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California voters and CIRM—will lightning strike twice?

Nature Biotechnology volume 36, pages 126–127 (2018)Cite this article

An Erratum to this article was published on 06 July 2018

A Correction to this article was published on 06 March 2018

This article has been updated

In 2004, when the CIRM was voted into existence, then US president George W. Bush put the kibosh on federal funding for research on hESCs. In response, a group spearheaded by real estate developer Bob Klein floated a citizen-sponsored proposition—Prop 71: the California Stem Cell Research and Cure Initiative—to fill the funding gap created by Bush. After a star-studded and costly ($34 million) campaign, Prop 71 passed with 7 million votes, unequaled by any citizen-sponsored proposition, according to Klein. The initiative's funding through state bonds was unusual as these are typically issued for tangible projects like bridges or schools. Also atypical was the agency's decision to put the go-ahead for stem cell research conducted with public funds in the hands of voters, and the creation of a state agency like none other, with an independent governing board answerable to no one in the state government.

From its inception, however, the agency has faced its share of controversies. At the outset, lawsuits filed by religious groups and taxpayer organizations kept the agency from giving out any grants for nearly three years after the 2004 election, when the proposition was passed. Without governmental oversight and with a board populated by people whose institutions stood to gain from the funding—Dave Jensen, of the California Stem Cell Report calculated in 2014 that roughly 90% of the funds went to institutions with representatives on the board, although that has shifted more recently—it was criticized for lack of transparency and conflicts of interest, notably by the Institute of Medicine in 2013 (Nat. Biotechnol. 31, 7, 2013).

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Change history

  • 22 February 2018

    In the version of this article initially published, the statement that CIRM's Transition Committee “considered requesting $5-billion (or a total of $10-billion) from the electorate” should have read the “Committee heard a presentation for another $5-billion ($10-billion with interest) citizen-sponsored proposition.” The error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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    Laura DeFrancesco

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DeFrancesco, L. California voters and CIRM—will lightning strike twice?. Nat Biotechnol 36, 126–127 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0218-126

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