April 15, 2006
srcElliot Spitzer unveiled his $1 billion stem cell proposal to the acclaim of a crowd of folks who gathered in an unlikely location (Long Island Jewish Health System) for the announcement. The Times' coverage is thin but essentially he is promising a bond initiative, and the effect of his proposal would be two or three times that of the pending (and not-so-pending) programs in New York State at the moment. On the other hand, if you think the opposition who have tied up the money in California are creative, just wait until you meet the people in New York who tied up law governing decisionmaking by significant others - tied it up entirely, allowing no action at all, so that only Mississippi has a worse family decisionmaking situation - over the question of whether or not fetuses would be protected. It has become clear that even with a balloted initiative the money doesn't flow easily from the states into stem cells, tiny advances against Prop 71 to fund stem cell training grants in California notwithstanding.