California creates "mini-NIH" to Fund Stem
Submitted by art on Thu, 2004-11-18 07:22.
Known as the "California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative," the ballot measure, which provides $3 billion in state financing for stem-cell research, won by a comfortable 59 to 41 percent in Tuesday's statewide balloting.
The initiative was designed as an end run around the Bush administration, which enacted a policy in 2001 barring NIH grants for any stem cell work involving destruction of human embryos. Now California has jumped in with an alternative source of grants -- up to $350 million a year for a decade