Instead, the Sacramento Democrat is seeking to increase the information given to potential egg donors about the possible health risks of hormones used to increase egg production for extraction. Her legislation would also require the state’s new stem cell agency to evaluate studies on these health risks and to commission its own research on the subject.

Ortiz said she changed course based on the advice of medical professionals - not because of criticism from her supporters. She said the medical professionals told her not enough was known about the medical risks to justify a moratorium.

“I don’t mind criticism,” Ortiz said Thursday. “That comes with the job. My barometer is what is the right thing to do, and what is the fair thing to do.”

Several patient advocates and researchers, who considered Ortiz to be their champion on embryonic stem cell research, had attacked the senator’s proposed moratorium because they believed it would stymie the research.

The Senate Health Committee, which Ortiz chairs, approved her bill, SB 18, without the moratorium Wednesday. It also approved a constitutional amendment, SCA 13, to impose new rules on the state’s stem cell agency.

Scientists need human eggs to conduct therapeutic cloning, one of the promising forms of research to be funded through the $3 billion stem cell research program state voters approved in November.

With therapeutic cloning, or somatic cell nuclear transfer, scientists take the nucleus from an egg and replace it with the nucleus of a skin or other somatic cell. The research is still very new and inefficient. The first case of therapeutic cloning used 242 eggs.

Scientists say they eventually hope to develop other methods that will eliminate the need for so many human eggs. But they said they need the human eggs to find that new method.
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How hypocritical can this Senator be?
She amended her bill based on the lobbying efforts of the medical profession, but she wouldn

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