A Struggling Science Experiment

Members of the citizens' oversight committee, including Gayle Wilson, center, are sworn in at a December meeting in San Francisco. (Noah Berger -- AP)

"I don't think there has been any rush to judgment on any front thus far," Hutton said. "The board is keeping the challenges that patients have day in and day out in their minds, but they are taking logical, prudent steps as to how they move this forward."

Human embryonic stem cells are one of the great medical hopes of this century. Extracted from fertilized eggs in their first days, these cells have an ability to "grow" into many different types of cells that make up the human body, be they muscle cells, brain cells or something else. Even though no single treatment has resulted from this research, some think that scientists will one day be able to engineer these cells so they can be used to cure all kinds of life-threatening diseases, from heart disease and diabetes to cancer and HIV/AIDS. The research, however, has been opposed by some religious groups, women's rights advocates and others because the eggs are donated by fertility clinics and the embryos are destroyed during the laboratory work.

Proposition 71, approved by 59 percent of California voters on Nov. 2, allocates $295 million a year for 10 years for stem cell research and outlines a streamlined bureaucratic structure for how the program will operate. In contrast, the federal government spent $25 million on similar research last year.

The initiative is being governed by a citizens' oversight committee and three working groups focused on specific topics. Members of the oversight committee must adhere to state rules regarding financial disclosures, open meetings, and civil service laws. The working groups, which act in an advisory capacity, are exempt -- a source of concern to many public-interest groups.

"If you don't know what people are saying in the meetings, then you have no way of telling whether their declared interests are playing an undue role and influence in what they are recommending," said Terry Francke, general counsel of Californians Aware, which advocates open government.

Of the 29 members of the committee, at least nine serve on boards of biotech or pharmaceutical companies or have financial holdings, according to disclosure forms they filed. Only a handful of these companies currently conduct stem cell research, but critics contend that the potential of the science is so large that it is not hard to imagine that the firms could one day be involved in the work.

The board's vice chairman, Edward Penhoet, is the co-founder of two prominent biotech firms, Chiron Corp. and Renovis Inc. He has said he owns at least $3.36 million in stocks and stock options in biotech firms. Tina S. Nova is chief executive of biotech firm Genoptix Inc. And Ted Love is president, chief executive and director of biotech venture Nuvelo Inc. He has more than $1 million in stock in Nuvelo and another $1 million in Theravance Inc.

Penhoet, Nova and Love have declined to follow Klein's lead in divesting their holdings. Hutton said the committee considers such steps a "personal decision."

The Jan. 31 meeting of a subcommittee of the oversight group, held in a windowless room at one of the University of California-San Francisco medical school buildings, illustrates the mammoth challenges members of the oversight group face. Panel members briefly discussed complex issues such as how to handle intellectual property rights for discoveries made with state money and what protections should be put in place for patients for participate in research. They talked about conflict of interest rules and ways to address minority health disparities.

The longest discussion concerned the appointment of members of the Scientific and Medical Accountability Standards Working Group. They agreed they wanted scientists, economists, lawyers and ethicists.

Joan Samuelson, an advocate for patients with Parkinson's Disease, suggested they add someone with an expertise in religion to the mix. "The public looks to theologians for guidance," Samuelson said.

Many of the others nodded. But it wasn't long before the implications of the seemingly simple suggestion sunk in.

Were they looking for someone who was a specialist in Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism or what? What about other sects and subsects? They wondered what kind of statement it would make if they chose someone with one belief system over another. And what about separation of church and state?

In the end, everyone agreed it was too complicated. An explicit call for theologians was left off the list.