A Harsher Look at California's Stem Cell Program: No More Cash Without Changes
By David Jensen,
California Stem Cell Report [cites CGS' Pete Shanks]
| 08. 23. 2018
California's $3 billion stem cell experiment received a host of accolades last week at a state legislative hearing, but one strong, critical voice was not heard in the proceedings.
That came from the Biopolitical Times, a blog operated by the Center for Genetics and Society of Berkeley, a longtime foe of the agency.
In a piece written by Pete Shanks, the agency was taken to task for a number of reasons. And he argued that it should not receive additional funds as it is presently constituted.
Shanks wrote,
"At one time, CIRM had a deserved reputation for funding buildings , some of them at private universities, and was heavily criticized for that, but the $270 million “major facilities” budget approved in 2008 has all been spent. Some of the conflict of interest scandals are largely in the past, though ripples persist , and some of the institutional ones remain; several universities that receive large grants are still represented on the board . But there has been a new regime in place (“CIRM 2.0”) for several...
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Bioethics needs an update
The National Research Act is now 50 years old. It was signed into law on July 12, 1974, as a direct response to publicity about the 1932 “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.” The Hastings Bioethics Forum celebrated its anniversary with an...
Image courtesy National Human Genome Research Institute
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is supposed to encourage effective medical advances while also ensuring that patients and research subjects are protected. This dual mandate demands tricky judgment calls that are made more difficult by outside pressures of several kinds, political, judicial, and especially commercial. This April story at Bloomberg examines one deeply troubling pattern of regulatory capture:
Americans Are Paying Billions to Take Drugs That Don’t Work
Companies are increasingly...
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