Stem Cell Initiative Certified for Ballot

The California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative is one of 14 propositions that will face the state's voters in this presidential election year, officials said. Advocates contend that stem cell research, which would be financed by a state bond issue over 10 years, could lead to breakthroughs in curing numerous diseases.

The ballot initiative is an implicit referendum on an executive order that President Bush issued in 2001. That action limited the use of federal funds for stem cell research to a small number of cell colonies already extracted from human embryos.

At the time, Bush said he chose to limit research to avoid doing anything that would "encourage further destruction of human embryos."

The challenge to Bush -- who will also be on the ballot in November -- is made all the more dramatic by the fact that Nancy Reagan, the wife of Bush's political role model, last month publicly embraced stem cell research as a way to help people like Ronald Reagan, who suffers from Alzheimer's.

"I do think the initiative is designed in part to embarrass President Bush by putting pressure on the president to open up the federal spigots for funding," said Wesley J. Smith, a Castro Valley author and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank.

For Californians, the ballot fight could be about money as much as morality. Voters this year already have consented to borrow up to $15 billion to help ease the state's fiscal crisis. The stem cell measure would add another $3 billion in debt backed by the state's general fund. Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill estimated that, including interest, the measure would amount to a $6-billion obligation.

That debt would be used to create a new state agency that would give out grants and loans to a network of researchers. The initiative's proponents insist the new revenue and royalties from patents that might result from research breakthroughs would easily pay off the cost of the bond issue. Moreover, supporters say, it would be a huge boon to the state's economy, with researchers flocking here, and would advance the science internationally.