Stem cell blowback

A year after California voters enacted Proposition 71, an initiative that committed the state to raise and disburse $3 billion for embryonic stem cell science over a decade, the state hasn't spent a penny on stem cell research and the institutions created to manage and oversee the biomedical funding bonanza are fighting a two-front battle for survival in both the courts and the California Legislature.

Instead of presiding over awards of hundreds of millions of dollars in grant money in 2005, as its backers predicted in November 2004, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), the agency created to implement the state's bold experiment in biomedical research, is bogged down defending itself against legal attacks that have put its continued operation at risk (see BioCentury Nov. 8, 2004 & April 11, 2005)...