SAN FRANCISCO — The stem cell institute that California voters willed into existence with their approval of a $3-billion bond measure goes on trial today.
The lawsuit, to be heard by an Alameda County Superior Court judge, is relatively simple: Opponents contend the lack of direct state control over the institute's finances is unconstitutional.
The state attorney general's office and the institute's lawyer counter that the measure amended the state constitution to allow for such independence.
The dispute has frozen one of California's boldest experiments: to create an embryonic stem cell research industry that has been deemed off-limits for federal funding by the Bush administration.
Beyond the dry legal question, the trial will offer the San Francisco-based California Institute for Regenerative Science a forum to press its case that it has been and will be accountable to the public.
Since inception, the institute has been embroiled in a debate over the workings of its citizen oversight committee, which over a decade will dole out an amount comparable to the annual gross national product of Papua New Guinea to advance the relatively young science.
"This agency has been under a microscope for the last year and been subject to a fair degree of criticism," said institute attorney James Harrison. "In some sense, this trial gives us a chance to prove what this agency has accomplished and how accountable it has been."
Many key decisions -- about ethical standards for research, whether revenue from patented findings would be shared with the state, if indigent Californians would be ensured access to treatments -- had not been made when the lawsuits were filed.
But now they have been, after nearly five dozen public meetings and hours of spirited discussion with patients' groups, researchers, legislators, taxpayer watchdogs, stem cell skeptics and more.
Proposition 71, known as the Stem Cell Research and Cures Act, was approved by 59% of voters in November 2004 to allocate $300 million a year for a decade. It created the institute and its governing body, the 29-member Independent Citizen's Oversight Committee. (The initiative's high-powered backer, Robert Klein, was selected to chair it.)
Although most committee members are appointed by elected officials, the proposition was designed to insulate the governing board from politics, so it forbade legislative intervention for three years.
