California's official "good government" agency issued its report [PDF] on the state's stem cell agency last week, which in turn fought back with all too typical defensiveness and arrogance, including a threat of suing the state government.

At the urging of the state legislature, the Little Hoover Commission examined the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) governance. (I testified at the Commission's first hearing, back in November.) Its recommendations are relatively modest: CIRM's governing board should be smaller, with most members appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate. The agency should no longer have dual--and sometimes conflicting--leadership. Its audit committee should include performance audits. And so forth. In restrained language, the Commission's report also cited widespread concerns about the "actions and personal style of ICOC chair Robert Klein" and CIRM's often tenuous relationship with the legislature.

True to form, CIRM quickly fired back. Klein's private advocacy group released a memo authored by lobbyists that CIRM had hired to ward off reform efforts (a further indication that Klein uses Americans for Cures as a vehicle for actions from which he would otherwise be proscribed as board chair (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)). CIRM's outside legal counsel also issued a memo. CIRM itself offered a strongly-worded press release--strangely not on the agency's website--which played the "cures card" and threatened a lawsuit if the recommended reforms are pursued. David Jensen, whose coverage at the California Stem Cell Report sets the standard, described this threat as raising "the rather bizarre picture of a state agency suing the governor and the legislature."

Such hostility to oversight demostrates exactly what the Little Hoover report describes as the "adversarial climate" that CIRM has created. It can largely be traced to Klein, who set the tone soon after the 2004 passage of Proposition 71, which created CIRM, by saying that "the Legislature is not needed." Unfortunately, the irony of CIRM's hostile response to a mild critique of its "adversarial" habits was likely lost on Klein.

At least one member of CIRM's board publicly expressed his frustration with the agency's reaction. In a comment on the California Stem Cell Report blog, AIDS / HIV patient advocate Jeff Sheehy condemned the agency's "knee jerk" opposition to the report, and asked, "On whose authority are thousands of dollars of lobbying, communications, and legal resources being spent opposing this report?" He later elaborated in a longer statement to the blog.

The Little Hoover Commission focused on increased accountability and transparency at CIRM, but the stakes are even higher. In fact, the $3 billion research program was cited twice in a feature article in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle about how the state arrived at its current budget crisis. Although the Little Hoover report does not raise the prospect of limiting CIRM's cash stream, which would likely require another ballot measure, the leadership of the stem cell agency should take note of the fiscal climate, and use its political capital wisely.

Previously on Biopolitical Times:

• Sacramento Bee: "Stem cell chief's exit is long overdue"
• Stem Cells in the Time of Fiscal Difficulties
• CIRM won't give up on eggs for cloning-based work
• Digging Themselves a Hole
• Letting Sleeping Dogs Lie
• Nature on California's "Cronyism"
  

On June 19th, the New York Times published an Op-Ed about baseball titled "Let Steroids Into the Hall of Fame." We at the Biopolitical Times Sports Desk were not happy. It was an extraordinarily over-the-top defense of drugs in sport that ended in hyperbole:

If [the Baseball Hall of Fame] excommunicates the greatest stars anyone has ever seen, it will suffer the fate of all battlefields located on the wrong side of history. Obscurity.

Yesterday, however, the Times published four separate letters of complaint. Between them, they complain about the damage drugs have done to the nature of the sport; note the pernicious influence steroid users may have on children; object to supporting criminal activity; and stress the health risks involved.

We find it heartening that the Times did not publish a single letter endorsing doping in baseball. Chalk up a win for common sense

Previously on Biopolitical Times:

• Fertility Drug Makes the Big Leagues
• Baseball Enhances Philosophy
• The New Republic Asks Whether Baseball is Already Losing the Next Doping Battle

The ad (click to enlarge)

Here's an innovation in reproductive tourism: Bring first world eggs, kept fresh inside the ovaries of smart and pretty American college students, to third world wombs, rented on the cheap from poor Indian women who are sure not to make trouble during or after their surrogate pregnancies.

The classified ad shown here, which appeared this February in the Duke University campus newspaper, was placed by a Florida-based fertility firm called Proactive Family Solutions. Its website sells Indian surrogates as a sensible option for prospective parents:

Perhaps more important than the lower cost of surrogacy in India, is the fact that an Indian surrogate is far less likely to attempt to claim parental rights over the child, and the pregnancy will be closely monitored to make sure that the surrogate lives a healthy lifestyle during her pregnancy.

Its pitch to egg providers:

Proactive Family Solutions program is unique. In addition to monetary compensation, we give our donors a free trip to India where the egg retrieval takes place….The medical appointments won't take much time, which means your two weeks in India will be largely a vacation for you. You will have significant time to explore and absorb a fascinating culture as well as shop, tour and enjoy the nightlife.

Americans aren't the only ones taking advantage of pregnancy outsourcing. According to a recent article in the London Evening Standard, a Mumbai obstetrician "delivers on average one baby to a British couple every 48 hours." The story recounts the joy of "one London couple who have taken advantage of India's `baby factories'" to have twins via surrogacy.

Previously on Biopolitical Times:

• More media coverage of surrogacy outsourcing
• Oprah on Renting Wombs in India: “It’s beautiful”

Thanks for pointing us to the Duke University newspaper ad go to Kari Points, MPP, a global health policy analyst who researches cross-border reproductive services. Her recent work is a multi-country analysis of legislative strategies to protect the health and human rights of surrogates. For more information, contact her at kari.points@gmail.com.

The new Synthetic Biology Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars recently released a report entitled Ethical Issues in Synthetic Biology, authored by three scholars from the Hastings Center. Synthetic biology is a developing field that allows scientists to, in a sense, create organisms and biological systems that don’t exist in nature from scratch. By focusing on artificially creating the building blocks of life at the molecular level, scientists hope to be able to develop products such as new forms of energy or novel ways to do environmental cleanup.

Synthetic biology raises a host of social and ethical concerns – some small and others that are truly profound.  The report notes in the preface:

Ethical concerns are too often addressed after investments in science have been made and technologies are already mature and in the marketplace. At that point, neither the research community nor policymakers have a strong incentive to address ethical issues for fear that any debate may stifle technological advance and innovation. But given the rate at which new technologies are emerging and converging, this paper argues that a comprehensive ethical approach is needed early to best foster the wide public acceptance and support of new technologies such as synthetic biology.

While it may be a bit too early to suggest, as a normative matter, that synthetic biology ought to be widely accepted by the public, this report is right to encourage broader thinking about ethical concerns now as opposed to later.