CIRM continued to defy the law, having its nose dragged by the interests of big institutes and universities as above the law of Prop71 that created CIRM, leaving only a few dog-bones for hESC research to chew. With the representatives of big institutions taking their liberty to rewrite the law to maximize their own return, CIRM’s RFAs and initiatives showed no sign of prioritizing hESC research to maximize the State’s return that the law shall, but the non-transparent measures that the law shall not. No money for hESC research from California’s $3B ambitious stem cell project was highlighted by their large disease team awards. The 2nd round of disease team awards revealed, not any better than the previous round of > $200M, no new hESC therapy but a cluster of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) triumphing over the much more potential hESCs against any laws, turning blind to > 20 years of MSC studies that have already produced negative results in clinical trials. Their last award of 2011 to an out-of-state molecular biologist idolized no leader but stem cell con man no exception to academia, proving once again how wrong it has been to put the public’s trust for a law on executives and outrageous salaries.
The statute of that CIRM can do whatever they want was established in California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s effort in vain to persuade CIRM to fund hESC research, discouraging anyone to think that CIRM would take any comments or arguments of authority, government officials, congressmen, public, media, or stem cell scientists into accounts. In a cyperfly age, CIRM gives no opportunity for any feedbacks or suggestions. CIRM incapability of delivering the law has been re-enforced by their long list of awards welcomed not by the grants criteria written into California stem cell research and cure bond act or Proposition 71 [1], but the tangled financial interests of academia and big Institutes that could not even hide behind their non-transparent measures and symbolic barring of directors, making each round of awards like a slam on the reason of their own existence. With each round of awards that revealed no welcome to hESC research, CIRM has lost its colorful vibrancy of hope that drove the pass of Prop71, abandoned by all major media to the dark side of science infested with conflicts of interests and broken scientific integrity to threaten the sacred knowledge passing through the academic ground.
A far cry from CIRM’s no concern for a state law, uncontested complains to tiny-bit things such as job threats from a couple of adult stem cell researchers have caused national stirring for the concern for a federal law, the Dickey-Wicker Amendment [2]. However, Dickey-Wicker Amendment was written in no way for demanding their common interests of justice for injustice. Dickey-Wicker Amendment is added so that the federal funding cannot be used to destroy embryos only for the benefit of mankind but it surrenders to the greater benefit of public health, such as the uses for incurable diseases. Without asking if their decision would jeopardize the hard work of those men and women who sacrifice their careers to pursue hESC research in order to unlock the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, the supreme court’s decision almost choked the entire NIH’s hESC research that just started to breath the precious air of freedom, threw the whole hESC research field into turmoil, triggered hESC research lab shutdowns, and caused a much bigger job threat spreading all over the country.
Not long after the Korean scandal in science, shocked by those science traitors, I came back from a keystone chromatin meeting to tell my admiration to Rudy Jaenisch for his scientific integrity to Evan Snyder, but confounded by Evan’s sneer expression that he knew those Harvards were actually the real persons behind that science paper, had absolutely no scientific integrity. A few years later a few weeks before Christmas in 2009, at ASCB (American Society for Cell Biology) meeting in San Diego, I attended Rudy Jaenisch keynote address to a very large audience again. NIH’s new Director Francis Collins flew to the meeting that morning to give an unscheduled speech right after Rudy Jaenisch. I could not believe my ear to hear that then ASCB president Duke University professor Brigid Hogan announced that no question was allowed. As a prestigious professor in DNA methylation and chromatin, Rudy Jaenisch was totally aware, more than anyone else, of the altered DNA methylation and genomic integrity in iPS cells, cloned cells, and trans-differentiated cells that made reprogrammed adult cells nothing close to stem cells or normal tissues, too dangerous and too greater of a risk to public health to be used as alternatives for embryonic stem cells. Failure to mention it to the big picture of general audience, as one of the most influential persons in sciences, he opted to select the facts in favor of his theory that has misled both the scientific field and the general public. His republican favored theory would soon prevail in the unfolding of a turmoil of events: democrats’ loss of Ted Kennedy’s seat to republicans right before that Christmas, lawsuit to federal funding on hESC research the following year, hESC research lab shutdowns over the country, the downfall of democrats in Congress before the next Christmas, the aftermath of government budget battles over a bipartisan Congress, and narrowly escaped government shutdowns right before this past Christmas.
At one UC connect event, a business-tier looked well-educated lawyer was asking me that “I heard that the potential of human embryonic stem cells is decreasing, there are stem cells in placenta, …”. I stopped gulfing down the refreshments to effort polite while wondered if this handsome block was from his mother’s placenta so got no brain of his own. Obviously, all those public education campaigns launched by CIRM have failed. Picking a spokesman for hESC research from CIRM’s long-list of awardees is like finding a tiny fish in the ocean, therefore, it is quite expectable that their public education might just have the opposite effect. I would not be too surprised to see a herd of placenta-born men burgeoning in front of me after all those brain-washing lectures and spotlights by their spokesmen.
Science is naked, accepting nothing less than a truth, and freedom is the soul. Without it, science cannot hold its integrity as a whole. Depriving of freedom has imprisoned stem cell research, ripping the integrity apart. In 2011, the status of human embryonic stem cell research was no better than the prisoner of war, the stem cell war. With the pending lawsuit on federal funding for hESC research crouching closely behind the political agenda of the election year, the future the stem cell research has never become so uncertain. However, no matter pro or con, the potential of human embryonic stem cells lies in the survival of human race and will never decrease. Only the advances of human embryonic stem cell research hold the key to unlock the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, the last legal obstacle to restrict the federal funding on human embryo research.
References: The Laws:
1. Proposition 71:
(c) Recommendations for Awards
Award recommendations shall be based upon a competitive evaluation as follows:
(1) Only the 15 scientist members of the Scientific and Medical Research Funding Working Group shall score grant and loan award applications for scientific merit. Such scoring shall be based on scientific merit in three separate classifications—research, therapy development, and clinical trials, on criteria including the following:
(A) A demonstrated record of achievement in the areas of pluripotent stem cell and progenitor cell biology and medicine, unless the research is determined to be a vital research opportunity.
(B) The quality of the research proposal, the potential for achieving significant research, or clinical results, the timetable for realizing such significant results, the importance of the research objectives, and the innovativeness of the proposed research.
(C) In order to ensure that institute funding does not duplicate or supplant existing funding, a high priority shall be placed on funding pluripotent stem cell and progenitor cell research that cannot, or is unlikely to, receive timely or sufficient federal funding, unencumbered by limitations that would impede the research. In this regard, other research categories funded by the National Institutes of Health shall not be funded by the institute.
(D) Notwithstanding subparagraph (C), other scientific and medical research and technologies and/or any stem cellresearch proposal not actually funded by the institute under subparagraph (C) may be funded by the institute if at least two-thirds of a quorum of the members of the Scientific and Medical Research Funding Working Group recommend to the ICOC that such a research proposal is a vital research opportunity.
2. Dickey-Wicker Amendment
SEC. 509. (a) None of the funds made available in this Act may be used for–
(1) the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes; or
(2) research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero under 45 CFR 46.204(b) and section 498(b) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 289g(b)).
(b) For purposes of this section, the term `human embryo or embryos’ includes any organism, not protected as a human subject under 45 CFR 46 as of the date of the enactment of this Act, that is derived by fertilization, parthenogenesis, cloning, or any other means from one or more human gametes or human diploid cells.
The statute of that CIRM can do whatever they want was established in California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s effort in vain to persuade CIRM to fund hESC research, discouraging anyone to think that CIRM would take any comments or arguments of authority, government officials, congressmen, public, media, or stem cell scientists into accounts. In a cyperfly age, CIRM gives no opportunity for any feedbacks or suggestions. CIRM incapability of delivering the law has been re-enforced by their long list of awards welcomed not by the grants criteria written into California stem cell research and cure bond act or Proposition 71 [1], but the tangled financial interests of academia and big Institutes that could not even hide behind their non-transparent measures and symbolic barring of directors, making each round of awards like a slam on the reason of their own existence. With each round of awards that revealed no welcome to hESC research, CIRM has lost its colorful vibrancy of hope that drove the pass of Prop71, abandoned by all major media to the dark side of science infested with conflicts of interests and broken scientific integrity to threaten the sacred knowledge passing through the academic ground.
A far cry from CIRM’s no concern for a state law, uncontested complains to tiny-bit things such as job threats from a couple of adult stem cell researchers have caused national stirring for the concern for a federal law, the Dickey-Wicker Amendment [2]. However, Dickey-Wicker Amendment was written in no way for demanding their common interests of justice for injustice. Dickey-Wicker Amendment is added so that the federal funding cannot be used to destroy embryos only for the benefit of mankind but it surrenders to the greater benefit of public health, such as the uses for incurable diseases. Without asking if their decision would jeopardize the hard work of those men and women who sacrifice their careers to pursue hESC research in order to unlock the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, the supreme court’s decision almost choked the entire NIH’s hESC research that just started to breath the precious air of freedom, threw the whole hESC research field into turmoil, triggered hESC research lab shutdowns, and caused a much bigger job threat spreading all over the country.
Not long after the Korean scandal in science, shocked by those science traitors, I came back from a keystone chromatin meeting to tell my admiration to Rudy Jaenisch for his scientific integrity to Evan Snyder, but confounded by Evan’s sneer expression that he knew those Harvards were actually the real persons behind that science paper, had absolutely no scientific integrity. A few years later a few weeks before Christmas in 2009, at ASCB (American Society for Cell Biology) meeting in San Diego, I attended Rudy Jaenisch keynote address to a very large audience again. NIH’s new Director Francis Collins flew to the meeting that morning to give an unscheduled speech right after Rudy Jaenisch. I could not believe my ear to hear that then ASCB president Duke University professor Brigid Hogan announced that no question was allowed. As a prestigious professor in DNA methylation and chromatin, Rudy Jaenisch was totally aware, more than anyone else, of the altered DNA methylation and genomic integrity in iPS cells, cloned cells, and trans-differentiated cells that made reprogrammed adult cells nothing close to stem cells or normal tissues, too dangerous and too greater of a risk to public health to be used as alternatives for embryonic stem cells. Failure to mention it to the big picture of general audience, as one of the most influential persons in sciences, he opted to select the facts in favor of his theory that has misled both the scientific field and the general public. His republican favored theory would soon prevail in the unfolding of a turmoil of events: democrats’ loss of Ted Kennedy’s seat to republicans right before that Christmas, lawsuit to federal funding on hESC research the following year, hESC research lab shutdowns over the country, the downfall of democrats in Congress before the next Christmas, the aftermath of government budget battles over a bipartisan Congress, and narrowly escaped government shutdowns right before this past Christmas.
At one UC connect event, a business-tier looked well-educated lawyer was asking me that “I heard that the potential of human embryonic stem cells is decreasing, there are stem cells in placenta, …”. I stopped gulfing down the refreshments to effort polite while wondered if this handsome block was from his mother’s placenta so got no brain of his own. Obviously, all those public education campaigns launched by CIRM have failed. Picking a spokesman for hESC research from CIRM’s long-list of awardees is like finding a tiny fish in the ocean, therefore, it is quite expectable that their public education might just have the opposite effect. I would not be too surprised to see a herd of placenta-born men burgeoning in front of me after all those brain-washing lectures and spotlights by their spokesmen.
Science is naked, accepting nothing less than a truth, and freedom is the soul. Without it, science cannot hold its integrity as a whole. Depriving of freedom has imprisoned stem cell research, ripping the integrity apart. In 2011, the status of human embryonic stem cell research was no better than the prisoner of war, the stem cell war. With the pending lawsuit on federal funding for hESC research crouching closely behind the political agenda of the election year, the future the stem cell research has never become so uncertain. However, no matter pro or con, the potential of human embryonic stem cells lies in the survival of human race and will never decrease. Only the advances of human embryonic stem cell research hold the key to unlock the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, the last legal obstacle to restrict the federal funding on human embryo research.
References: The Laws:
1. Proposition 71:
(c) Recommendations for Awards
Award recommendations shall be based upon a competitive evaluation as follows:
(1) Only the 15 scientist members of the Scientific and Medical Research Funding Working Group shall score grant and loan award applications for scientific merit. Such scoring shall be based on scientific merit in three separate classifications—research, therapy development, and clinical trials, on criteria including the following:
(A) A demonstrated record of achievement in the areas of pluripotent stem cell and progenitor cell biology and medicine, unless the research is determined to be a vital research opportunity.
(B) The quality of the research proposal, the potential for achieving significant research, or clinical results, the timetable for realizing such significant results, the importance of the research objectives, and the innovativeness of the proposed research.
(C) In order to ensure that institute funding does not duplicate or supplant existing funding, a high priority shall be placed on funding pluripotent stem cell and progenitor cell research that cannot, or is unlikely to, receive timely or sufficient federal funding, unencumbered by limitations that would impede the research. In this regard, other research categories funded by the National Institutes of Health shall not be funded by the institute.
(D) Notwithstanding subparagraph (C), other scientific and medical research and technologies and/or any stem cellresearch proposal not actually funded by the institute under subparagraph (C) may be funded by the institute if at least two-thirds of a quorum of the members of the Scientific and Medical Research Funding Working Group recommend to the ICOC that such a research proposal is a vital research opportunity.
2. Dickey-Wicker Amendment
SEC. 509. (a) None of the funds made available in this Act may be used for–
(1) the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes; or
(2) research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero under 45 CFR 46.204(b) and section 498(b) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 289g(b)).
(b) For purposes of this section, the term `human embryo or embryos’ includes any organism, not protected as a human subject under 45 CFR 46 as of the date of the enactment of this Act, that is derived by fertilization, parthenogenesis, cloning, or any other means from one or more human gametes or human diploid cells.
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