Appeals at the California Stem Cell Agency: Worthwhile or Worthless?

His remarks came in a “comment”
filed on the Duchenne item that appeared yesterday on this site. (His
full comment can be found at the end of that item.)

Shestack said that the handling of the
$6 million CIRM grant involving Duchenne research is “a casebook
study on why the special(extraordinary) petition is worthwhile. There
was indeed new and relevant information that only became available
after grant review. Scientific staff and leadership flagged it.”

The utility of the petitions is one of
the reasons that we ran the story about Duchenne and the team at
UCLA. The extraordinary petition process is currently under fire by
both the Institute of Medicine and the stem cell agency itself, which
has appointed a task force to come up with changes. But, while the
petition process is certainly less than perfect, so is the peer
review/grant review process.

The Duchenne application is not the
only “case study.” An application by Karen Aboody of the City of
Hope is often cited as another case. There are undoubtedly others.

The petition process was adopted
several years ago by the board as a tool to manage willy-nilly
appearances of scientists before the CIRM governing board whose
applications were rejected by reviewers. Now the Institute of
Medicine has recommended the petitions be abandoned, saying they
undermine the integrity of grant review process. The IOM cited a
major controversy in Texas involving its cancer research agency as an
example of how grant reviews or the lack of them can go bad – not
to mention conflict of interest problems there. CIRM has already
started to look for better solutions regarding appeals. Many of its directors
are troubled by emotional presentations from patients in
connection with petitions and the lack of adequate information to
make informed decisions on the spot about the contested matters.

Whether appeals can be put in a tidy,
scientific box is debatable. Researchers have the right, under state
law, to address the board on any issue whatsoever. And at least some
of them will continue to do so -- regardless of any appeals changes --  when millions of dollars and their
careers are at stake.

Opinions and decisions of CIRM
reviewers are not holy writ. They can and do make mistakes, as we
all do. In making changes in the appeals process, the goal of the
agency should be to devise a public and transparent process rather
than enshroud it in more secrecy. CIRM also should find a way to do
a much better job of communicating to applicants the availability of
appeals and precisely how to appeal when it becomes necessary.