Delays in Proposition 71 Funding Beneficial, Editorial States
The San Francisco Chronicle on Monday published an editorial and an opinion piece addressing Proposition 71 -- approved by voters in 2004 to fund stem cell research -- and the lawsuit challenging its constitutionality.
The "long wait" for Proposition 71 funds to be released "isn't entirely in vain" because it has allowed the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to "set forth new specifics that open its activities to scrutiny and put protections for egg donors" in place, a Chronicle editorial states. Stronger state oversight and an audit of preliminary spending also provide "useful clarifications for a promising science virtually orphaned by the Bush administration," the Chronicle states. The editorial concludes that the state's efforts are creating "a blueprint for stem-cell research elsewhere and could set the stage for important breakthroughs" (San Francisco Chronicle, 3/13).
"It is unconscionable that the courts have permitted a meritless lawsuit of such public importance to drag on as long as it has," Russell Korobkin, a professor at the University of California-Los Angeles School of Law and senior fellow at the UCLA Center for Society and Genetics, writes in a Chronicle opinion piece.
Korobkin suggests that if the court rules for the state and the plaintiffs appeal the case, "as they have already pledged to do," the California Supreme Court "should exercise a power that it has ... to bypass" the appellate court and "review the case immediately." According to Korobkin, "this unusual expedited approach could enable the courts to put an end to the litigation as early as this summer" (Korobkin, San Francisco Chronicle, 3/13).