No on Prop. 14; no need to replicate California's disappointing stem cell experiment
By Editorial Board,
San Francisco Chronicle
| 09. 24. 2020
Like MySpace, the Martha Stewart prosecution and American democratic norms, spending gobs of state money on stem cell research might sound like an artifact of the Aughts. And yet 16 years after voters agreed to borrow $3 billion to explore a promising new area of medical research, stem cells are back on the California ballot.
The state’s voters passed Proposition 71, which created the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, in a fit of hope that stem cells could treat an array of diseases and injuries. President George W. Bush’s order limiting federally funded embryonic stem cell research on religious grounds added urgency and politics to the cause. Celebrities such as Michael J. Fox and Christopher Reeve urged Californians to step into the breach for them and countless others with incurable, often heart-rending conditions.
Now the Oakland-based agency’s backers want voters to approve an additional $5.5 billion under Proposition 14 to sustain not just a limitless possibility but also the more mundane and complex reality of the institute’s experience. Especially in a field as nascent as stem cells, science is slow...
Related Articles
By Priyanka Runwal, Chemical and Engineering News | 08.05.2024
Saritee Sanodiya, 26, has spent countless days wondering if she’ll ever live a “normal” life. Growing up, Sanodiya often missed school, frequenting the hospital for sudden, life-threatening drops in her hemoglobin levels and excruciating pain in her joints. High fever...
It’s been a busy couple of months in biopolitics, with developments in the US, UK, China, Japan, and implicitly on Mars. Time for a brief roundup.
• • •
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...
By Sarah Kliff and Azeen Ghorayshi, The New York Times | 07.15.2024