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Article XXXV. Medical Research, Section 5, Chapter 3, 125290.30. Public and Financial Accountability Standards, Patent Royalties and License Revenues Paid to the State of California. "The ICOC shall establish standards that require that all grants and loan awards be subject to intellectual property agreements that balance the opportunity of the State of California to benefit from the patents, royalties, and licenses that result from basic research, therapy development, and clinical trials with the need to assure that essential medical research is not unreasonably hindered by the intellectual property agreements." Whenever people talk who want to delay or destroy the California stem cell program, they always say Proposition 71 guarantees royalties from the research. Does it? Look closely. "The ICOC shall establish standards that require that all grants and loan awards be subject to intellectual property agreements that balance the opportunity of the State of California to benefit from the patents, royalties, and licenses that result from basic research, therapy development, and clinical trials with the need to assure that essential medical research is not unreasonably hindered by the intellectual property agreements." What that means to me is that every research grant and contract must be judged individually, balancing the possibility of an immediate payback versus the longterm benefits of research for cure. How can there be a one-size-fits-all policy, when the research projects are so different? If a grant was given to a company experimenting with something that was going to give them an immediate profit-that's one thing. But if a researcher was trying to solve a small but important intellectual question, like how to mark a special kind of stem cell in a way that scientists could "read" it, that might bring in money someday, or maybe never. How can there be one identical contract, for every kind of grant? That is why the language says what it does, so individual contracts can be worked out. And here is another point of balance. California has roughly ten per cent of the nation's people. So if America spends $3 trillion dollars on all medical care, (and it does) California's ten per cent of that is (approximately) three hundred billion dollars. That is a mountain of money, including both out of pocket expenditures and time lost from work. So three hundred billion dollars on one side of the balance see-saw. And to balance that enormous need, how much are we spending on research for cure? A few dollars come from the Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research Act, which I am proud to say was the source of the first state-funded embryonic stem cell research in America. (For those who have not read this column before, the RR Act was named after Roman Reed, my paralyzed son.) Aside from those paltry few dollars-how about-- nothing? On one side, three hundred billion dollars in medical debt. On the other side, the part where California voted for stem cell research to lower costs by research for cure-- nada. Zero, zip, nothing. California voted to spend three hundred million a year (for ten years) on stem cell research. It is not happening. We are delayed by lawsuits from the anti-research religious right. They will be defeated. But in the meantime, the research is not being done. Perhaps even worse, legislation like Senator Deborah Ortiz's Senate Constitution Amendment 13 (SCA-13, an unlucky number for research!) could open up new grounds for lawsuits against our hard-won stem cell research program. If SCA-13 imposes still more iron-clad restrictions on the research program, we open the floodgates for endless lawsuits-oh, look, this might be a violation of subsection c, paragraph one million-- let's have another lawsuit! Remember, there are people who want to kill our research program. They are patient, they have money, they hire lawyers. Every numbing legal paragraph will be gone over with a fine toothed comb, as their two-hundred dollar an hour legal beagles look for any slightest excuse for yet another lawsuit. Enough already. After 54 public meetings, and endless hours trying to work out every conceivable objection and problem, the last thing Prop 71 needs is a whole new set of regulations to try and figure out, and to give the opposition more lawsuit weapons. Those mandated to implement the new stem cell program have bent over backward to consider all reasonable suggestions for change. Already, numerous changes have been made, and there is a process in place to implement more improvements as we go along. But there comes a point when the will of the voters must be respected. We had the great debate; all sides were heard. California voted. Does not our new stem cell program deserve a chance to get going? Or should it be legislated into frozen immobility, the legal equivalent of paralysis, by an endless procession of lawsuits? That is a question of balance as well. Don Reed - www.stemcellbattles.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn