FIC Blog

Is it any surprise that scientists who want to clone and kill human embryos have other ethical problems too? An op-ed in the Sunday Courant notes that two-thirds of the grant-awarding committee have conflicts of interest:

For example, the board includes Xiangzhong “Jerry” Yang, the state’s premier stem cell researcher. Last year, he threatened to move his work to China if the state did not pass the funding bill. Once he was on the committee, he made it clear that he’d be seeking big bucks. He’s now applied for $5 million – from his own committee.
Moreover, because Connecticut has only two research universities, conflicts of interest are built in: Committee members will consider grants to their own institutions. The Office of State Ethics pointed out a problem with the original committee of nine members. If members had abstained from voting on grants for their own institutions, the committee could not have reached a quorum.
A logical response would have been to replace some committee members with experts from out of state, or to change its composition to include biologists who don’t conduct stem cell research. Instead, in January, the General Assembly simply doubled the size of the committee – and exempted it from conflict-of-interest laws.

The author reports that members of the committee are likely to have investments in the companies doing the research and that they will not be required to disclose their financial interests to the public. It is for good reason that he concludes that “a pattern of rushing ahead instead of moving forward responsibly is emerging in stem cell research.”