On Election Day 2004, California experienced an earthquake of sorts— not one measured on the Richter scale but one whose reverberations may be felt for years to come. On that day, approximately 7 million voters said yes to the promises of a new science by approving the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, known as Proposition 71, which authorized a $3 billion bond program to fund stem cell research in the state and the establishment of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). The driving force behind the proposition and chairman of CIRM’s Independent Citizens’ Oversight Committee is Robert Klein ’70 (BA ’67), a man accustomed to shaking things up. President of Klein Financial Corporation, a real estate investment banking company with expertise in financing and developing affordable housing, Klein has made a career out of helping those in need.

Klein met with Henry T. “Hank” Greely (BA ’74), Deane F. and Kate Edelman Johnson Professor of Law and director of the law school’s Center for Law and the Biosciences, on February 15, 2007—the day after the California Court of Appeals heard oral arguments on litigation challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 71. Legal challenges to the proposition began immediately after its passage in 2004 and have prevented CIRM from raising crucial bond funding. But Klein found a workaround: He helped to secure $200 million in loans from the state and private investors, so that CIRM’s main mission—to fund stem cell research—could begin.

Greely is an expert in the legal implications of new biomedical technologies, especially those related to genetics, neuroscience, and stem cells. As chair of the California Advisory Committee on Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research, vice chair of Stanford’s Stem Cell Research Oversight Committee, and director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics’ Program on Stem Cells in Society— Greely knows Klein, the work CIRM will foster, and many of the Stanford University scientists who have now received funding from the initiative. Greely jumped at the opportunity to discuss CIRM with Klein—but also to dig a bit deeper into the substance of the man behind the groundbreaking initiative.

GREELY: Where did you grow up?

Klein: I grew up in college, I think, like most people. But I went to a large public high school in Fresno, California.

So you’re a Fresno kid.  

I am a California kid. My father was a city manager. He was the assistant city manager in San Jose, then assistant city manager in Menlo Park. Then he became city manager of Monterey Park, then of Santa Cruz, and then of Fresno. So the family moved a bit.

I hadn’t realized that about your father. Did that influence your interest in public service and public policy? 

It had a major impact. But when I got to Stanford, the finances were such that he had to leave public service and go into private business. So he went into real estate development, but he set a model of contributing back to society. In Santa Cruz, which was at that time a sleepy town that frequently got hit by floods from the San Lorenzo River, I was old enough to watch him pioneer with Justin Herman a major redevelopment project— the river parkway and the harbor marina on the coast. Then I watched him bring the trustees of the Cowell estate together with the regents of the UC system to negotiate a contribution of the land to create the UC Santa Cruz campus. It seemed to me to be a very ambitious goal for a new University of California campus. One day, as my father and I stood on a hill with the Cowell trustees and the UC regents and looked out at the ocean, my dad said, “This is where the campus will be.” I was 12 years old and I thought, “This is my dad, so I’m going to believe it, but is this really possible?”

What’s interesting to me about that is it’s an example of bringing together government and private philanthropy, which you’ve managed to do successfully with CIRM as well.

I learned it from my father. He was a great teacher.

You were of course a stem cell biology major in college, right?

[Laughs] I was a history major with a poli sci minor. And then I studied law. But I did have a tremendous course in human physiology, which has been incredibly valuable in giving me a background that I followed up on later.

At law school, what did you particularly enjoy?

Well, John Kaplan was phenomenal. He taught Criminal Law, which was a magnificent course. I also enjoyed Leon Lipson, who had come as a visiting professor in international law, and Gerald Meier, who was with the business school but taught a course at the law school on the economics of public policy. Meier was a brilliant individual. With his influence I went on a

“I REMEMBER VERY DISTINCTLY BAYLESS MANNING SAYING YOU WILL FIND THAT LAW IS THE PASSPORT TO EVERY CRITICAL AREA OF SOCIAL POLICY, AS WELL AS THE CHALLENGES OF CORPORATE LIFE AND POTENTIALLY YOUR PERSONAL LIFE.” ROBERT KLEIN

fellowship to the United Nations Economic and Social Council in Geneva, which was a tremendous experience.

Did you have any significant extracurricular activities during law school?

It was a time of great political foment. I took a leave of absence from the law school to work for John Tunney’s campaign for the U.S. Senate against George Murphy. Murphy was an absolute hawk on the war in Vietnam and he supported an anti-ballistic missile system that would have taken massive amounts of federal dollars away from critical social areas. So I took nine months off and was the statewide coordinator for the under-30 campaign.

That’s the era when I first paid attention to politics. I was growing up in southern California, so I remember that race from the outside. What did you do after graduation? 

Well, I had had a number of great professors—

This is good. We like to hear this.

One of these professors was a visiting lecturer, Bill Glikbarg (BA ’46), who had his own firm in Los Angeles. I took his course in affordable housing. At the time I was doing some legal aid work for a family in Los Angeles. The family was facing eviction from a house they thought they had an option to buy. So I was interested in the topic. At the end of the course Bill offered me a position as a junior partner in his property development firm. He told me I could influence the market more by creating good affordable housing that draws the tenants and provides a benchmark for comparison for the housing authorities than I could by representing one legal aid client at a time.

So but for that adjunct coming in from practice to teach a course, your entire career would have been different.

Totally. In my last year at the law school, I was running the Northern California projects for the firm and had five real estate projects in progress. Also, Professor Kaplan sponsored a law school symposium that I organized on the law, civil disobedience, and the ghetto. This was just after the riots in Detroit and the establishment of the President’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, which Victor Palmieri ’54 (BA ’51) directed. I was able to get Victor to make a presentation to the law school and participate in a section of the course. That experience helped me appreciate my ability to access those who were changing society.

And the value of a law degree to help bring about change.

Yes. I remember very distinctly Bayless Manning, a former Stanford Law School dean, saying you will find that law is the passport to every critical area of social policy, as well as the challenges of corporate life and potentially your personal life. He said this is your ticket to participate in a broad range of fields of tremendous importance to society. And that was absolutely true.

Have you ever actually practiced law?

Only legal aid. I never practiced law formally.

Yet law played an important role in your career.

It’s been absolutely crucial. Take, for instance, my drafting of the legislation for the California Housing Finance Agency. The first time we passed it, it was vetoed by Governor Ronald Reagan. The second time we passed it, it was signed by Governor Jerry Brown. But it would have been impossible to do that work without my legal education and legal writing skills. We would be in hearings in the afternoon and have 100 amendments that needed to be turned in by midnight. It would have been impossible to meet those deadlines without the legal education that I had.

So after more than 30 years working in low-income housing, you emerge as a stem cell advocate. How did you first get involved in this area of science?

My youngest son was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. I immediately got involved with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF)—first by trying to gain passage of a supplemental NIH appropriations bill to increase funding for research.

So one of your first thoughts was how can I get the government to help?

You need the federal government to be behind the research. It was committing some resources, but not enough. One third of all Medicare dollars go to people with type-1 or type-2 diabetes so the disease is a national problem and the government’s response has been devastatingly inadequate. The then president of the JDRF, Peter Van Etten, contacted me to be a volunteer. He looked at my background in political reform and asked me to become part of the team to get Congress to approve the supplemental NIH mandatory appropriation. A major turning point for me came after a meeting with Senator John Kerry and my son Jordan, who joined me in D.C. for informal hearings on diabetes. It was a way for him to fight back against the disease. After hearing Jordan describe for the senator the potential effects of diabetes, Kerry asked him what would happen later in life. Jordan said well, you can go blind, or lose your kidneys, or have amputations and your life can end that way. Afterwards I said, “You’re 12 years old. This is too much for you to handle.” And then he said, “Dad, don’t worry. Everyone is dying. I’m just dying a little faster.” If you’re a father, that’s a totally unacceptable reality.

So you drafted Proposition 71, which passed by a clear majority in 2004. It looks like you may be nearing an end of the legal wrangling. These are exciting times for CIRM.

Yes. We’re approving $150 million in research grants and we’re about to put $300 million into research facilities across the state, and I hope to add another $600 or $700 million of facilities from private donations and borrowing by the universities and research institutions.

Where will you focus your research efforts?

One opportunity is applying embryonic stem cell research and somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) to expanding the application of adult stem cell therapies. These therapies are very effective in 8 or 9, maybe 12, disease areas. With leukemia and multiple myeloma, we’ve raised the survival rate from 6 percent to 80 percent—that’s tremendous, but it’s only effective for a maximum of 50 percent of the patients for whom one can obtain a 50 percent immune system match with the cell donors. The other 50 percent are dying, even though there is a successful therapy for these diseases. With SCNT in which you match the patient’s immune system or with embryonic stem cell research that creates adult cells with immature immune systems, we have the possibility of expanding the group eligible for this therapy to maybe 70 to 75 percent. The challenges are beyond my imagination but hold such great potential for reducing human suffering.

The next president may have a more liberal position with respect to embryonic stem cell research. If that happens, how will that affect the California initiative?

I hope you’re right. People forget that it was fetal tissue that gave us the science to create the vaccines for polio and smallpox. It is because of that science, and the leaders who allowed it to advance, that we haven’t had a polio outbreak in this country since the 1950s. In 1957 it was estimated that polio would cost the country $100 billion a year by 2005—instead, it’s a rare disease. But the key here is that critical breaking areas of science have always been controversial. In 1977 UC San Francisco announced the creation of artificial human insulin—the drug that keeps my son alive. The research that allowed development of that drug, recombinant DNA technology, which was developed at Stanford and UCSF, was considered controversial at the time. It continued because a group of patient-advocates, scientists, and business leaders showed up in Congress and asked that members respect the science and not shut down this developing area of medicine. We know from history that science needs stability to develop. We also know that every two years when the Congress changes that it can shut down funding despite the new president. California will provide long-term stability for scientists from the United States and all over the world. We have a constitutional amendment—Prop 71—that allows them the legal sanctuary to conduct research in this state, and the funding for this safe harbor will be in place for at least another 10 to 12 years. Researchers who have dedicated their lives to relieving human suffering through this new area of scientific and medical research will have the ability to go from basic research to applied research to translational medicine to the point that private companies may carry it through clinical trials and to the patient—all right here in California. That stability is vital.

You have taken a law degree into fields far different from most people and have created something that is very important and I sense very personally satisfying as well.

It’s satisfying knowing the large numbers of individuals dedicated to this research that we will fund. As a father and as a patient-advocate, I will celebrate when we have breakthroughs that reduce the suffering of families. I can only hope that juvenile diabetes will be one of those breakthroughs.

EDITOR’S NOTE: On February 26, the unanimous appeals court decision was announced—overwhelmingly supporting the right for CIRM to raise funds and continue its work.