Hall in today's (Jan. 13) San Francisco Chronicle. Hall quoted Robert Klein, chairman of the CIRM oversight committee as saying he never meant to set a "firm" May deadline for dispensing funds. Klein said the agency would not issue grants until the best standards were in place.

Hall wrote, "Klein is counting on a comprehensive set of stem cell guidelines from the prestigious National Academies, an independent research organization in Washington, D.C., to help speed things along."

The organization said the standards will not be ready at least until April. Presumably those standards would be adopted on an interim basis by CIRM, triggering the first grant cycle. Then the agency would have 270 days to adopt final rules.

The players on the oversight committee

Here is a complete list of the members of the oversight committee for the California Insitute for Regenerative Medicine as prepared by Stu Leavenworth, associate editor of The Sacramento Bee. The list was first carried in his nice overview of the agency in Sunday's Bee.

*Chair*
* Robert Klein II
Portola Valley developer and board member of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (nominated by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other state officials)

*Vice Chair*
* Edward Penhoet
Co-founder of Chiron Corp. and current president of Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, a San Francisco philanthrophy (nominated by Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and state Controller Steve Westly)

*Appointed by Schwarzenegger*

* Keith Black
Director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute and director of neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

* Brian E. Henderson
Dean of University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine

* Oswald Steward
Chairman and director of the Christopher Reeve-Irvine Research Center for Spinal Cord Injury at UC Irvine

* Leon J. Thal
Chairman of the Department of Neurosciences at UC San Diego and director of its Alzheimer's Disease Research Center

* Gayle Wilson
Wife of former Gov. Pete Wilson; corporate board member of Gilead Sciences Inc., a pharmaceutical firm, and other companies

*Appointed by Lt. Gov. Carlos Bustamante*

* Josephine Phyllis Preciado
Executive director of the Diabetes Research network, Fresno Collaborative, UC San Francisco; and executive director of the Latino Center for Medical Education and Research, Fresno

* Tina S. Nova
President and chief executive of Genoptix Inc. in San Diego

* Richard Murphy
Chief executive officer of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies

* Robert J. Birgeneau
Chancellor of UC Berkeley

* David Serrano Sewell
San Francisco deputy city attorney

*Appointed by state Treasurer Phil Angelides*

* David Baltimore
President of the California Institute of Technology

* Dr. Michael Friedman
President and chief executive officer of City of Hope, a research and treatment center

* Michael Goldberg
Venture capitalist from Woodside

* Dr. Francisco Prieto
President of the American Diabetes Association's Sacramento-Sierra chapter

* Janet Wright
Chico cardiologist and member of the American College of Cardiology

*Appointed by State Controller Steve Westly*

* Ted W. Love
President, chief executive and director of Nuvelo Inc., a biopharmaceutical company based in Sunnyvale

* Joan Samuelson
Founder and president of the nonprofit Parkinson's Action Network

* Philip Pizzo
Dean of Stanford Medical School

* John C. Reed
Chief executive of the Burnham Institute

* Sherry Lansing
Chairwoman and chief executive of Paramount Pictures' Motion Picture Group

*Appointed by Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez*

* Jonathan Shestack
Founder of Cure Autism Now and producer at Warner Bros. studios

*Appointed by former Senate President Pro Tem John Burton*

* Jeff Sheehy
Deputy director for communications at UC San Francisco, AIDS Research Institute

*Appointed by UC chancellors who have campuses with medical schools*

* Susan V. Bryant
Dean of the UC Irvine School of Biological Sciences and professor of development/cell biology

* Edward W. Holmes
Dean of the UC San Diego School of Medicine and vice chancellor of UC San Diego Health Services

* David Kessler
Dean of the UC San Francisco School of Medicine and former head of the Food and Drug Administration

* Gerald S. Levey
Vice chancellor of UCLA Medical Sciences and dean of the medical school

* Claire Pomeroy
Dean of the UC Davis School of Medicine and vice chancellor of UC Davis Human Health Services

The story of Florencio

A man named Florencio López-de-Silanes was recently forced out of his job as the prize-winning head of the Yale University's International Institute for Corporate Governance.

López-de-Silanes was so highly regarded, according to a recent account in the Wall St. Journal, that he was a governance consultant for the World Bank and helped train foreign corporate directors. López-de-Silanes, however, resigned from his position at Yale after he allegedly double-billed the school for about $150,000 in business travel expenses, according to the Journal.

What does this have to do with California's newest agency, the Institute for Regenerative Medicine?

It has to do with money, trust and temptation, and the public's business.

Some Californians are concerned about how the stem cell agency is handling its affairs. “Trust us” seems to the official position at this point, although it is no easy task to get new bureacratic body breathing.

Dana Parsons, a columnist with the Los Angeles Times, may reflect some of the public unease. Earlier this week she (or is it he?) wrote that while she was not in full buyer's remorse about Proposition 71, she was feeling a tad edgy.

“It's just that they're dealing with huge amounts of money and huge amounts of hoped-for results. Just as surely as that formula provided the passion for the initiative, it could create pressure to do things too quickly or too much behind closed doors,” Parsons said.

So Parsons called James Warsaw, a “highly honorable” Southern California man who made his fortune in a family sports merchandising business and who supported Proposition 71. Parsons asked for reassurances about CIRM's conduct so far. “I'm reassuring you,” Warsaw said. That was good enough for the columnist.

It certainly does seem to be an appropriate time to trust the new agency, given its newness and start-up travails. That said, the first step in building trust is to create procedures that will ensure that the public's interest is fully protected.

The CIRM oversight committee is filled with accomplished, intelligent and principled people. They will be overseeing the dispensation of $3 billion – an amount that could tempt a saint. Open meetings, open records and strong ethical regulations will go far in avoiding future problems that could sap the agency.

As we know, sometimes even the best people do bad things. Ask Florencio López-de-Silanes.
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We would be delighted to publish your comments about the progress of the stem cell agency or the failings of this blog. Please send them along to djensen@californiastemcellreport.com.
Suggestions for links are welcome as well.

From Our Readers

The following is from GLS in Temecula, CA:

With 3 billon dollars at stake, they'd better vet the fund managers for scientific and other conflicts in full public view. Otherwise, we will get a bunch of hacks bought and paid for by the big medical companies.



Note to readers: This blog will publish comments from readers without using their real names, if requested and depending on the nature of the material. Generally, however, we want to know the identity of a person before posting his or her comments.

CIRM Bared ... Sort Of

Want to take a close look at the spending plans of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine? It is all exposed -- sort of -- in the governor's proposed budget for 2005-06, which he laid out Monday.

However, most readers will find the information less than satisfying. The figures are clearly preliminary and reflect little input from the agency itself, given that the board has only had 1 1/2 meetings and has no staff to prepare a budget. The numbers are pretty much placeholders for more details to come in the middle of May in what is known as the May Revise.

Indeed, the proposed plan's primary value is as a historical artifact. You can read it by clicking here.

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We would be delighted to publish your comments either on the agency's progress or the failings of this blog. Please email them djensen@californiastemcellreport.com. Send us your suggestions for links as well. Thank you.

"Biopigs" to Blackberries: Scoring in the Minus Column

California's new stem cell research agency has generated an impressive wave of negative attention in its first month.

All across the nation, the headlines are harsh.

“Fiasco” was the description on MIT's Technology Review website by its Web editor, Brad King. He recently counted 150 stories exploring negative aspects of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

Matthew J. Peterson of Local Liberty, a blog at the Center for Local Government at the Claremont Institute, said the agency was a “monster” created by “big biotech, Hollywood producers, and other wealthy interests.”

“Biopigs” are clamoring at the trough, wrote another blogger, Derek Gilbert.

Even Proposition 71 supporter California State Sen. Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento, complained in an op-ed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle that the “initiative falls glaringly short in providing key protections to the public's pocketbook.”

The Christian Right was largely silent with the exception of LifeNews.Com, where Editor Stephen Ertelt wrote a “we-told-you- so” piece.

Stuart Leavenworth, an associate editor of The Sacramento Bee, weighed in with perhaps the most thorough-going piece, one that was clearly labelled opinion. Some excerpts:

• “There is hope this group may end up operating more openly than the law allows and less secretly than some critics fear. But for that to happen, state officials and the public will have to exercise steady pressure, with an awareness of how much is at stake.”

• “During the meeting, I briefly chatted with (Robert) Klein, tried to arrange a longer interview, and then was dodged by him and his associates. Busy talking and typing into his wireless Blackberry, Klein came across as the consummate business guy, experienced in orchestrating deals but uncomfortable in dealing with the public spotlight.”
  

• “Although Klein seemed sincere in wanting to hear public comment, committee member Sherry Lansing, CEO of Paramount Pictures, rolled her eyes and yawned while members of the public addressed the board with their concerns.”

Leavenworth's lengthy article touched most of the bases, from conflict-of-interest concerns to scientific ethics. It is must reading for those following this agency.

Is all this harsh reaction deserved? After all, this is a new agency trying to move very quickly without a staff, right?

Perhaps. But Proposition 71 has a passel of powerful and knowledgeable friends who have operated in the public spotlight for decades. It would have served them well to midwife the birth of CIRM and stanch the flow of negativity. One can hope that Klein and members of the oversight committee today better understand the need to preserve their credibility and the confidence of the public than they did a month ago.

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Who's The Man?

Although CIRM has done a fair job of wounding itself, nobody would know unless somebody told the story. As of this week, the main minstrel is Paul Elias, biotechnology writer for The Associated Press. After the initial first meeting debacle in December, an article written last week by Elias spawned most of the negative comment and headlines around the country. Why? Because The AP has national and global distribution. TV, radio, newspapers and web sites around the world use AP -- not reports from regional California newspapers. Often AP simply picks up stories from local papers, but in this case the organization has a reporter specifically covering the agency. That means that the folks at CIRM need to focus sharply on Mr. Elias. He is the starting point for national media coverage and will also establish the initial tone for reporters coming in from outside California, such as those from the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe and others.

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We would be delighted to publish your comments either on the agency's progress or the failings of this blog. Please email them to djensen@californiastemcellreport.com. Send us your suggestions for links as well. Thank you.