Proposition 71 Stem Cell Research

The California Court of Appeal in San Francisco heard oral arguments Wednesday in the 2-year-old dispute that has kept the state's voter-created stem cell institute from issuing any of the $3 billion in bonds approved under Proposition 71, the 2004 stem cell research initiative. The plaintiffs in the two consolidated lawsuits are appealing a decision by the Alameda County Superior Court last April that upheld the constitutionality of the institute and its citizen oversight committee.

Stanford University will build a center for stem cell research in the heart of its campus with the help of a $33-million gift announced Tuesday. The donation from Lorry I. Lokey, the founder of Business Wire and a 1949 Stanford graduate, came a day after a California appeals court upheld the constitutionality of Proposition 71, a $3-billion bond measure for stem cell research.

The California Supreme Court gave final clearance Wednesday to California's landmark $3-billion stem cell research effort, declining to hear an appeal of two lower court rulings upholding the constitutionality of 2004's Proposition 71. "This is the end of the road," said Dana Cody, executive director of the Life Legal Defense Foundation, which represents two of the taxpayer and religious groups that sued.

California's leading research universities are spending millions of dollars hiring scientists and building lab space for human embryonic stem cell research, even as money from the state's massive bond measure remains tied up in court. USC has lured a top scientist from the Australian Stem Cell Centre to head its new research institute and has committed $10 million this year to hiring faculty and renovating lab space.

California's $3-billion foray into stem cell research, approved by voters more than a year ago, will not begin in earnest for perhaps 15 more months because of legal challenges to the initiative, officials said Friday. "It will be the spring of 2007 before we will be able to pursue stem cell research on the scale that the voters of Prop. 71 expect," Zach Hall, president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, told his board of directors Friday.

Opponents of the $3-billion stem cell research initiative approved by California voters characterized it Monday as fraught with conflicts of interest and so unaccountable to the state and taxpayers that it is unconstitutional. A deputy attorney general countered that the legal challenges that have held up public spending by the state stem cell institute are "tortured interpretations of the constitution."

A trial that could determine the fate of the state's $3-billion stem cell research initiative concluded Thursday in Alameda County Superior Court, but the judge will not issue a ruling until later this month at the earliest. Opponents contend that the institute, which voters created in November 2004, is unconstitutional because it operates without direct state control.

Legal challenges to the state's $3-billion stem cell initiative were rejected Friday by an Alameda County Superior Court judge in a strongly worded ruling. The lawsuits by taxpayer and religious groups have blocked the state's ability to issue the bonds that will allow it to hand out an estimated $300 million a year over a decade for stem cell research. Challengers vowed to appeal to the California Supreme Court -- a move certain to extend the legal battle until at least next year.

The state attorney general asked a California appellate court Wednesday to expedite lawsuits that have paralyzed the voter-approved $3-billion stem cell research initiative, after plaintiffs confirmed that they will appeal. Proposition 71, passed in November 2004, aimed to circumvent federal restrictions on embryonic stem cell research and channel more money into the science than any other U.S. effort.

The meeting was almost over when Roman Reed steered his wheelchair to the microphone. On the table before him sat a 149-page book of budget charts and timetables, the first concrete outline of what California's voter-approved stem cell institute plans to accomplish in its 10-year lifespan. "I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart," Reed said to the institute's staff and 29-member oversight board in October.