Do you want to know what California’s stem cell agency is doing with California taxpayers’ $6 billion?  Here’s one way.

Proposition 71 passed by 59 percent of the state’s voters in 2004 created the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to parcel out $3 billion in research money over a decade. With bond financing charges the program will cost $6 billion.

Today the agency distributed via e-mail its first "Consumer briefs: Results from CIRM Funded Research."

If you want to know more about the discoveries the agency is funding, it’s useful information. So far the stem cell agency board has approved 168 grants totaling more than $530 million.

You can sign up to receive these reports and other items of interest like news releases by e-mail on CIRM’s website.  Just click on "Sign up for E-alerts" in the upper left of the CIRM home page.

Or, if you’re afraid that might lead to too much in your e-mail in-box, you can always just follow our  blog.

Consumer Watchdog’s Stem Cell Oversight and Accountability Project is aimed at ensuring that all Californians have affordable access to any of the results of the research they’re paying for.

But I strongly encourage anyone interested in CIRM to check their site and sign up for their e-alerts.