State's stem cell agency seeks more time, money - comes under fire how money spent

[The Straight Story]

State's stem cell agency seeks more time, money

When millionaire Silicon Valley real estate developer Bob Klein launched his ballot drive to create a $3-billion state fund for stem-cell research in 2004, he pitched it as a way of taking politics out of science and focusing on cures. One particularly heartbreaking campaign ad showed former big screen Superman Christopher Reeve paralyzed in a wheelchair, struggling for breath and imploring California voters to "stand up for those who can't."

Next month, Klein's six-year term as chairman of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine expires. Under his stewardship, the agency has funded research leading to hundreds of scientific papers, but scientists say marketable therapies for maladies such as cancer, Alzheimer's and spinal cord damage promised during the campaign remain years, if not decades, away.

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But California's stem cell agency quickly found itself mired in another form of politics: legislators and government watchdogs criticized the program for paying its president more than twice the governor's salary, distributing nearly $1 billion to universities with representatives on its board of directors and overselling the promise of stem cell cures.

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Another sore point has been the high salaries paid to top administrators, who handle a staff of about 50. In 2009, President Alan Trounson, a renowned stem cell scientist from Australia, was paid $490,000, the second highest salary in state government outside the university system, records show.

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-me-stem-cell-20101122,0,586087.story