Gov. Brown, declaring that "not everything in life is for sale," vetoed legislation that would allow women to sell their eggs for research.
From Capitol Weekly's Alex Matthews: "Gov. Brown vetoed controversial legislation that will allow egg donors to be compensated for oocytes, egg cells, provided for research purposes."
“Not everything in life is for sale nor should it be,” Brown said Tuesday evening in his veto statement. “In medical procedures of this kind, genuinely informed consent is difficult because the long-term risks are not adequately known. Putting thousands of dollars on the table only compounds the problem.”
"The bill, authored by Assemblymember Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, would have lifted restrictions that were put in place through 2006 legislation to protect egg donors from potential exploitation in the wake of Prop. 71, which provided $3 billion to establish a stem cell agency in California." (Ed's Note: For a detailed story on this issue, see Capitol Weekly's July 10 report.)
The governor wants to rewrite Proposition 65, the initiative approved by voters in the 1980s to protect themselves against dangerous chemicals, and on Tuesday he gave an indication of what exactly he wants to do.
From Cheryl Miller in The Recorder: "As it scrambles to overhaul Proposition 65 in the final weeks of the legislative session, Governor Jerry Brown's office has released draft amendments that would shield more small businesses from private lawsuits brought under the voter-approved Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act."
"Proposed changes, circulated among interest groups over the weekend, would exempt retailers who employ fewer than 25 people from Prop 65 litigation, which can result in sizeable civil penalties and attorneys fees. Currently, the voter-approved initiative only shields businesses with fewer than 10 employees."
"The proposal drew immediate criticism from at least one environmentalist who said the change was not vetted during months of private meetings held between the governor's administration and dozens of stakeholders."
The opening day of the new Bay Bridge, orginally planned for Labor Day but then cast in doubt after structural issues were discovered, may open on time, after all.
From the Chronicle's Michael Cabanatuan and Henry K. Lee: "The on-again, off-again Labor Day opening of the new Bay Bridge eastern span should finally be settled on Thursday, just two weeks before a four-day closure necessary to shift traffic to the new structure."
"Federal officials revived the possibility of a Labor Day opening, giving their approval for a temporary fix for snapped high-strength steel rods that hold seismic-stability structures together. A letter from the Federal Highway Administration said the short-term repair would provide a "comparable level of seismic performance."
"As such, we see no reason to delay opening the bridge to traffic," Vincent Mammano, a division administrator with the federal agency, wrote Friday to Steve Heminger, executive director of the Bay Area Toll Authority."
The turf dispute between nurses and doctors remains in play, with legislation giving the nurses greater authority advancing, but in a less expansive form than when it started out.
From the Bee's Melody Gutierrez: "A watered-down bill allowing nurse practitioners to operate independently of physicians passed during reconsideration in an Assembly committee Tuesday after failing to earn enough votes last week."
"Senate Bill 491 by Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina, increases the scope of practice of nurse practitioners by allowing them to practice independently of physicians in certain medical facilities, such as hospitals, clinics and skilled nursing facilities. Amid fierce lobbying in opposition, including by the California Medical Association, which represents doctors, Hernandez removed language in the bill that would have allowed nurse practitioners to operate completely independent of physician oversight after 6,240 hours of supervised practice."
"We heard thoughtful testimony last week and it was clear that members wanted to find common ground to help California bridge the provider gap and ensure that we all have access to quality healthcare," Hernandez said in a statement."
From the LAT's Bettina Boxall: "Finally, some good news about the effects of climate change. It may have triggered a growth spurt in two of California's iconic tree species: coast redwoods and giant sequoias."
"Since the 1970s, some coast redwoods have grown at the fastest rate ever, according to scientists who studied corings from trees more than 1,000 years old."
"That's a wonderful, happy surprise for us," said Emily Burns, science director at the Save the Redwoods League, which is collaborating on a long-term study with university researchers on the effect of climate change on redwoods, the world's tallest trees, and giant sequoias, the largest living things by total mass. "The forests are not experiencing detrimental impacts of climate change," Burns said."
And from our "All You Need is Love File" comes word that the latest media narrative (Atlantic, NYT) about college students having sex at greater levels than ever before is probably hogwash.
"A new study presented at the American Sociological Association on Tuesday shows that the "hookup culture" narrative might be a myth. Martin A. Monto, a professor of sociology at the University of Portland, found in the comparative study “no evidence of substantial changes in sexual behavior that would support the proposition that there is a new or pervasive ‘hookup culture’ among contemporary college students.”
"Basically, college kids aren't having any more sex today than they did in the 1990s, despite suggestions (ahem, The Atlantic and The New York Times) to the contrary. Monto compared national data on two waves of students who had completed at least one year of college. The first wave was from 1988 to 1996, the second from 2002 to 2010. He found that today's young people aren't having sex more often or with more partners than their predecessors did...."
"The numbers? 59 percent of students today said they have sex weekly or more often, while only 32 percent said they've had more than one partner in the past year. What's different today is that students' partners are more likely to be friends or casual partners as opposed to longterm mates (otherwise known as boyfriends and girlfriends). 77 percent of today's students said they had a regular partner or spouse, while 85 percent said the same in the earlier generation. Monto attributes this slight decline to the "change in age of marriage."
