The Week Ahead
A San Francisco Board of Supervisors committee will hold a final hearing on legislation that would create an employer health coverage contribution mandate. A compromise reached last week combined the proposed mandate with Mayor Gavin Newsom's universal health access plan. If approved, the measure will move to the full board.
The U.S. Senate will take up legislation addressing stem cell research: HR 810, which would allow funding for research using stem cells derived from embryos originally created for fertility treatments and willingly donated by patients; S 2754, which would require NIH to research and fund methods of creating embryonic stem cell lines without destroying human embryos; and S 3504, which would make it illegal to conduct research on embryos from "fetal farms," where human embryos could be made in a nonhuman uterus or from human pregnancies that were created specifically for the purpose of research.