Tracking the Wild CIRM: Sweeping Overviews of the Stem Cell/Gene Therapy Agency Are Upcoming

You can comment at the meetings or in writing ahead of the sessions

The latest, grand plans of California’s stem cell and gene therapy program will receive two public airings in the next 10 days, during which the public, researchers, businesses and patients will have a chance to comment, criticize and support the $12 billion effort.

The word “grand” is used deliberately because the proposals are indeed just that. The billions at stake do not guarantee results. The financing involves risky research and intractable diseases and conditions that have resisted cures for centuries.

The ambitious effort, in an unprecedented way, uses a direct democracy tool to secure the billions. At the same time, that tool has created a pathway for the financial extinction of the program, which is known officially as the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). CIRM says what is doing is “better than hope.”

(More details involving the paragraph above can be found here.)

The first meeting comes this Thursday. It involves the 35-member CIRM governing board. CIRM CEO Jonathan Thomas will lay out