By Liz Townsend

Six years after voters approved a $3 billion dollar program in embryonic stem cell research, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is seeking a new chairman and facing scrutiny about the lack of results shown by the $1.1 billion spent so far.

While most of the money has gone to projects using stem cells obtained by killing human embryos, in 2009 CIRM quietly began to add adult stem cell research to its program, according to the New York Times. Adult stem cells have thus far been the only source of successful medical treatments, despite the promises of embryonic stem cell advocates.

A report released in late November made several recommendations: CIRM should weed out projects that have shown no progress, improve public relations efforts to prepare for a future initiative that will ask voters for more money, and forge closer ties to the biotech industry, the Sacramento Bee reported. However, the panel that wrote the report "made no attempt to measure CIRM against the campaign promises of 2004," according to the Bee.

The panel also called for more openness in the relationships between board members and the institutions receiving money from CIRM. The CIRM board has 29 directors, and "most of CIRM's grants have gone to institutions connected to its directors," the Bee reported.

The board has been chaired since its inception by Robert Klein, a major proponent of Proposition 71, the 2004 ballot initiative that authorized the program. Klein will end his term at the end of the year, according to the Bee.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger initially chose Canadian scientist Alan Bernstein for the post, sending him a personal letter to offer him the job, the Globe and Mail reported. However, only a week later Bernstein received a second letter from Schwarzenegger withdrawing the nomination because of a provision in state law previously unknown by state officials.

"It is a state law that says a state agency has to be run by a U.S. citizen," CIRM spokesman Don Gibbons told the Globe and Mail. "We weren't aware of the code."

Klein has called for another bond referendum in 2012 that will ask voters of the near-bankrupt state to commit as much as $5 billion more to stem cell research, the Bee reported. However, the people of California and even some in the media are questioning whether a focus on embryonic stem cells--beyond the issues of morality--is a responsible use of the state's limited resources.

"Prop 71 was driven by ideology, not science," according to an editorial in Investor's Business Daily. "Were it otherwise, the money should have flowed to those pursuing, and producing, actual treatments and actual therapies for actual human beings. Let's not get fooled again."