By David Jensen – Capitol Weekly
Directors of the $12 billion California stem cell agency will face a fundamental question next week that could determine whether its efforts to produce revolutionary treatments for afflictions ranging from heart disease to cancer will live or die.
The question is contained in a briefing on the funding model for the 18-year-old California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), which is the only California state department that has a slow-moving, financial guillotine hanging over it.
Embedded in the briefing are 14 words with a host of implications: “What is (or what are) the most important outcomes for CIRM in 10 years?” The question and possible answers raise political, financial, scientific, medical and ethical challenges for CIRM, an enterprise that is unique in California history and the largest such state effort in the nation.