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Robert Klein resigns presidency of Americans for Cures

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

The californiastemcellreport notes that Robert Klein has resigned as president of the lobbying group Americans for Cures, a position he had held concurrently with his job as head of California's CIRM.

John M. Simpson was quoted: "His [Gibbons'] phone call came after my posting the view today that holding both the state position and the advocacy position was untenable and the situation was a train wreck waiting to happen."

The bunglings at CIRM have been ongoing. In a previous IPBiz post titled On California's CIRM: unwieldy dinosaur of times past?:

The current Reed/Klein matter in California could be viewed as an alternative history "ghosts of problems future" that New Jersey simply will not have to visit.

The repeated missteps, and attempted corrections, of California's CIRM will become a "case history" for study in what not to do in public funding of research.

See also
A response of sorts to Don C. Reed about covering both sides of CIRM including the text:

Of the point about --disservice to the millions of patients suffering from chronic disease and injury for whom stem cell research holds great promise for future therapies and cures--, one might look to a January 19 IPBiz post quoting Dr. Yamanaka on his iPS work:

Last week, Yamanaka told reporters in Tokyo that aspects of the iPS discovery - though not stem cell therapy, which might be a decade away from clinical application, even if the research continues going well - have reached another breakthrough point.

IPBiz notes that iPS is further along in development than the human SCNT work of the Hwang-type that CIRM was trying to fund, for example, in its grant (now withdrawn) to the Cha entity. One asks: great promise for "when" in the future? Sooner than Jules Verne's Nautilus, but likely not within 10 years? One suspects that the rejection by the voters of the state of New Jersey of the stem cell bond issue last November was caused in part by these concerns. There are probably also concerns about money going to scientific empire building rather than to the pursuit therapeutic cures. How much disservice has been done as to promises that might be a long time in realization?

CIRM: smoke and mirrors, concealing a vacuum...

Full post as published by IPBiz on July 14, 2008 (boomark / email).