WAKING UP IN BED WITH THE CULTURE OF DEATH:

The Stem Cell Chair to the Highest Bidder? (Francine Coeytaux and Susan Berke Fogel, December 17, 2004, LA Times)

As the media, elected officials and even supporters of Proposition 71 — the stem cell initiative — are now recognizing, we Californians have just passed a highly flawed law. Concerns about transparency, accountability and conflicts of interest abound. California, the largest blue state, voted overwhelmingly to send a raspberry to Washington on stem cell research. We are the Golden State, the Left Coast, the cutting edge, and our next horizon, we decided, is embryonic stem cell research. And true to form, we didn't use the normal avenues to get there, preferring the initiative route to the legislative process.

Today, the newly formed Independent Citizens Oversight Committee, or ICOC, meets to take its first public step: electing a chair and vice chair. This is the opportunity to show leadership, to elect a person who has a record of serving the public interest, who will ensure the highest levels of scientific integrity and stewardship of the enormous amounts of public money — $3 billion — provided by the law.

But instead, the state is stumbling right out of the gate as all four of the elected officials charged with nominating the chairman lined up to reward Bob Klein, Proposition 71's chief author, campaigner and financier, by handing him the plum job — no competition, no public debate, no choices.

It comes as no surprise that the "mandatory criteria for chairperson" mirrors Klein's own resume: After all, he wrote the law, designed the process and determined the criteria by which he would be nominated.

What is surprising is that our elected officials are willing to anoint him.

Who'd have dreamt that a law intended to debase your culture by allowing money to trump life would place money above accountability?

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 17, 2004 8:51 AM